BSE, formerly Bombay Stock Exchange, has been seeing a continuous churn at the top management level with Lakshman Gugulothu, CEO of the SME platform becoming the latest to jump ship. In the last four years alone, the bourse has seen close to a dozen high-profile exits. This river-like flow of executive talent is in sharp contrast to rival National Stock Exchange, where the top brass has remained unmoved, as serene as a lake, with Ravi Narain, MD &amp; CEO and his colleague Chitra Ramakrishna holding fort for over a decade.

A river and a lake

Business Standard

Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has said he will not contest stripping of his medals and a ban from competitive cycling, following the recommendation of the US Anti-Doping Agency, over doping charges.

Brakes on a battle

The truth is if the Congress government accepted a state recommendation and that recommendation turns out to be mala fide, the state shares responsibility.

State govts may be responsible too: Yashwant Sinha

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Quotas and consequences&rdquo; (August 24). It is disheartening to note that the political leadership is ready to amend the Constitution to introduce reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government promotions. If India wants to leverage the advantages of its sizeable young population, the government and political parties alike should encourage a culture of &ldquo;merit&rdquo;. Unfortunately, our decision makers are united in bringing in a culture of mediocrity, which will eventually ensure the flight of meritorious youth out of India.

Letters: Merit over mediocrity

Apropos the report &ldquo;SBI chief wants NPA rules tweaked&rdquo; (August 24), banks have umpteen ways of camouflaging non-performing assets (NPAs) and what is finally disclosed is only a percentage of actual NPAs; the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has absolutely no way of arriving at the correct position of NPAs. The norms for arriving at NPAs have been fixed and are based on international standards. It is for banks to discipline borrowers and educate them to adhere to regulatory requirements. NPAs have to be kept as low as possible and the loss on account of NPAs can&rsquo;t be expected to be subsidised by any other stakeholder of the bank.

Letters: NPA rules are just fine

This refers to Shubhashis Gangopadhyay&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Ducking the debate&rdquo; (August 25). For a parliamentary democracy to be effective, a spirit of constructive cooperation between the ruling dispensation and opposition parties should prevail. The government must look to opposition parties to point out genuine faults and shortcomings in its policies and their implementation. The opposition, on its part, has to perform the task of an effective watchdog, and should not keep opposing and criticising everything that the government does or does not do. The government, in turn, has to be sensitive and responsive to the debates in Parliament and should make course corrections as appropriate. Only then will Parliament effectively work for and on behalf of the people of India. In the absence of this kind of functioning of parliamentary democracy, the institution is bound to lose respect.

Letters: Parliamentary efforts

India&rsquo;s democracy is known for its infinite variety, so few constituencies can boast of a two- or three-horse electoral race. So much so that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) can accommodate up to 64 candidates. Ballot boxes have to be used if the number exceeds this &mdash; though this has yet to be tested since the highest number of candidates in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections was 35 from Madras South in Tamil Nadu. But it appears that some parliamentarians are not satisfied with this upper limit, so the Election Commission has started work on new EVM designs that will accommodate more than 64 candidates, according to a reply tabled by Minister of Law and Justice Salman Khurshid in Parliament earlier this week.

The 64-candidate question

Recently when the Defence Research and Development Organisation developed low-cost toilets for 1,000 panchayats, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh was heard singing its praises and even joking with Defence Minister A K Antony that he should shell out some of the huge funds at his disposal to produce more such toilets. But his enthusiasm doesn&rsquo;t seem to extend to his own ministry. The ministry recently significantly raised the subsidies it gives for toilet construction to Rs 20,000 per unit from the earlier Rs 3,000. But to a question last week in the Lok Sabha whether it proposed to launch low-cost toilets, the minister denied having such plans.

Loos talk

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) &ndash; which has been stalling Parliament for the past week over the Comptroller and Auditor General&rsquo;s report on coal block allocations &ndash; has been at its creative best coining new slogans everyday to slam the United Progressive Alliance government and disrupt the functioning of the House. One favourite is &ldquo;Raja ke liye jail, Manmohan ke liye bail, Wah re wah, Congress kya hai yeh khel&rdquo; (while A Raja is sent to jail, Manmohan Singh is given bail and the Congress is at its best playing games). Senior BJP leaders launch into these slogans and the rest of the BJP MPs join in as a chorus. Parliament debates, however, do not record any of these colourful interjections, merely reporting them as &ldquo;interruptions&rdquo;.

