Despite at least 400 prisoners serving under the death sentence in India, the country&rsquo;s record of executions is lower than many (Click on graphic)

Global gallows

Business Standard

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...

The attack on Mumbai that unfolded on November 26, 2008, and didn&rsquo;t stop for 60 unrelenting hours was not an ordinary crime. Indeed, if there ever is any occasion that fits the Supreme Court&rsquo;s &ldquo;rarest of rare&rdquo; qualifier in handing out the death sentence, this would be it, considering how emotive the issue has become in India and how much the scenes of carnage from 26/11 have embedded themselves in collective public memory.

Swift closure

Over five decades IITs are famous for the merit based admissions and very negligible tuition fees. Also most of the students belong to villages. Those students were passionately working hard to get to IITs as the fee burden on the family was less. Now the hiking of the fees may be marginal from institute&rsquo;s point of view but this means a lot to those student. Loan requires heavy documentation and ultimately adds pressure to students. Instead IITs should look for options such as corporate sponsorship's, funds from government, and alumni, among others.

Student's corner

The buzz was that Air India One, the Indian prime minister&rsquo;s official plane, was going to take off half an hour earlier than scheduled from the Phnom Penh VVIP air strip on Tuesday evening. Then, there was talk that the delay was on account of a brief meeting with US President Barack Obama, so the air was thick with expectation of what Singh might have to say. But within minutes of take-off &ndash; on time &ndash; it was clear that Singh would not hold his customary on-board press conference after all. Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and senior bureaucrats would fill in for him. The reason, though, had nothing to do with any high-level confabulations by the prime minister, but something as mundane as a sore throat. But that didn&rsquo;t stop journalists from speculating that Singh had been advised not to face media questions just ahead of the winter session of Parliament, that is almost guaranteed to be stormy.

Talked down

The on-board briefing on Air India One turned a little confusing over who was to be quoted and who was not. Initial instructions were that top government officials would provide reporters with a strictly off-the-record briefing without naming names. This did not, however, please Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who was standing in for the prime minister. He was seen whispering to foreign ministry officials after which Sharma&rsquo;s comments were declared on the record. The other senior official at the briefing remained off the record. After the conference, byte-hungry reporters even managed to get some exclusive footage with Sharma.

Unquote, quote

It&rsquo;s not just the primary markets that are in a soporific state, investment bankers appear to be no less sleepy. Recently, at a press conference organised by the first company to hit the markets with an IPO (initial public offering) in five months, the chief of a leading investment bank was caught off guard. He was asked whether recent changes in IPO regulations would apply. What changes? His colleague had to first brief his boss on the new rules that were announced in August and amended last month. Later, both of them had to make frantic calls and check whether the new regulations had, indeed, come into play.

Out of order

Apropos the debate &ldquo;What&rsquo;s better: a single-member or a three-member CAG?&rdquo; (November 21), the reason behind the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government&rsquo;s intention to make the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) a multi-member body is the latter&rsquo;s role in exposing the misdeeds of the ruling government. Whenever an institution exerts its constitutional powers to make the ruling establishment accountable to the people, the latter attempts to mess up the institution by altering its basic structure and appointing establishment loyalists. That cannot be allowed. Moreover, Subhash Kashyap has rightly pointed out that it doesn&rsquo;t matter whether CAG is single-member or multi-member; what matters is the personality of the person/people holding the constitutional positions.

Letters: Watchdog of democracy

Apropos Anol Nath Chatterji&rsquo;s article &ldquo;CAG follows global best practices&rdquo; (November 12), it is clear that the independence of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is an important cornerstone of India&rsquo;s democracy guaranteed by the Constitution. The founding fathers of the Republic of India foresaw that any legislative interference &ndash; even in seemingly unimportant matters like salaries and expenses of CAG and his staff &ndash; would undermine its functioning.

Letters: CAG's global presence

This refers to A K Bhattacharya&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Is Singh a victim of politics&rdquo; (Raisina Hill, November 19). Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&rsquo;s role as a politician is an outcome of his helplessness. The Congress party (read Sonia Gandhi) had changed the UPA governance structure soon after making Singh the prime minister. It transferred all powers of the PM to the Congress president. The transformation of Singh as a politician accommodating party compulsions is a bonus to the party, since it need not think twice before taking any decision that have implications on the government&rsquo;s role. When you cannot fight them, join hands with them &mdash; this aptly sums up the PM&rsquo;s role.

Letters: Singh, the politician

The recent summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, in Phnom Penh was noteworthy for two reasons. First, because it became clear that a powerful bloc within Asean is not willing to allow Beijing to bully its way through maritime territorial disputes, even though the host nation, Cambodia, lobbied hard for China.

More FTAs, less red tape

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.

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