Credit Suisse became the latest foreign brokerage to downgrade Bharti Airtel's stock. Following the downgrade, shares of India's top telecom service provider fell 3.85 per cent to Rs 248.70 on the BSE, its lowest close since October 2006. "Despite the recent sharp correction in Bharti&rsquo;s stock price, we believe that risks from key events over the next 12 months are not fully understood or appreciated by the Street.

Dialing out of Bharti

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is unable to understand how Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gives vent to his frustrations. &quot;Advaniji has now started writing a blog. Atalji used to make jokes, write poetry and give speeches but the prime minister just doesn't speak. We met him the other day and he was looking distressed. We asked him what the matter was. 'With this CAG and the CVC after me, what does a prime minister do,' he said with despair. Most times, he just doesn't speak. How does he work through his rage?&quot; a much younger BJP MP was heard asking a group of reporters at an Eid function recently.

Unspeakable rage

Several sections of the venerable Indian Penal Code (1860) prohibit the &ldquo;unlawful assembly of five or more persons&rdquo;. The objective is to prevent mobs reaching critical mass. Last Friday, the home ministry adapted the principle to mobile telephony in the hope of ending the rumour-mongering that has caused a panicked exodus from Bangalore, Pune and other cities of residents originally from the northeast.

Decoding the panic

I am 25 and am planning to buy a life cover. I am told that the extent of life insurance one needs depends on one's human life value (HLV).

Life Insurance: V Philip

The volatility in agri commodities was rampant in the beginning of this monsoon season amid anticipation of deficient rainfall by the India Meteorological Department.

Action up, volatility down

The Comptroller and Auditor General&rsquo;s (CAG&rsquo;s) report on coal blocks highlights the Centre&rsquo;s problematic delay in introducing transparent methods for the allocation of natural resources.

A murky sector 

Groundwater is not only located miles below the surface of the earth, information about it is as hard to come by. Officials from the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) are not only cagey about sharing information on current groundwater levels, they provide novel excuses for not doing so, even though the information has not been classified as confidential or sensitive. After several visits to CGWB functionaries in search of this information, one senior official, summed up the situation. How can one get information on groundwater levels so easily, he said, after all, it is not like going to the pond and fetching a bucket of water, you have to dig deep for it. If that&rsquo;s the attitude, it is small wonder that India is headed for a water crisis.

Deep secret

Apropos Ajai Shukla's report &quot;Navy's wavering delaying warships by years&quot; (August 20), delays in the induction of frontline warships is particularly disturbing because the navy was always considered to be the only branch of the three armed forces that had got its act together &mdash; right from warship design to indigenous manufacture, with the active involvement of domestic industry. More to the point, it speaks of a distortion of the clear vision the navy had set for itself based on an assessment of public and private sector capabilities in the country.

Letters: Is the navy losing vision?

After spending a nearly a year at the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation, Reserve Bank of India&rsquo;s Executive Director G Gopalakrishna is back at the central bank in the department of banking supervision. Gopalakrishna had been a strong contender for the deputy governor&rsquo;s post but dropped out of reckoning and was shifted to DICGC. Now that he is back and will become the senior-most ED when Deputy Governor Anand Sinha retires next February, he will be a strong contender to replace Sinha.

Back in the reckoning

Apropos Dean Pears' article &quot;Getting what you pay for&quot; (August 20), I completely agree with the idea of providing incentives to make sanitation campaigns a success. Though India's social sanitation campaigns through programmes like Nirmal Gram Puraskar have imparted executive powers to panchayati raj institutions and have impacted millions in rural villages, sanitation coverage in still very low. There is a complete lack of awareness and the rural population is not familiar with the benefits of various sanitation schemes at the time of their launch. The government has merely been &quot;pushing&quot; these initiatives on people. But lack of complete information has not had the desired impact. Thus, there is an urgent need to run multiple &quot;awareness campaigns&quot; along with doling out grants to panchayats.

Letters: Sound the hygiene alarm

The adage &ldquo;perception is harder than reality&rdquo; seems to be dawning on the Akhilesh Yadav government. With the regime set to complete six months next month, there is precious little investment on the ground to enhance the achievements of its youthful chief minister. Senior bureaucrats, however, are less inclined to be critical.

