This refers to Subir Roy&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Creating a post office&rdquo; (February 1). India Post, in a major makeover move, had launched its new logo a few years ago. There have also been reports of its plans to acquire a number of aircrafts to carry letters, parcels and logistics consignments for ensuring overnight delivery in major towns. However, some basic issues ailing postal services for a long time have not been addressed yet. The condition of major post offices in villages, towns and even cities is pathetic. Most of them do not have proper telephone facilities. Besides, a number of postal employees work in bad conditions in congested rooms without any proper ventilation.

Letters: Failed delivery

Business Standard

This refers to the report &ldquo;Isro shares part of report indicting Nair&rdquo; (February 6). Over the past one year, we have seen several policy lapses and huge losses caused to the exchequer because of incorrect interpretations of policy and so on. In many cases, political spokespersons have defended wrongs by pointing fingers at those who talked about corruption or unethical practices. In the process, the purpose of audits, probes and reviews is being lost.

Letters: Defending wrongs

I wish to take an insurance cover of Rs 25-50 lakh.

Life Insurance: Deepak Sood

India&rsquo;s railway network should be one of its greatest strengths. It has considerable penetration, an adequate land bank and an independent cadre of managers. In the creation of a single market for goods, one of the most growth-enhancing measures possible, it is a crucial tool. Yet Indian Railways (IR) has become a casualty of populist politics, and the numbers being scrutinised in advance of the Railway Budget for 2012-13 should demonstrate how badly that has served the network. Over a third of the 2011-12 Budget outlay is serviced through a borrowing liability &mdash; of Rs 20,594 crore. Fund balances have plunged for years now, which has impacted the capital fund in particular; from over Rs 10,000 crore in 2007-08 to a tenth of that. Capital is not being utilised to create new projects, either, bringing the essential upgrade of the network to a halt.

Off the tracks

For years, economists did not know how to think about services. The tertiary sector of the economy was an afterthought for many early economists, and that caused a bias in economic theory and policy that lasts to this day. India&rsquo;s high economic growth rates of the past few years have come on the back of sustained service sector growth. But this should not be seen as a completely new phenomenon. In fact, the productivity gap between developed countries and India in services has been consistently smaller than in other sectors for almost a century. Today, services contribute the majority of national income, but only a tiny fraction &ndash; 8.7 per cent &ndash; of central taxes. This is not a state of affairs that can be allowed to continue. The goods and services tax, or GST, has long been planned to rationalise and simplify the tax system. Yet its introduction continues to be stalled, largely for political reasons.

Negative list, positive news

If there's any global conference or a summit of importance being organised in any part of the world, you can be sure there will be protestors, some serious, others less so, and some outright mercenary. India, though, unwittingly provides an antidote to sustained opposition. A recent global summit on an environmental issue in Bangalore attracted its complement of conscientious objectors outside the hotel where it was being hosted.

Unlike America's 99%

The jobs scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) seems to be a godsend when states want to desperately do something and need labour. Take the case of the state that needed to build playgrounds and had the Centre include it in the roster of work allowed under the scheme. Himachal Pradesh Rural Development Minister Jai Ram Thakur mentioned a similarly pressing need while attending the sixth anniversary celebrations of NREGA in Delhi.

NREGA's monkey business

The global scamster industry has travelled from the ailing economies of Africa and finally washed up on the shores of the US. Earlier scams originated from politically-troubled states like Nigeria or Congo and requested the recipient to &quot;park&quot; millions of dollars in his account till things settled down in return for a generous fee. The latest one is far more ingenious. It appears in the form of an &quot;official&quot; letter from the Internal Revenue Service of the US Department of Treasury to anyone who may have concluded some transactions overseas. &quot;Our records indicate that you are a Non-resident,&quot; the letter says, &quot;as a result you are exempted from United States of America Tax reporting and withholdings on interest paid to you on your account and other financial benefits. To protect your exemption from tax on your account and other financial benefits, you need to recertify your exemption status and enable us confirm your records with us.

Taxing scam

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Time to redial&rdquo; (February 3). Reassuringly, the Supreme Court&rsquo;s ruling on the 2G case has come as a salutary lesson to politicians as well as corporate giants. Once and for all it has made it quite clear that the looting of precious public assets such as spectrum by business houses in connivance with the political class cannot be allowed. The presumptive loss due to the irregular grant of spectrum licences in 2008 is estimated to run into crores and crores of rupees. The government can no longer deny the enormity of the economic crime committed by it in the name of expansion of mobile connectivity and consumer interest over revenue maximisation. Singling out A Raja alone as the sole culpable person is grossly unfair. Let us hope that venal politicians and greedy corporate companies will now think twice before striking sweetheart deals.

Letters: ...and why it was needed

This refers to the edit &ldquo;The bitter sweet truth&rdquo; (February 3). Decontrol will definitely help the sugar sector become more competitive and improve its productivity. The move will compel sugar co-operatives to implement cost-saving measures. However, the industry, like many others, is not known for self-discipline and there is some doubt in the minds of consumers whether the decontrol would benefit consumers.

Letters: Will decontrol help?

The Supreme Court&rsquo;s landmark judgment ordering the cancellation of all the 122 licenses for 2G operations is a clear indictment of A Raja. It is heartening that the apex court in its judgment has expressed zero tolerance for corruption in unambiguous terms.

