Liquor baron Ponty Chadha who was killed during a shootout with his brother, Hardeep, is not the first Indian businessman who met with a violent end.

A few more businessmen who were killed...

Business Standard

The arrest of two women in Palghar (near Mumbai) for an innocuous Facebook status update is the latest indicator of an increasing intolerance of free speech, especially online. The state has also increased its surveillance. The focus on surveillance and censorship is evident not only in specific instances but also in the statistics. In February, the government said it taps 300 new phones on an average day. Google&rsquo;s latest Transparency Report says India also generates the second-largest number of requests for content takedowns and information about user accounts. Between January 2012 and June 2012, India made 2,319 requests for user data from 3,467 accounts and 273 requests for takedowns. Google complied with only 64 per cent of those requests, which means the rest did not meet legal standards, even under the provisions of Indian law. Many requests were for the removal of content &ldquo;defamatory &rdquo; to sundry politicians, and &ldquo;government criticism&rdquo;.

Absurd arrests

A three-member body is not essential, but appointments must be made independently.

What's better: a single-member or a three-member CAG?

The government has been trying to focus on no-frills accounts to promote financial inclusion. At a press conference after a meeting with Finance Minister P Chidambaram and north zone bank chiefs last week, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit urged the finance ministry to remove obstacles in opening such accounts that provide basic banking services for the poor. Dikshit, clearly, isn&rsquo;t particularly familiar with basic bank accounts &mdash; she apparently didn&rsquo;t even know what they were called. In the middle of her passionate plea for financial inclusion, she paused to ask the official sitting next to her, &ldquo;What do you call them, free-fly...?&rdquo; It took the Delhi chief minister a little while to understand the term. Only with a bit of effort could she finally pronounce the phrase &ldquo;no-frills accounts&rdquo;.

No-flub account

Indeed, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had a pretty uncomfortable press conference all round. She was bombarded with all kinds of questions related to banking and finance &ndash; unsurprisingly &ndash; considering she was facing many business journalists, and had just met, along with other north zone chief ministers, with Finance Minister P Chidambaram and some bankers.

Close to home

At least one interesting take on the government&rsquo;s single-minded focus on raising investor confidence and &ldquo;animal spirits&rdquo; has come from, of all things, the cover image of a second-quarter earnings report. The Q2 report from Motilal Oswal features a cartoon of a giant firecrackers stall named &ldquo;India fireworks&rdquo;. Sitting on one side is the recognisable figure of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, assisted by Chief Economic Advisor Raghuram Rajan; on the other is Finance Minister P Chidambaram, helped by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Ahluwalia. With big smiles, they&rsquo;re all selling firecrackers labelled &ldquo;digitisation&rdquo;, &ldquo;FDI&rdquo;, &ldquo;divestment&rdquo; and &ldquo;roads&rdquo;. And, investors seem to be lining up, too, celebrating wildly. (On Chidambaram&rsquo;s side, they&rsquo;ve even broken their queue.) Take a closer look, though, and something odd emerges. All the investors in line are brown-haired.

Cartoon truth

This refers to the report &ldquo;Indians more racially targeted now than other Asians in Australia&rdquo; (October 27). The Scanlan Foundation Mapping Social Cohesion Survey 2012 &ndash; on which the report is based &ndash; asked respondents whether their feelings towards different immigrant groups were positive, negative or neutral. In the case of Indian immigrants, the survey found that 46.9 per cent were either very positive or somewhat positive, 37.7 per cent were neutral and 13.6 per cent were somewhat negative (8.9 per cent) or very negative (4.7 per cent). The report failed to mention that 84.6 per cent of respondents were either positive or neutral in their feelings towards Indian immigrants.

Letters: Australians on Indians

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Big loopholes in farm credit&rdquo; (November 14). All agricultural issues are being sought to be resolved through credit subvention, but that is not a long-term solution. The small farmer faces a host of issues, including input costs that have multiplied, high cost of fertilisers, monsoon and markets. His land is snatched away by developers, and his son&rsquo;s education is now costlier with privatisation. Medicines are unaffordable, too.

Letters: Credit for supply chains

This refers to the report &ldquo;Container rail freight rates set to rise 31 per cent&rdquo; (November 19). Concor managing director&rsquo;s statement that rail movements are not competitive below 300 km universally is likely to be belied by China. China is building a 220-km rail line through Columbia &mdash; three times the length of the Panama Canal, and connecting the ports of the Atlantic and the Pacific in order to boost its exports to the Americas. It says its success depends &ldquo;on the cost of transporting per tonne, the cost of investment, and they all work out&rdquo;. In this regard, thus, our container operators should neither have concerns of margins being hit, nor passing of some of the proposed rate rise to consumers.

Letters: Competing with Panama

It is not often that the government asks the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) to review its report on the pricing and marketing policy for wheat &mdash; though the commission&rsquo;s recommendations have been overlooked in the past to factor in political considerations while fixing minimum support prices (MSP). The present controversy over wheat- marketing policies concerns chiefly two issues.

Listen to the CACP

It is encouraging to see a lot of Indian companies across industries engaging customers in the digital landscape. While some have successfully created high volumes of conversation across various channels including blogs, forums, and social media sites, others are reportedly engaging customers through contests, humorous videos and events on social media.

