After over a year&rsquo;s prodding by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, or NAC, the government has altered the rules framed under its flagship tribal welfare legislation, the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The NAC&rsquo;s intent was to effectively protect the livelihood security of forest-dependent communities; however, some of the changes may actually exacerbate the already simmering conflict between the FRA and laws meant to protect India&rsquo;s forest and wildlife. The FRA, enacted in 2006, seeks to assure the right of traditional forest dwellers, largely tribals, to use minor forest produce for their subsistence. It gives village assemblies &ndash; Gram Sabhas &ndash; a major say in forest management matters; unsurprisingly, central and state forest departments have disapproved.

A question of balance

Business Standard

I am buying a second home in Pune. I will be getting its possession by the year-end. Since my husband refrains from giving it on rent, it will be used more as an investment avenue. I would like to get my home insured as soon as we get it.

General Insurance: Gaurav Garg

Finance Minister P Chidambaram&rsquo;s move to shift R S Gujral out of the revenue department smacks of his urgency to show the industry and the public that he was not party to his predecessor&rsquo;s economic decisions. Two policies are relevant here. One is the retrospective legislation and the other is the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR). As far as the retrospective legislation is concerned, Parliament, by and large, supported it. Kapil Sibal had publicly stated that retrospective legislation in clarificatory matters is a perfectly acceptable method of taxation. During his two tenures in the finance ministry, Chidambaram, too, must have sponsored such retrospective legislations. This policy must have been approved by the Cabinet before it was presented in Parliament. And surely the prime minister, too, must have approved it before the Budget was presented.

Letter: ...or a display of dislike?

A K Bhattacharya, in his column &ldquo;Civil servants as policy signal&rdquo; (Delhi Diary, August 9), makes instructive observations about ministers picking up a favourite secretary on assuming a new charge. It has its pros and cons. On the positive side, it helps a minister work with a like-minded person and facilitates quick implementation of decisions. But it also leads to groupthink in key issues in which inputs of different ideas is critical. In some cases, the great understanding becomes an unholy nexus as in the case of A Raja. If the minister holds a key position in the government or ruling party, bureaucrats are tempted to court him or her by being pliable and loyal, and not necessarily objective. And when a secretary alone is held responsible for policy failures, it demoralises the cadre. The present United Progressive Alliance government has perfected the art of finding scapegoats in civil services.

Letter: Picking favourites

The Kolkata Metro, the oldest Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) in the country, is generally dismissed as the poor country cousin of the Delhi Metro. With its shiny interiors and state-of-the-art coaches, the Delhi Metro has even been rated among the top five metros of the world. However, on the day that the north, east and north-east were plunged into darkness and the Delhi Metro came to a grinding halt, the unglamorous Kolkata Metro continued to ply. That&rsquo;s because the Delhi Metro&rsquo;s power supply is solely dependant on the northern grid, whereas the Kolkata service can rely on the privately-run CESC&rsquo;s captive power plant in times of emergency. So while Delhites had a harrowing time on that fateful day, stuck inside coaches in dark underground tunnels, Kolkata Metro commuters &ndash; for once &ndash; were a notch above their Delhi counterparts.

The power track

How do you not answer a tough question? Mahindra Satyam&rsquo;s C P Gurnani (pictured) provided a master class in the art of the mixed metaphor to provide a non-answer. Asked about the likely impact of the global slowdown in the company&rsquo;s clients, he said, &ldquo;The clouds of uncertainly in the US will have an impact and will be felt by us. But we are almost ready to face the storm. In fact, we faced a mega typhoon in 2009. We have fired a lot of bullets and it is time that our marketing team convert them into canons.