Letters: A good call

The sugar industry&rsquo;s wait for an end to stifling restrictions and regulations seems to be eternal. Even as the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Economic Advisory Council, headed by C Rangarajan, had reportedly chalked out a detailed road map for sugar decontrol, the prime minister, instead of acting on it, chose to appoint another committee &ndash; headed by Rangarajan himself &ndash; to go into all the related issues. This has given rise to more suspicion than it has quelled about the government&rsquo;s real intentions concerning deregulation. The timing of the announcement, coming in the middle of the Assembly election process in three major sugar-producing states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand, further compounds misgivings, given the sector&rsquo;s deep-rooted politicisation.

The bitter sweet truth

What do movements in the price of commodities say about expectations for the economy in 2012 and beyond? Food inflation in India has been a major determinant of policy in recent years, and has shaken up the economy. As Table 1 reveals, it has dropped considerably. This extends across most non-protein foodstuffs, as shown in Table 2; but wheat (and protein-intensive food, like poultry) is showing signs of resilience.

StatsGuru-06-February-12

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has taken serious exception to the Union government&rsquo;s inability to accede to her request for a one-time special financial package to enable the state to tide over its precarious financial condition. Her more explicit reason for seeking this special favour is that the previous Left Front government has bequeathed a critical financial situation. The less explicit reason is that the Trinamool Congress&rsquo; support is crucial for the survival of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, and this should come at a price. The inability to get what she wants partially explains the manner in which, at critical junctures, Ms Banerjee has refused to stand by the prime minister, forcing him to retreat with loss of face.

Downhill with Trinamool

It has been more than ten years since the term &ldquo;Bric&rdquo; was coined. The Bric nations &ndash; Brazil, Russia, India and China &ndash; were supposed to be the engines of global growth, the new poles of the world economy as Europe and North America slipped slowly into twilight. Yet Jim O&rsquo;Neill of Goldman Sachs, the man leading the team that coined the phrase in 2001, has been quoted as saying that &ldquo;there are important structural issues about all four, and as we go into the 10-year anniversary, in some ways India is the most disappointing&rdquo;.

Falling Bric

As this newspaper reported yesterday, the India-Bangladesh border in Assam has emerged as a hotbed for anti-India elements carrying out smuggling of fake Indian currency notes (FICNs), narcotics, and arms and ammunition despite the tight vigil maintained by the BSF. According to available data, FICNs amounting to Rs 18,71,500, Rs 28,43,390, Rs 32,26,900 and Rs 36,61,800 were seized along the border in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 (up to October) respectively. These crimes have been attributed to the unfenced stretches of the India-Bangladesh border in Assam, as well as on the &ldquo;second line defence&rdquo; Assam Police that is crippled by lack of adequate manpower, arms and ammunition, and the number of border outposts they must have in order to check such rampant illegalities. Blame ultimately goes to the state government of the day for having pretended all along that everything is fine and that cross-border crimes are a figment of &lsquo;communal&rsquo; or media imagination.

Crime on Bangladesh border

The Election Commission deserves to be commended for the manner in which it has tightened its grip over malpractices in elections over the years. That ills like booth capturing and brazen intimidation of voters have been substantially controlled across the country is a feather in the cap of the commission. It would be worthwhile for the Election Commission to consider, however, whether it really needs to stagger the polls to the extent it does. In the current round of assembly elections, on the one hand while Manipur went to polls on January 28 and Punjab and Uttarakhand on January 30, the elections in UP spread across seven phases will culminate only on March 3. The assembly elections in Goa are also slated for March 3. It is only after completion of polls in all five states that counting will take place for all on March 6. It is hardly surprising that in the states where polling has been completed, work in government offices is virtually at a standstill.

Staggered elections

The Supreme Court verdict cancelling the 122 telecom licences issued by former communications minister A Raja is one more indictment of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-2 government, which has been reeling under the 2G spectrum scam for nearly two years and has still not heard the end of it. There is no doubt that the government&rsquo;s coffers will benefit by this judgment as the court has asked telecom regulator TRAI to make fresh recommendations on grant of licences and the government should take a decision on this within a month. This is a windfall for the government at a time when it is struggling to meet its fiscal deficit target, as it could earn even more than the Rs 1 lakh crore that it got from the auction of 3G licences because the spectrum to be auctioned is much more.

Telecom verdict yet another indictment of UPA-II

What are the policy directions in which India&rsquo;s political parties are taking its citizens? Studying the manifestos released before the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections helps answer that. Three of the four major competing parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, and the Samajwadi Party, have released manifestos. The fourth, the incumbent Bahujan Samaj Party, has always taken a stand against manifestos &mdash; one that reveals its leadership&rsquo;s traditional belief that control over administration and the transfer of the levers of power to the disadvantaged is more important than specific policy proposals.

Everybody gets a cow

Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy had moved the judiciary seeking to make Chidambaram a co-accused in the 2G spectrum scam alleging he was as culpable as former Telecom minister A Raja in determining the prices of scarce spectrum and in allowing the dilution of shares. After the Patiala House court dismissed the petition today, the Congress says its stand is vindicated, while the Opposition says that the governemnt has already been ruled against.

Does the quashing of Swamy's plea against Chidambaram prove Congress' innocence in the 2G scam?

I am holding some shares and I want to gift them to my mother.

Business Standard

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