Connecting the digital way

In an interview with the Press Trust of India on Sunday, Finance Minister P Chidambaram explained that there was no &ldquo;antagonism&rdquo; between his ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Citing a recent trip that he took with RBI Governor D Subbarao to a G20 meeting in Mexico, he said that there he had &ldquo;spoken to several governors and several finance ministers&rdquo; and &ldquo;the relationship is exactly the same&rdquo;. The government &ldquo;argues the case for growth&rdquo;, presumably the central bank argues for taming inflation, and then a decision is made. It is welcome that Mr Chidambaram has taken a step towards clearing the air. Some recent public pronouncements had begun to worry observers. There is a thin line between arguing a case and appearing to put pressure on a monetary authority whose hard-won autonomy is, in historical terms, relatively recent.

Worrying disconnect

The government&rsquo;s move to set up a permanent tribunal for resolving inter-state water disputes makes little sense. Given the dismal record of tribunals, both present and past, in settling bitterly contested water rows and states&rsquo; minimal compliance with their awards, it would be futile to expect results from the proposed new tribunal. If the objective behind this plan is to expedite the dispute disposal process, as seems to be the case, it is unlikely to be served.

Water nonsense

Amid the furore of another controversial arrest &ndash; of a young woman in Mumbai &ndash; under the draconian provisions of the IT Act, many people are recalling an exchange at the recent India meeting of the World Economic Forum in Gurgaon. A panel dedicated to developments in the online world, especially in terms of freedom of speech, featured the presence of Information Technology and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, who has been the focus of many complaints about the increasingly oppressive nature of India&rsquo;s online policing. At some point, Ajit Gulabchand of Hindustan Construction Company told him sternly that whatever he may or may not actually feel about the subject, &ldquo;he was a different man once in the government&rdquo;. The reference, presumably, was to Mr Sibal&rsquo;s legal career outside the government, where he has famously defended several high-profile targets.

The charges of office?

Bal Thackeray and Indira Gandhi had a few similarities. Both were aggressive, undemocratic in their ways and with a mind of their own. Thackeray wore &lsquo;Marathism&rsquo; on his sleeves. He will be remembered as a man who took on one and all, if he had a different point of view. On his demise, his son Uddhav will no doubt try hold his flock together. But with Maharashtra politics already divided into four parties, it remains to be seen if Uddhav Thackeray can stay afloat.

Letters: Balasaheb and Indira

Everyone&rsquo;s trying to take advantage of the festive season, it seems. Even, apparently, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which splashily launched gift packs of soaps and other beauty products during Diwali. The special VHP twist? The products &ndash; all organic, of course &ndash; feature various products of the cow. The GouBrands Organic Products Company has named its soaps Maharani, Maharaja, Rajkumari and Rajkumar. Some of them have jasmine, lavender and chocolate (&ldquo;Rajkumar soap expresses the naughty and sharp Rajkumar with a rich chocolate flavour&rdquo;), but VHP assures its customers that all the antiseptic properties of cow urine (&ldquo;arka&rdquo;) are fully retained in the soaps. The soaps are being sold in &ldquo;limited edition&rdquo; boxes during Diwali and Pongal till the New Year. And, of course, you could buy them for Christmas gifts, too.

Antiseptic season

This refers to Sreelatha Menon&rsquo;s column &ldquo;A joke called NREGS&rdquo; (Ear to the Ground, November 18). In his book Swaraj, Arvind Kejriwal notes that siphoning off Central funds by government officials can be tackled by devolving untied funds upon villagers directly. In this context, uninformed and often scheming gram panchayats, usually pulling in different sectarian directions, are already struggling to effectively utilise untied funds available to them. A sudden inflow of large funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) will worsen the situation. If only political and administrative will could be mobilised to ensure near-full implementation of NREGS in a responsive manner, this one scheme could change the lives of a vast number of currently disempowered people of India in a short span of time.

Letters: Hopes from NREGS 

Apropos the editorial &ldquo;Bal Thackeray&rsquo;s true legacy&rdquo; (November 19), there is a need to know the reason for Thackeray&rsquo;s huge popularity among unemployed Maharashtrian youth. An impartial examination would perhaps reveal that the cosmopolitan Bombay of the 1960s and 1970s was arrogantly and rabidly anti-Marathi speakers. Second, opportunities in the job market then were denied to Marathi-speaking youth in an unfair manner. That led to Thackeray&rsquo;s early successes. Moreover, it is noteworthy that a national party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, gave respectability to Shiv Sena&rsquo;s politics by forming an alliance.

Letters: Rabidly anti-Marathi?

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Defend your choices&rdquo; (November 19). It seems the key personnel in the UPA government and the Congress party carry a personal vendetta against the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for exposing the mega scam through his statutory audits. The CAG had given three estimates of presumptive losses relating to the 2G spectrum auction of 2008. They were based on data provided by the government. And it was the Opposition and the media that hyped the Rs 1.76 lakh loss, not the CAG.

Letters: Blaming the CAG

When someone like Bal Thackeray dies, spare a thought for the harried people at 24x7 news channels. Clearly, a flurry of calls were made to leaders cutting across party lines, and celebrities of all sorts for suitably sonorous and sombre reactions to Thackeray&rsquo;s death on Saturday. Every single news-channel editor needed a quick quote over the phone &ndash; or &ldquo;phono&rdquo;, as they&rsquo;re apparently known in the industry. In all the chaos, some wires can get crossed. One sufferer in consequence was Minister of State for Shipping and South Mumbai Member of Parliament Milind Deora, who was startled to receive a call asking what he, (the late union minister) Vilasrao Deshmukh, thought of Thackeray&rsquo;s death. A disgusted Mr Deora tweeted angrily: &ldquo;Just got a call from a news channel asking me for a phono. I was also asked if I&rsquo;m Vilasraoji. Pathetic! I obviously declined.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 811 - Business Standard