Apropos Mr Bal Govind&rsquo;s letter &ldquo;True democracy&rdquo; (July 3), Indian democracy, too, is seriously flawed. Till we have the &ldquo;none of the above&rdquo; voting option that will give us the power to reject undeserving candidates and parties, we will not be a true democracy. Moreover, there is no internal democracy in political parties.

Letters: Democratic farce 

Business Standard

Scenarios look a bit grim. The Indian market is facing several problems. There have been outlook downgrades by rating agencies. Many banks too, have been downgraded. Though inflation has eased compared to the last few months, even this aspect does not seem to be encouraging enough. To top it off the rupee is also on a downward slope, which has put further pressure on the investment climate.

A case for investing in foreign market?

Robert E Diamond Jr, the chief executive of Barclays, resigned on Tuesday, less than a week after the British bank agreed to pay $450 million to settle accusations that it had tried to manipulate key interest rates for its own benefit.

'Barclays not alone in making rate claims'

It is a prudent move for a&nbsp;B-school to adopt IPRS&nbsp;to validate its placement data. This validation provides accuracy of the placement reporting and imparts credibility to the B-school. This transparency measure exhibits the self-assurance and poise of the B-school, and instill trust in students.

Student's corner

I don't have a life cover. I will be moving abroad in a few months. My family is going to stay back in India for at least a year.

Life Insurance: V Philip

Congressmen in Chhattisgarh have been put in an embarrassing position by their party&rsquo;s central leadership over the killing of suspected Naxalites by security forces in Bastar. Hoping to embarrass the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), local Congressmen were among the most vociferous in alleging that those killed were innocent villagers. But even as the Chhattisgarh Congress was making a big issue of this, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram held a press conference in New Delhi to say just the opposite. He was emphatic that hard-core Naxalites were killed in the encounter. Then he even named some of the alleged extremists. But as it turned out, none of them had any connections with the Naxalites. So the Congress leaders in the state are in a dilemma. They cannot blame their leaders for the mess, so they are now castigating the state police for providing the Centre with incorrect information.

Killing contradictions

Journalists attending a routine press briefing after a recent special meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) core group in Chhattisgarh were offered a new treat in the form of lassi and other milk products. It turned out that this new largesse was courtesy Rasik Parmar, the party&rsquo;s state media liaison, who has been appointed chairman of the Chhattisgarh Milk Federation. Obviously, the temptation to showcase the products of the institution to journalists whom he&rsquo;s known for years was too hard to resist. Indeed, the lavish spread of lassi, paneer and shrikhand prompted journalists to suggest that Parmar should be made the Chairman of Chhattisgarh State Beverages Corporation. Or, conversely, that the corporation chairman should be entrusted with the job of media liaison.

Milk of kindness

Recently, a village well in the Tumkur district of Karnataka, about 40 km from Bangalore, was cleaned up after many years. This was not the work of a conscientious civic organisation but the unintentional by-product of a rumour. A villager is said to have found two Rs 500 notes in the well, and the story spread that there was treasure to be found in it. As a result, a good number of people got down to cleaning up the well, scraping out the accumulated mud and even hiring a pump to empty the dirty water. No &ldquo;treasure&rdquo; was found, but at least villagers can now depend on the most priceless asset of cleaner water.

Civic sense

Over 400 pilots of Air India have ended their 58-day agitation after the Delhi High Court ordered them on Tuesday to resume work immediately and asked the airline&rsquo;s management to look into their demands. All this while, the civil aviation ministry, now led by a very firm Ajit Singh, was adamant that it would not bow to pressure tactics, and even terminated the services of some 100 pilots.

No more arbitrariness

The new service tax regime introduced by the government on July 1 comes as an additional burden at a time when citizens are already bearing the brunt of high food and fuel prices and a falling rupee.

Letters: Service taxed

This refers to Tania Kishore Jaleel&rsquo;s article &ldquo;E-voting will make life easier for investors&rdquo; (July 4). Electronic voting, or e-voting, is no guarantee for more investor participation. First, it will require all investors to own a computer &mdash; more importantly, they should be computer literate. Second, they should have an internet connection. All investors &ndash; most of who are in their 70s &ndash; may not own a computer or have access to the internet.