UP's perception pangs

The chief ministers of states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) flew in to New Delhi this weekend, to be felicitated by the party&rsquo;s central leadership. The party&rsquo;s president, Nitin Gadkari, said that all the party&rsquo;s states were posting growth numbers well above 10 per cent, and were the engine of national GDP growth. One of the party&rsquo;s senior leaders, and a former finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, went further, saying that a high growth performance has been achieved by BJP-ruled states &ndash; including those in which it is in alliance with parties such as the Akali Dal or the Janata Dal (United) &ndash; even as fiscal prudence was maintained through the crisis period.

Don't rest on your laurels

The recommendation by the parliamentary committee on agriculture that field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops be stopped is both a retrograde and short-sighted move. It seeks to end the application of biotechnology for the good of agriculture and, in the longer run, even the industrial and medical sectors.

Biotech's step back

I will be travelling to Europe in October.

Banking: Prashant Joshi

A regulatory body would ensure such universities do not get a chance to take advantage of gullible people of India and exploit careers of bright students.

Students' corner

A progressive improvement in the monsoon, after a dismal June that saw rainfall deficient by over 30 per cent, has eased some worries over kharif crop production. Since then the rainfall deficit has been halved to 15 per cent, dispelling fears of a situation as bad as in 2009, when severe drought lowered foodgrain production by seven per cent. In addition, the fact that the monsoon&rsquo;s revival is late does not affect the fact that the water level in major reservoirs has reached normal levels, ensuring that water will be available for post-monsoon crop irrigation, hydroelectric power production and other needs. Also, rural demand for both power and diesel has fallen sharply, softening the power rates in the spot energy market from their peaks two weeks ago.

The return of the rain

The purpose of a report like that of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on coal block allocation is to inform discussion in Parliament, to ensure that the executive is held accountable and, if necessary, policy is re-framed. Of course, that is only possible if Parliament is functional, and a credible and active Opposition uses the system to hold the government&rsquo;s actions up to scrutiny. Were their representatives to put in the hard work, research and careful reading required in that process, India&rsquo;s citizens would have no cause to complain. Unfortunately, Opposition members of both Houses of Parliament do not seem willing to do the work involved; which is why they have chosen, instead, to disrupt proceedings for two successive days, demanding the prime minister&rsquo;s resignation.

Shouting over discussion

This refers to Indira Rajaraman&rsquo;s article &ldquo;The power grid knockout&rdquo; (August 21). The writer has advocated revitalising the Inter State Council (ISC) &ndash; under Article 263 of the Constitution &ndash; to resolve interstate electric power sharing problems on the sound premise that our power shortage and outage issues have risen from the failure of the Centre and the states. Possibly, the role of the states in the power generation-transmission-distribution chain is more pronounced. Transmission losses in India are very high &ndash; up to 50 per cent, according to one estimate. In China, they are confined to six to eight per cent. Power thefts enjoy political protection.

Letters: Power play

Despite drawing a blank on the disvestment front in the current financial year up till now, why is the disinvestment department so confident of meeting the Rs 30,000 crore target in the remaining six-odd months? According to a senior official, Finance Minister P Chidambaram is working overtime to convince his colleagues in charge of the ministries handling companies listed for disinvestment this year to support the finance ministry&rsquo;s effort. So now, much depends on the new finance minister&rsquo;s persuasive powers, especially since they&rsquo;re pitted against a sluggish market.

Hard-selling divestment

Credit Suisse became the latest foreign brokerage to downgrade Bharti Airtel's stock. Following the downgrade, shares of India's top telecom service provider fell 3.85 per cent to Rs 248.70 on the BSE, its lowest close since October 2006. &quot;Despite the recent sharp correction in Bharti&rsquo;s stock price, we believe that risks from key events over the next 12 months are not fully understood or appreciated by the Street.

El Ni&ntilde;o is a weather phenomenon characterised by the warming of the sea-surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, affecting the generation of clouds, rainfall and winds in the tropics

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