It wasn't as if the law enforcement agencies in Mumbai were not aware in advance of the magnitude of the protests that took place at CST on August 13. It is just that they didn't anticipate such an ugly turn of events in which goons went on a rampage, torching vehicles and public property, snatching guns from cops, hammering up journalists and generally indulging in violence in which two people were killed.

Do you see India as a soft state for its inability to contain mob violence?

Business Standard

Policy makers may have expressed a sigh of relief as inflation, measured by the wholesale price index, came down marginally to 6.87% in July from 7.25% in June. But headline numbers often don&rsquo;t tell the entire story. Even as India turned 65 and Prime Minster Manmohan Singh read out a long list of government programmes in his Independence Day speech, the Indian consumer has been bearing the brunt of raging inflation.

28% inflation in pulses... 24% in veg: does the UPA have an answer?

Social media is likely to be a hot topic among the hundreds of chief information officers (CIOs) and senior executives from around the world gathering in Hyderabad next week to honour the most innovative IT organisations at the 25th annual CIO 100 Symposium(Click on graphic)

Low on socialising

Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores, Target Corp and Best Buy formed a company that would allow customers to pay with their mobile phones, as they work to gain control over the growing method of processing purchases. The company, named Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, is developing a mobile application, the retailers said in a statement. The app is intended to work with all smartphones and as many forms of payment as possible, including Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc debit- and credit-card accounts, said Terry Scully, president of Target&rsquo;s financial and retail services.

Mobile-payments network 

The Delhi government last week announced that the house sparrow would be, from now on, the official bird of the state. The little, chirruping birds were traditionally a familiar part of life in India&rsquo;s capital &mdash; sitting on window ledges and telephone wires, nesting in the spring and flying about at dusk in great flocks. Yet those who have seen Delhi only in the past decade or so will have few such memories; there has been a sharp decline in the number of sparrows in the city, one of the reasons why the state government has chosen to highlight the bird. This decline in the population of the sparrow is not exclusive to Delhi or to India&rsquo;s cities. The bird, which was till very recently abundant over two-thirds of the world&rsquo;s land surface, has disappeared from large stretches now. In parts of north-western Europe, it is even considered to be endangered.

Cities and sparrows

The government&rsquo;s ambitious biofuel programme, marred by glitches since its launch in 2003, seems finally to be running aground. While the blending of diesel with biofuel derived from jatropha remained a non-starter right from the beginning, admixing petrol with ethanol &ndash; which took off after several hiccups &ndash; has failed to go beyond an admixture level of five per cent. Even this is getting harder to sustain.

The wrong renewable

Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chairman U K Sinha today said the regulator wanted to take a final view on offer documents filed by companies for their public issues as soon as possible. The regulator wants to be self-disciplined and have certain criteria based on which the offer documents can be rejected.

We want a certain amount of self-discipline: U K Sinha

Demand for gold in India, the world's biggest consumer, stayed subdued on Friday after prices moved higher, tracking a similar trend overseas, as poor monsoon rainfall slashed purchases in key southern markets.

Gold demand stays weak as prices rise

When Pranab Mukherjee became President of India, a controversy broke out over who would be the No 2 in the government. The minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, offered his good offices. Why? Because his ministry dealt with toilets and was in the business of No 2 any way, Ramesh said.

The No 2 business

The ties between India and Bangladesh deepen as plans of the prime minister&rsquo;s Pakistan visit recede. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is going to Bangladesh to meet his counterpart. This will be followed by a visit by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. And, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is going to Bangladesh to assess investment possibilities and the economic climate. Meanwhile, there is no word on the PM&rsquo;s visit to Pakistan against the background of disturbed domestic conditions. It is almost as if, having re-found Bangladesh, India doesn&rsquo;t want to lose it again.

Re-finding Bangladesh

Although he is much more relaxed in Rashtrapati Bhavan, President Pranab Mukherjee is also a little bored. He called correspondents to meet him earlier this month and said &ldquo;My doors will always be open for you. I am missing you&rdquo;. And then he called several ministers, including agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, inviting them to lunch. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t come to see me yet. Why don&rsquo;t you have lunch with me next week?&rdquo; he suggested to Pawar, who agreed immediately.

