I could not agree more with your edit &ldquo;General in a labyrinth&rdquo; (February 14). The platform of honour and integrity on which the General fought his age battle now lies exposed, revealing his real motivation &mdash; garnering as much personal gain as he could out of this age anomaly. The General accepted 1950 as his year of birth to obtain his promotions and then, as Army Chief, tried to push his case for an added year of service. If that were not the case, he would have certainly resigned by now. What surprised me also was one piece of advice that the Supreme Court offered to the General: Wise men sway to the wind.

Letters: A tale of self-service

Business Standard

Competition Commission Chairman Ashok Chawla is a veteran bureaucrat and well placed to understand the functioning of government, his last stint being finance secretary. As a panelist at the New Delhi leg of the PwC-Business Standard CEO Summit, therefore, he was in a good position to answer a member of the audience who claimed to have worked for the government early in his career and asked why it refuses to address the concerns of industry.

An insider's view

Apropos the edit &ldquo;An open shame&rdquo; (February 16), as a practicing architect, recently, I came across the concept of small, plastic septic tanks that treat human waste and channel the wastewater for irrigation. What we need is the government will to subsidise such small installations for use instead of having underground drainage systems at the village level.

Letters: Managing waste

Working past office hours on February 14, a senior workaholic bureaucrat in Shastri Bhavan was told to leave early since it was Valentine's Day. The bureaucrat's sardonic reply was that he had wished his wife early in the morning but ever since he had come to office, it was work that was wishing him Valentine's Day again and again, even at 8 in the evening.

A bureaucrat's valentine

Apropos K D Singh&rsquo;s letter &ldquo;One-sided story&rdquo; (February 15), the writer appears to have given a new meaning to the words &ldquo;duress&rdquo; and &ldquo;coercion&rdquo;. If General Singh felt strongly about his date of birth and deemed it a matter of &ldquo;honour&rdquo; (that overused term), he should have stuck to his stand, risked his promotion and sought legal redress prior to his (conditional) promotion in 2008 instead of knocking at the doors of the Supreme Court after becoming the Chief of Army Staff and just before his retirement.

Letters: What duress?

Vocational training focuses on practical applications of a job. Thus it will help to enhance individual employability, reduce the mismatch between demand and supply of skilled manpower and provide an alternative for those pursuing higher education without particular interest. These are aimed at preparing students for entry into the labour market and even after vocational training there opens scope for higher learning. Thus it will help to promote skill development.

Student's corner

That the civil aviation ministry has lifted the restrictions it placed on the overseas expansion of domestic private airlines is good news. Those restrictions, which were brought into force in March 2011 in order to protect state-owned Air India from competition, were misguided. Air India, which carries only a fifth of the country&rsquo;s international passengers, was always unable to take full advantage of the bilateral routes that were reserved for it.

Clearing the runways

National shame&rdquo; is how most people, including some senior government functionaries, often refer to the pervasive practice of open defecation. Yet, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), launched in 1991 with the noble objective of providing access to hygienic toilets for all by 2012, receives only scant attention from the government. The latest assessment indicates that as many as 22 states will miss the deadline for eliminating open defecation.

An open shame

My car was stolen and I followed all the procedures to claim insurance against my comprehensive policy. But before the settlement happened, the police found my car. I have not taken the possession yet.

General Insurance: Gaurav Garg

You could call it Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao&rsquo;s &ldquo;revenge&rdquo; on Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu. The forthcoming monetary policy review by the central bank is slated for Thursday March 15, which also happens to be the day the government is to table the pre-Budget Economic Survey for 2011-12 in the Lok Sabha. For Basu, this will be his third and last Economic Survey, a document he holds dear. If Subbarao comes out with the monetary policy review the same day, the Survey will likely be overshadowed by what the central bank does or does not do.

Mint Road rules

Apropos the edit &ldquo;Green cover-up&rdquo; (February 15), it&rsquo;s hardly surprising to see that we have lost 367 square kilometres of forest in the past two years. What could one expect given the speed with which we are encroaching on forested land in the name of infrastructure development? Our lopsided approach to development that pays no heed to environmental concerns will yield disastrous consequences sooner than later. It is also not surprising that Andhra Pradesh has recorded the highest decline in forest cover; this is a state where illegal mining has become the norm of the day. Attributing the loss to Maoist activities is indeed unconvincing and, at best, a mockery of the issue. It is about time we probe deeper to determine the real cause of depleting forest-covers and take adequate measures to check it.

Letters: Save our forests

Guess what Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos have in common? For one, all three are economists and, for another, all three head coalition governments. Papademos and Singh have another point of similarity: both were governors of their respective central banks &mdash; Singh headed the Reserve Bank of India between 1982 and 1985 and Papademos was Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 to 2002. The major point of difference, of course, is that Monti and Papademos, both of whom took charge in November last year, head countries that are neck-deep in financial and economic crises. Singh doesn't have to face that problem as prime minister &mdash; he addressed that particular crisis as finance minister almost 21 years ago.

