It has long been established that the National Capital Region has become extremely unsafe for women employees, especially those in professions that entail night duty. Following recent Supreme Court orders, women employees being dropped home late at night require to be accompanied by a guard or a male colleague. But what about women who finish work earlier? A multinational public relations firm in Gurgaon has decided to take no chances. It has distributed cans of pepper spray to all its women employees and advised them to keep them clipped to their handbags at all times.

Spraying the message

Business Standard

I am 52, and have recently sold my business, the proceeds from which I want to invest. My children are in their final years of school. So, my priority is to plan for their future . I also have two commercial properties, which I have not let out. I have two life insurance policies, for which I pay Rs 72,000 annually. Please help.

Financial Planning: Malhar Majumder

Surely the intellect of a high-level&nbsp;inter-ministerial committee is not required to conclude that the subsidised export of wheat and the disposal of grain at discounted rates at home can help ease the current grain congestion. However, this seems indeed to be the conclusion reached by the high-level panel set up by the prime&nbsp;minister under the chairmanship of his Chief Economic Advisor C Rangarajan to suggest ways to relieve pressure on grain storage. The committee has suggested the export of two million tonnes of wheat through government channels, with an estimated subsidy of Rs 1,500 crore, and an additional million tonnes through private exporters with a subsidy of Rs 150 crore. In addition, it has proposed the distribution of eight million tonnes of wheat to the poor and two million tonnes to the non-poor at reduced prices.

The grain glut

The new consent order guidelines released by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, should address some loopholes in the treatment of serious offences by the market regulator. The new norms list 10 offences, including charges of insider trading, front-running, serious frauds and so on, which can no longer be easily settled via consent. Offenders could be open to more serious penalties including larger fines and disgorgement orders. The consent mechanism can also no longer apply without the completion of a full investigation of the facts in any case. A consent order allows the settlement of a possible violation, by imposing a monetary penalty, which is paid by the defendant without legal admission of guilt. It is designed to avoid putting extra pressure on over-burdened judicial and regulatory processes. Under the old consent order guidelines, Sebi could impose a penalty of up to three times the profit allegedly made through manipulative activity.

Withholding consent

The recent transfer of over 100 officials in the ministry of information and broadcasting (I&amp;B) has left many red-faced. True, these transfers are well within service rules but it is the efficacy of the changes that have raised many questions. As a senior official pointed out, one primary objective of the I&amp;B ministry is to disseminate information. In the recent transfers, however, language and medium of communication were given scant respect. So, officials who belong to south India have been transferred north and are required to do their jobs as communications people in a local language that is completely alien to them. It will be interesting to watch how the government&rsquo;s official messengers manage to spread its message at a time when it badly needs to convey some good news about itself.

Message without medium

Newly appointed Uttarakhand Governor Aziz Qureshi is among the few people to have started following austerity measures even before taking the oath of office. Travelling to Dehra Dun from Bhopal, Qureshi sat in executive class of the Shatabdi Express, to which he is entitled. But family members who were accompanying him for the swearing-in ceremony travelled in the ordinary chair car. The state government had offered Qureshi use of the state aircraft or helicopter but he declined both. He was also given the option of using a special railway saloon reserved for use by governors, but he insisted on travelling by Shatabdi.

Austere trend-setter

Apropos the report &ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t an adivasi be president, asks Sangma&rdquo; (May 27), I am amused at Purno Sangma&rsquo;s question. Even as one cannot contest the right of an adivasi to become president, merit, and not caste or religion, should be the deciding factor. I wonder why debates pertaining to political nominations ultimately boil down to caste and religion. It&rsquo;s strange that no one is talking about choosing a presidential candidate with high integrity and an impeccable track record? Perhaps it is futile to talk of these qualities because such a candidate may not exist at all in these times.

Letters: Merit is the deciding factor

The recent increase in petrol prices has put the ruling BJP in Chhattisgarh in a fix, especially after the Centre raised the issue of cutting the state component of taxes in fuel prices. A cut could bring down prices by as much as Rs 15 a litre but the Raman Singh government, like many other state administrations, is loath to deprive itself of this revenue. As a result, the protests have taken an almost comical turn. For instance, the BJP trade wing has staged a token protest against the ruling UPA government at the Centre, but it has evaded the issue of local tax cuts. Asked about the party&rsquo;s line of action on the petrol price rise, the trade wing state president Kedar Gupta answered, &ldquo;We have burnt an effigy of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Burning issue for BJP

This refers to &ldquo;Maharajah&rsquo;s travails&rdquo; (Weekend, May 26). While the pilots of Air India deserve to be criticised for going on strike at a time when total commitment was needed to save the company from disaster, let us not ignore others who are responsible for this impasse. There are several case studies that establish that the main cause for the failure of acquisitions and/or mergers is poor human resource planning rather than poor technological or financial planning. Yet the merger of Air-India and Indian Airlines was effected by Praful Patel, minister for civil aviation, with undue haste and without reconciling the different salary scales, ladders of promotion and job profiles of the employees. After the merger, little attention seems to have been paid to reduce these disparities before extending the duties and pay benefits of pilots of Air-India to those of Indian airlines without a quid pro quo for the former.

Letters: Why blame the pilots only?

Purno Sangma is perfectly justified in asking why a tribal can&rsquo;t make for a suitable presidential candidate. Any citizen of the country, irrespective of his religious, caste, gender or ethnic identity, should be free to contest the election. But to claim the post solely, or largely, on the strength of one&rsquo;s &ldquo;special&rdquo; identity would be patently incorrect. We have had stalwarts like Rajendra Prasad, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Zakir Husain and Shanker Dayal Sharma as presidents of the country. And it&rsquo;s worth noting that they did not hold the office on the basis of any special identity. The unacceptable criteria of caste and religion are an import of the years when there was a complete debasement of the entire political spectrum in the country. And today the real need to elect a capable person who is intellectually upright, ethically sound and personally courageous is being conveniently overlooked.