No reply

In its keenness to be known as a fair referee, the insurance regulator appears set to allow all life insurers &ndash; and not just the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) &ndash; to increase their stake in a company beyond 10 per cent. In reality, LIC would be the only beneficiary, since no other insurer currently comes anywhere near the 10 per cent mark. In fact, the average stake of all other insurance companies individually in a listed company is 2.5 per cent, with the highest stake being 7.1 per cent. On the other hand, LIC has already breached the 10 per cent mark in 18 companies, since the Life Insurance Corporation Act of 1956 allows it to acquire up to 30 per cent stake in a company &mdash; but only after government approval. The regulatory nod would take away the need to obtain the government&rsquo;s permission.

LIC raises stakes

The Indian economy has not yet hit bottom. That is the unavoidable lesson of the figures for industrial production released on Thursday by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation. While the index of industrial production (IIP) series is justly criticised for its flaws and its volatility, its trend is unmistakable.

Not yet hit bottom

After a long period of drought, the rains have finally arrived in Karnataka and are slowly intensifying. Their arrival is noteworthy not because they are propitious for a state that has suffered two consecutive years of drought but because of the timing. The rains arrived soon after the state government managed to convince the Centre of the need for financial support to neutralise the impact of drought. As a state official joked, perhaps those in power managed to convince the rain gods to stay away long enough for the Centre to loosen its purse strings.

God given?

No institute can sustainably function without a financial consideration. The fact that these institutes do get students means that there is a large demand-supply mismatch which cannot be met by elite institutes. Also, what is considered 'merit' can be product of coaching and many other factors, and so it too can be indirectly traced the students' financial background in most cases. Instead of any strong crackdown or collusion, MHRD should force these institutes to divulge full information about themselves to all students. What a student does after getting all information should be his/her business.

Student&#8217s corner

The software &amp; services industry attracted the most investments, accounting for 23.26% of the total investments in terms of deal volume with an aggregate of $1.3 billion.

A snapshot of PE activity & deals

Finance Minister P Chidambaram&rsquo;s penchant for starting his day early is giving his colleagues sleepless nights. The FM&rsquo;s instruction to report for work before 9 a m has, apparently, caused such anxiety among some officials that they find themselves waking up in the middle of the night just to check the time and make sure the clock hasn&rsquo;t struck 9. The fact that the FM has little patience with latecomers only adds to their nervousness. The minister is also learnt to have asked all bureaucrats to use the biometric machine to record their &ldquo;in&rdquo; and &ldquo;out&rdquo; times. According to an official, some senior bureaucrats were not doing so earlier but the FM insisted that if the juniors could, why couldn&rsquo;t the seniors.

Sleepless in New Delhi

Meanwhile, the questionnaire assessing the &ldquo;happiness quotient&rdquo; of finance ministry officials has puzzled some of them. One of the questions was whether they were happy in their current role and, if not, would they prefer another role. Some officials who were happy with their current jobs but still wanted to move to a better role found it difficult to answer this since a transfer was ruled out if they chose the &ldquo;happy&rdquo; option. Perhaps the finance minister&rsquo;s &ldquo;happiness metre&rdquo; needs some modifications.

Measuring happiness

Officials in the finance ministry can partly blame the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office (PMO) for making them work last weekend. It is learnt that about 300 files were sent to the PMO over the last one month when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was handling the finance portfolio. Most of these files were pending in the PMO and were sent back to the finance ministry when Chidambaram took charge. With eight to 10 files up for the FM&rsquo;s approval every day, the new minister naturally wanted to clear the backlog. And sure enough, he wanted all officials to be present in the office to answer his queries.

Back space

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Hating ratings&rdquo; (August 8). The most surprising aspect of this issue is the utter gullibility of the corporate world. It is beyond one&rsquo;s imagination how the otherwise hard-nosed businessmen have fallen hook, line and sinker for the patently and obviously unreliable methods of data collection. Not just that, but they poured hundreds of crores of rupees down the advertising drain on the basis of those popularity ratings of TV programmes. It is time corporations dumped advertising on TV altogether and instead resorted to the older but time-tested methods of marketing like door-to-door campaigns, product demonstrations and free samples and so on.