Bored Mr President

President Pranab Mukherjee&rsquo;s address on the eve of Independence Day gives us a ray of hope that the malaise of corruption plaguing the nation will be addressed seriously (&ldquo;Respect our institutions, work with them,&rdquo; August 15). Especially resounding is his statement: &ldquo;The institutions are visible pillars of our Constitution and if they crack then the idealism of the Constitution cannot hold.&rdquo; We are indeed proud of our parliamentary tradition and wish that Parliament functions effectively, taking up the burning issues and debating them widely and deeply. In a similar vein, let us also learn to respect popular civil movements without decrying them and address the issues they take up. Other institutions like the Comptroller Auditor General, the Central Bureau of Investigation and Vigilance must also be given due credit for ensuring accountability in governance.

Letters: Booster  speech

M J Antony&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Creditors in a domineering role&rdquo; (Out of Court, August 15) argues for special protection to small borrowers under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act. However, any sort of protection will only result in unscrupulous borrowers taking advantage of the system. Again, in the absence of the power to recover, banks may also be reluctant to lend to retail borrowers &mdash; which, in turn, will affect genuine borrowers. It should be understood that the fault lies not with the provisions of the Act itself, but with the people or institutions implementing these. For a law to be effective it is necessary for it to be simple and hassle-free and, most importantly, it should eschew exemptions. This will, in turn, lead to quicker decisions in recovery proceedings and also prevent clever lawyers from taking advantage of legal anomalies.

Letters: Why blame law?

A general insurance company is liable to make claim payment within 30 days after receiving all the documents, statements and forms from the insured. An insurance company always tries to abide by the stipulated timeline. However, if there is an instance where the insurer is not in compliance with the same, the insured can directly call up the insurance company's call centre and report the grievance. Additionally, the insured can also reach out to the regulator&rsquo;s call centre or lodge the complaint on its website. Such claim payment related queries and delays are closely monitored by the regulator.

General insurance: Bhargav Dasgupta

Internal migration is crucial for all economies, but especially for those, like India&rsquo;s, experiencing unbalanced growth. It keeps the national economy dynamic, while allowing parts of the country that aren&rsquo;t growing quite fast enough to export their excess labour. Some states depend heavily on remittances from workers who have moved to other parts of India, where their productivity &ndash; and hence wages &ndash; are higher.

Homes away from home

Earlier this month, the Chhattisgarh government released a list of measures bureaucrats have to follow as part of an austerity drive. It includes a ban on overseas trip. That&rsquo;s no surprise given the economic slowdown but it&rsquo;s the timing of the order that has attracted comment. This summer saw at least a dozen state bureaucrats escaping the scorching heat of Chhattisgarh to more salubrious destinations abroad. The austerity order was imposed only after these trips, ensuring &ndash; so the talk goes &ndash; that there is no one left to violate it.

After the fact

A microfinance company was recruiting for a position in its accounts department. During the selection process, a senior official was interviewing an employee from the accounts department of a media company that is in trouble now. The employee was asked why he wanted to move from a bigger brand. The employee flatly said, &ldquo;That company is going to be shut down in two years.&rdquo; The man across the table was intrigued but observed that it was chilling to recall that incident now since that is exactly what is happening to the company concerned.

Early warning?

For most sessions of Parliament, members of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spend their time trying to outshout each other on almost every issue that comes up for debate. But the discussion on the Whistle Blower&rsquo;s Bill proved an exception with some rare friendly banter between Deputy Leader of the Opposition Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP and Minister of State V Narayanswamy. Prasad asked Narayanswamy whether he had been in power for the past eight years, the UPA&rsquo;s tenure so far. &ldquo;No, four years,&rdquo; Narayanswamy corrected (he has been a Union minister for the past four years). To which, Prasad replied with mock seriousness, &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t wish you five more years. All I can wish you is for the distant future.

Well wisher

Your edit &ldquo;Nine of ten, unemployable&rdquo; (August 15) aptly laments the need for urgent reforms and legislation to govern educational institutions in engineering and management. Over the years, colleges and institutes have been allowed to mushroom rapidly, the attraction for promoters being the lucrative earnings coming from the mad rush on these courses. And the result is there for us to see: pedestrian graduates and even post-graduates who don&rsquo;t have a grasp of the fundamentals simply because the institutions were ill-equipped to impart quality education in the first place.

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