Letters: ...not caste or identity 

The petrol price increase last week can only be the beginning, since the harder task of dealing with the pricing of diesel, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas lies ahead. Underrecoveries, losses on each unit of fuel sold, are hitting oil marketing companies hard. As Table 1 shows, underrecoveries on diesel, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petrol together have been, for a long period, a large proportion of the net sales of oil marketing companies.

StatsGuru: 28-May-2012

This refers to Shyamal Majumdar&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Air India&rsquo;s rich &lsquo;workmen&rsquo;&rdquo; (Human Factor, May 25). The author criticises the labour laws that give these rich pilots the same rights as workmen. But it is these same labour laws that helped managements prevent union formation for weak and relatively low-paid industrial workers for long durations in Maruti and General Motors. The fact is that the balance of power is always in favour of the strong. In Air India&rsquo;s case, it is for the pilots. Be that as it may, once in a while it is heartening to see labour on the winning side.

Letters: Labour on the winning side

After the recent increase in petrol prices, Mamata Banerjee reportedly stated that the government should have increased petrol prices gradually instead of affecting such a steep increase in one go. This is classic doublespeak. If she was serious about it, she would have made a demand for increasing prices whenever the global prices of crude oil went up. As regards to the &ldquo;decontrol&rdquo; of petrol prices, since oil marketing companies are government-owned, the de facto control still remains with the government. So, ultimately, it boils down to how well the government manages petro-products prices, economically and politically.

Letters: ...and the doublespeak

I agree with your edit &ldquo;Right call, wrong handling&rdquo; (May 25). The BJP and Left parties&rsquo; call for a Bharat bandh on May 31 to protest the increase in fuel prices will not solve anything. This is merely a gimmick and will help the Opposition ride the popular sentiment against the steep increase in the price of petroleum products. If one takes a close look at the sales tax levied on petrol in all the states, including those ruled by the BJP or other regional parties, one can immediately see the double standard that these parties practise. Though they conveniently blame the central government for every price increase, they merrily benefit from the increase in tax revenues from such hikes.

Letters: Spare us the bandh 

When is the Delhi Budget? Three days before it was to be presented, the Delhi secretariat took two hours to provide the answer. Some officials said it would be tabled on May 28, others said after that and the rest had no clue about the Budget altogether. There was more confusion. Who will present this Budget? Chief Minister Sheila Dixit holds the finance portfolio. But her office said finance is handled by the revenue minister. The media relations officer was far from interested in providing straight answers on almost anything. Though he confirmed that the Budget is, in fact, on May 28, he could not say anything about media passes to cover the event. In reply to the query, he said airily, &ldquo;Pass, pass, everyone will pass, no one will fail.

Delhi Budget door ast?

It appears that the BJP has realised that it will have to project itself as a distinctly different party from the Congress. That may be the reason Narendra Modi has been given his due place in the party at the national level, albeit unwillingly. The BJP would stand a chance in the next general election only if it projects itself as a party that can give a clean and efficient government, and that is truly secular (not Hindu) without any agenda to appease any particular sections of the populace.

Letters: And how it can strike back 

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Undue benefits in aviation&rdquo; (May 28). Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) has apparently taken a grim view of the user development fee &ndash; levied on passengers boarding from Delhi &ndash; which was not part of the Operations Maintenance and Development Agreement (OMDA) between the civil aviation ministry and the GMR group.

Letters: The DIAL dilemma

I agree with your edit &ldquo;No alternative&rdquo; (May 28). The Congress party maybe in the doldrums but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not been able to take advantage of its weak position. Despite the many chances it has had, the BJP has been unable to corner the Congress. Given its inability to emerge as a strong Opposition party, there&rsquo;s little hope for it to come forward as an alternative to the Congress in the next general election. Much depends on how it will leverage Narendra Modi&rsquo;s position, as its only leader with a national appeal, to its advantage. But portraying Modi as a national leader may irk some of its other important allies like Nitish Kumar.

Letters: BJP's lost chance...

Vijay Mallya&rsquo;s Royal Challengers Bangalore may not have been in the finals of the latest Indian Premier League tournament but he is mildly envious of the winners Kolkata Knight Riders for more than its victory. He was struck by the attention KKR attracted from the West Bengal state government. &ldquo;grt to see the wb cm and people of kolkata felicitate kkr t team fr winning ipl . such encouragement goes a long way,&rdquo; Mallya tweeted sportingly on Monday.

Accolade for accolades

Milagrow, a company that markets home cleaning robots, had been seeing good demand for its robots from tech-savvy populations spread out across the cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and some from places like Coimbatore. It found to its surprise that there was a big demand for its products from cities like Jalandhar and Amritsar where it did not expect to sell much. When it researched, it found that the demand for the robots were coming from people who wanted to give them as dowry, to save their daughters from possible drudgery in the marital home.

Robot dowry

Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy, speaking after a ministerial-level meeting on inflation on Monday, said that the government had no immediate plans to raise the administered prices of diesel, kerosene and domestic LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). This comes after oil marketing companies raised the price of petrol last week by Rs 7.50 per litre, an increase of 12 per cent. Mr Reddy&rsquo;s statement was firm: he said a price hike was &ldquo;out of the question&rdquo;.

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