Letters: M-voting instead of e-voting

The committee formed by the human resource development ministry to examine objections to political science textbooks issued by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has submitted its 39-page report, which has come in for predictable criticism. The Thorat committee recommended that 21 cartoons be deleted and some other changes be made to the textbooks for next year. The report will now be examined by NCERT&rsquo;s textbook-monitoring committee. This transparent process of review and consultation should set at rest concerns, loudly expressed earlier, that the &ldquo;political class&rdquo; wished to stifle academic voices by exercising raw power to short-circuit institutional channels.

Cartoon history

In his article &ldquo;The empty seat&rdquo; (Ticker, July 21), Mihir S Sharma suggests it is inappropriate to term Rahul Gandhi a &ldquo;political novice&rdquo; in view of his nearly eight years of parliamentary experience. I think much depends on the quality rather than the tenure of experience. Equally important is the interest a person shows in the job while undergoing the experience.

Letters: On the margins

Alokananda Chakraborty&rsquo;s article on reverse mentoring was very interesting. Reverse mentoring is the need of the hour in many organisations. However, it may face obstacles such as ego, resistance to change, and a fear of being trivialised.

Letters: It's the attitude

This refers to the article &ldquo;About LIMH, BBR and life skills&rdquo; by Alokananda Chakraborty (&ldquo;Rules of the game&rdquo;, July 24). Rules and regulations should keep pace with the growth of technology or else it could have worrying ramifications.

Letters: Tech troubles

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy appears to believe in the biblical commandment &ldquo;love thy neighbour&rdquo; only when it comes to power generation but not political power. At a gathering of state industrialists recently, he punned on the word &ldquo;power&rdquo; when asked a question about the power situation (as in electricity generation) in the state. &ldquo;Andhra Pradesh is getting rain. But for power generation we need rains in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Power complex

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;The perils of indulgence&rdquo; (July 24). The crux of the latest political posturing from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is the high-handed behaviour of the Congress, which is yet to master the art of running a coalition government. Congress leaders must understand that a co-ordination committee is the need of the hour. Only time will tell whether the NCP is the new DMK, but anyone who follows Indian politics closely would agree that Sharad Pawar is one of the most unpredictable leaders and must be handled with utmost care. This is where the Congress is going to miss Pranab Mukherjee. Not only will Dr Manmohan Singh have to bring the economy back on track but he will also have to manage allies like Pawar, Mamata Banerjee and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who are going to make life difficult for the government.

Letters: Handle with care

Recently, activists like P V Rajagopal and water conservationist Rajendra Singh met representatives of top firms, Tata Steel, ArcelorMittal, Cadbury, Nestle and so on. Since the activists were hosting the meeting, industry spokesmen were at their gentle best on what they would like to do on land issues. But as such meetings are wont to, this one, too, turned fiery towards the end, with Singh naming companies he claimed had finished off the Ganges or made hundreds along the Yamuna Expressway homeless. Halfway through this tirade, the lone representative from a Jindal company quietly stood up to say she represented Ratan Jindal and not the other Jindals who seemed to be at the receiving end of Singh&rsquo;s temper. Not that this deterred Singh. As a parting shot, he accused industry chambers CII and Ficci, whose representatives were present at the meeting, of doing nothing when some of its members acted in an unethical manner.

Off target

It is not often that people other than close family and associates petition for the release of someone jailed for serious financial irregularities. But this is what some villagers in the Kharora block in Raipur district did recently after their sarpanch was jailed for a fiddle over development work in his village. The villagers&rsquo; motivation was neither political nor emotional; their problem was that all development work had stopped since the sarpanch&rsquo;s arrest six months ago, so they needed him back to oversee the projects. Finding no way out, a delegation of villagers drove to Raipur district headquarters and met a perplexed Collector Rohit Yadav with this novel demand. Speechless at first, Yadav played it safe by promising to appoint an ad hoc sarpanch so that development work could be resumed.

Arrested development

Reviving cricket ties to repair bilateral relations is not a bad idea, but it cannot make up for dismal co-operation on national security matters
Ayaz Memon
Sports journalist
&ldquo;if Pakistan can be given MFN status where trade is concerned, what&rsquo;s the big deal about resuming cricket ties? Why not exploit the common passion for cricket to improve relations?&rdquo;
Those who view Indo-Pak relations only from the prism of past conflicts are loath to allow a resumption of cricket ties

Should India host cricket matches for Pakistan?

There&rsquo;s a flip side to everything going digital and getting connected to the internet. Hackers are finding new ways to break into things &mdash; from residential power meters to nuclear power plants.

Business Standard

Business Standard

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