BJP interruptus

The government made an error of judgement when it barred futures trading in guar seed and guar gum in March on suspicion of &ldquo;excessive&rdquo; speculation. It is faltering again now, in holding back the permission sought by the commodity exchanges to resume forward contracts in these largely export-oriented agricultural commodities. Both the government and the commodity market regulator, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), seem to disregard the simple fact that no purpose could have been served by the suspension of futures trading in these products; nor would any be served by carrying on this ill-advised embargo. The prices of these products have continued to be determined by the demand-supply fundamentals. This has been conceded, in a way, by Food and Consumer Affairs Minister K V Thomas in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

Up a gum tree

There is no doubt where the primary responsibility belongs for the problematic continuance of the old method of coal block allocations: with the central government, and ultimately with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who retained the coal portfolio for a crucial period. This newspaper has previously argued that Dr Singh must explain his government&rsquo;s delays in introducing more equitable methods of allocation, such as auctions, through a discussion in Parliament. The principal party of opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by not allowing such a debate, is thus guilty of a dereliction of its duty to India&rsquo;s voters, who need to be allowed to make up their mind.

Debate, don't disrupt

How do India&rsquo;s macroeconomic numbers stack up against its rival emerging markets? Do they put India at a significant advantage or disadvantage when it comes to attracting capital flows? India&rsquo;s much-discussed growth collapse, as shown in Table 1, has been seen in most emerging markets except Indonesia. Some, like Brazil, have seen a decline even more precipitous.

StatsGuru-27-August-12

When Prof P J Kurien was unanimously elected the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, there was much bonhomie in the Upper House, as political parties took turns to congratulate him. While LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan praised Kurien&rsquo;s efforts and unique style of speaking Hindi (Kurien being a Malayalee); several other speakers referred to the former Physics professor&rsquo;s honest attempts at proportioning the time allotted to every speaker when he was in the chair, whether the party be big or small. All parties, however, had one common plea to make; to refrain from cutting them short by buzzing the bell; to which the ever-smiling Kurien responded by saying: &ldquo;My fondness for the bell is because I was a teacher.

Old habits die hard

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has asked police officers in the state to become real &lsquo;Singham&rsquo; to maintain law and order better in the state. While addressing a gathering at the training and research institute on August 23, Chouhan asked the policemen to inculcate some of the good aspects of Singham to fight crime. Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn had starred in the movie Singham in which he played the role of a cop.

The real Singham

The Indian state has once again, over this week, shown its inability to grasp the essentials of new media and the internet. In the poorly planned blocking of several websites and accounts on the social networks Twitter and Facebook, it has demonstrated not just the wrong instincts, but a wholesale lack of effectiveness. This is more than just a free speech issue, though that is an important argument.

The web's laughing stock  

The first thing that strikes you about Sony&rsquo;s latest smartphone, Xperia ion, is its screen. At 4.6 inches, the screen is not AMOLED but HD, which makes the display eye-catching. While outdoors, even in the sunlight, one can very clearly see and doesn&rsquo;t have to squint to read or browse pictures. Add to that an excellent camera &mdash; 12 megapixels &mdash; the Xperia ion is certainly a phone that will catch the fancy of people who like to click pictures.

Smarter than ever

Apropos &ldquo;Who killed growth&rdquo; (August 26), the United Progressive Alliance suffers from two birth defects. First, it came to power in 2004 deriding the National Democratic Alliance&rsquo;s &ldquo;India shining&rdquo; campaign and replaced it with the so-called &ldquo;aam admi&rdquo; stand. Second, it ushered in a diarchic form of governance in which the reform-oriented PM was expected to run the government with the National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi, who is more focused on redistributive schemes. The unfortunate demise of growth was only a natural outcome given her bias against pro-growth reform measures.

Letters: UPA's birth defects

This refers to your edit &ldquo;Debate, don&rsquo;t disrupt&rdquo; (August 27). Whatever the Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s reasons for disrupting Parliament, it is about time it realises that its image as the principle opposition party is now taking a beating. We can&rsquo;t overlook the fact that parliamentary sessions are being wasted, as important legislation and Bills are pending before the House; ultimately, it is taxpayers&rsquo; money that is being wasted. We need the government to be bold enough to enact legislation that would treat the act of disruption of parliamentary proceedings as contempt of Parliament. It should carry punitive measures akin to contempt of court.

Letters: BJP loses the plot

It is past understanding why the BJP is not letting Parliament function and is hell bent on the PM&rsquo;s resignation. It should have instead stressed on discussion and debate on the Comptroller and Auditor General&rsquo;s report on coal blocks so the nation could gain clarity on what went wrong and how it can be fixed. BJP should have shown the willingness to take on the government with solid arguments backed by facts, especially so since its allies are more keen on debate rather than disruption of Parliament.

Letters: Where's the debate?

Almost all human development indicator data nowadays provide a gender break-up. So why not on the data on open defecation? Two members of Parliament (MPs) stumped Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh by asking for the number of women who defecate in the open. The question was whether a large number of people including women practise open defecation and, if so, the MPs wanted details indicating gender-wise percentage. Although the minister could provide the former statistics, he admitted that his ministry did not maintain gender-wise data on the subject. What the ministry did not add in its written reply was that the numbers it had were based on the funds given to various state governments to build toilets under its sanitation programme &mdash; and individuals don&rsquo;t figure in this data. By its own admission, the other, more reliable data is provided by the Census that goes by the number of households that have a toilet rather than a strict head, or butt, count.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 853 - Business Standard