Letters: Back to basics

This refers to A K Bhattacharya&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Civil servants as policy signal&rdquo; (Delhi Diary, August 8). Senior civil servants are responsible not only for preparing policy prescriptions for ministers&rsquo; approval but also for getting these implemented. In this case, one of the measures suggested by civil servants and duly approved by the then minister and the Cabinet has run into rough weather and the government has had to re-examine it. But to pin the responsibility for that decision on a senior civil servant and have him transferred on a Sunday is odd. Ministers and civil servants have to work together.

Letters: Collective responsibility

This refers to the Chinese Whisper &ldquo;A question of timing (August 7). P Chidambaram&rsquo;s return to the finance ministry has come as great news for India Inc. Not only is Chidambaram an architect of economic reforms, but he is also a well-known face for investors and business houses. Given his track record in the finance ministry, he has the required courage and mettle to give a new boost to the Indian economy. In this context, it is expected that Chidambaram will propose economic reforms to tackle inflation, slow growth, the regressive tax regime and so on. Needless to say, restoring investor confidence should be high on his priority list.

Letters: A welcome return

The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has released a draft policy for the exploration and exploitation of shale oil and gas. The draft is to be fine-tuned after feedback has been received from citizens, concerned parties, experts, stakeholders and so on. This will hopefully result in a finalised shale policy by April 2013, and the first auction of shale blocks by December 2013, which will not be a moment too soon. The &ldquo;shale gas revolution&rdquo; has transformed the North American energy basket; given India&rsquo;s widening energy demand-supply gap, there is an urgent need to explore this new, non-conventional source. In April 2011, the US&rsquo; Energy Information Administration assessed risked gas-in-place of 290 trillion cubic feet (TCF) with technically recoverable resources of 63 TCF in four of 26 Indian sedimentary basins. Several Indian energy majors have started exploring shale joint ventures abroad in order to develop technical competency.

Planning the revolution

This refers to the report &ldquo;NDA leaders don&rsquo;t agree with Advani&rsquo;s blog post&rdquo; (August 7). L K Advani&rsquo;s views must urge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the electorate to introspect. The BJP needs to reinvent itself and put its house in order if it wants to come to power after the 2014 polls. Also, people must not forget that fractured mandates created the short-lived, Congress-supported United Front governments in the nineties and led to repeated mid-term polls.

Letters: Listen to Advani

That the government&rsquo;s refusal to rationalise the price of diesel in India is blowing a hole right through its Budget estimates for 2012-13 and its own credibility &ndash; leading to a further widening of the fiscal deficit and worsening of long-term inflationary pressure &ndash; is well known. Even a hike to take into account increased global oil prices has been endlessly postponed, and now it looks like it won&rsquo;t happen at all, because of the weak monsoon. The generators used by farmers to power the tubewells that inundate their fields with groundwater are working overtime &mdash; and they run on diesel. Raising diesel prices, it is argued, would add to farmer distress, though of course the government has no problem somehow simultaneously claiming it can target drought relief through an additional diesel subsidy to affected farmers.

A dieselised economy

Bharti Airtel&rsquo;s disappointing results have led to the stock touching a two-year low. Almost every analyst is rushing to downgrade the company. With reports being titled &lsquo;Not worthy of a medal&rsquo; and &lsquo;The wait for good things gets longer&rsquo;, analysts have lowered the company&rsquo;s rating, price target and financial projections.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 861 - Business Standard

A question of balance

General Insurance: Gaurav Garg

Letter: ...or a display of dislike?

Letter: Picking favourites

The power track

No reply

LIC raises stakes

Not yet hit bottom

God given?

Student’s corner

A snapshot of PE activity & deals

Sleepless in New Delhi

Measuring happiness

Back space

Letters: Back to basics

Letters: Collective responsibility

Letters: A welcome return

Planning the revolution

Letters: Listen to Advani

A dieselised economy