Same difference

The delay in the Budget session owing to polls in five states has given finance ministry officials more time to prepare the annual document. The officials, however, are not very excited about that opportunity. Some of them say they would have preferred to have had it at the end of February and an extra window of over two weeks hardly helps because they had started the budgeting process a little earlier this time. The Budget is to be presented on March 16, which means the entire process, including notifying Budget announcements, will be delayed, a time-line that will affect the year-end holiday plans some officials had drawn up with their families.

Timed out by the Budget

Long ago, Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of Bajaj Auto, chose to make a personal fashion statement by wearing T-shirts instead of the conventional office formals. His sartorial choice attracted attention at the Nasscom summit this week where a Silicon Valley employee commented that he was happy to see at least one person on the dais wearing a T-shirt. It was foolish, the employee continued, to wear formal suits and jackets in a country like India. Perhaps to put his formally dressed colleagues on the dais at ease, Bajaj responded with easy humour that for a person like him whose profession was to sell motorcycles, he could only afford to buy T-shirts.

Off the rack

You say in your edit that given that peacetime army promotions are based on seniority, it is untenable that General Singh should have accepted his promotion to the Chief of Army Staff on the basis of a 1950 birth year and then expected to retire on the basis of another, a year later. But the chief&rsquo;s birth year has nothing to do with his seniority, which depends on his date of commission. In fact, it is creditable that even with 1950 as his year of birth he was young enough and had the residual tenure to become army commander and chief. It is surprising that the media is assuming that the General, the office of the Army Chief and the army are one by accusing the General of dragging all of them into the controversy, while in the 2G case and other scams it differentiates between the prime minister, the Prime Minster&rsquo;s Office, the Cabinet and the government.

Letters: ...or misjudgement?

The latest edition of the &ldquo;India State of Forest Report&rdquo;, or ISFR, which is compiled biennially, is worrisome. The report claims that 367 square kilometres of forest have been lost in the past two years; and that the total forest and tree cover actually shrank, to 23.81 per cent of the country&rsquo;s total area. These are a reversal of the trends that had been claimed earlier.

Green cover-up

Minister for Law and Company Affairs Salman Khurshid has justly been criticised for what was seen as a direct attack on the authority of the Election Commission (EC). Mr Khurshid was warned by the EC that he was violating the model code of conduct when he promised that, if voted in, the Congress would increase the sub-quota for Muslims within the larger category of reservations for Other Backward Classes, or OBCs, from 4.5 per cent to nine per cent.

Code breaker

Apropos &ldquo;General in a labyrinth&rdquo; (February 14), the edit portrays a one-sided story. The very opening of the edit is factually wrong and grossly contemptuous. You say &ldquo;the Supreme Court has dismissed his [the army chief&rsquo;s] petition&rdquo; but it had, in fact, only disposed of his petition. Though you may have your own interpretation and perception of the proceedings, it ill behoves you to report the proceedings wrongly. You say the general gave two commitments to accept 1950 as his birth year. These undertakings ex-facie would reveal that the general did what he was directed by his superior. If this is not duress and coercion, then what else is? If you are short on logic, may I explain the situation through a cricketing analogy. If the ball is a no-ball, you cannot be given out even if the shot lands the ball in the gloves. You seem happy with the Court&rsquo;s order and yet you call on the army chief to leave office.

Letters: One-sided story

This refers to the Q&amp;A with Jan Myrdal (February 12). The Swedish writer and political commentator rightly asserts that heredity is not the best way to select leaders. However, there&rsquo;s nothing wrong in the idea if these leaders are selected democratically. And in some cases it benefits the party &mdash; Sonia Gandhi&rsquo;s leadership saved the Congress from disintegration. Hereditary politics is also prevalent in other parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and so on. Indeed the caste system is a deep and destructive reality in India, but we hope for it to disappear with education and better economic development. Along with that it would be desirable to see India&rsquo;s growth story encompass people at the very bottom.

Letters: Beyond heredity and caste

Apropos &ldquo;Regulating the regulators&rdquo; (Raisina Hill, February 14), the finance ministry has many subtle ways of undermining the independence of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and nominating one more representative to the RBI board is one such move. There have been many instances in which the ministry has wielded its power. And when the RBI governor himself reports to the finance minister, where is the question of independence? Also, the ministry does not merely function as the prime shareholder of public sector banks. It has the final say in the appointment of CEOs of these banks. In fact, it is not even necessary to regulate the regulator (RBI). The banking regulator is already aware of its subservient role. Its independence will only be restored if the Centre honestly believes in doing so. Till then this will remain wishful thinking.

Letters: Who's the boss?

It was a hardly a &quot;third place&quot; to unveil the mega Frappuccino deal. But when you have a hotel like the Taj Mahal to boast, why won't the Tatas use it as the venue for their signing ceremony with Starbucks Coffee? But journalists were a little stumped when they saw that there was no coffee on offer. Hopes were raised when they saw model baristas wearing the Starbucks green apron. But what perhaps foxed everybody was when Tata's R K Krishna Kumar and his counterpart John Culvert, president, Starbuck China and APAC, raised a Champagne toast.

Business Standard

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