Earlier this week, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, for the second time, cleared the purchase by the Anil Agarwal-promoted Vedanta Resources of a 58.5 per cent stake in Cairn India from Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy. Though this approval comes a little over a month after the deal was completed between the two UK-headquartered companies, the fact that it took this $8.48 billion deal, the largest involving an Indian company in the oil and gas sector, some 17 months to surmount wholly unanticipated governmental hurdles hardly redounds to the credit of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Random logic

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Who is a renewable energy consumer? Former power secretary Anil Razdan offered a new meaning at a recent conference. The issue came up when a member of an audience asked Ajoy Mehta, managing director of the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company, about its renewable purchase obligation (RPO). Mehta replied that a poor man with one bulb connection cannot be asked to pay more for renewable energy. But Razdan turned the issue into a joke, saying the man uses solar energy when his child studies in the daylight hours and wind energy when the family is cooled by the breeze instead of an air conditioner.

Back to nature?

This refers to the Newsmaker on Salman Rushdie (&ldquo;Our Scarlet pimpernel,&rdquo; January 20). The author&rsquo;s position on the matter is confused by her reference to factors that can best be described extraneous to the current situation. She questions the sources of funding that run the Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF). The JLF is spearheaded by WIlliam Dalrymple, a well-known writer who has written extensively on Islam in India (White Mughals is one of his books). It can be easily argued that he has no dog in this fight except the omnipresent elephant in the room: the state&rsquo;s responsibility to protect free speech. If the writer&rsquo;s allusion is to a dubious source of funding with an interest in disparaging Islam, it is plain wrong. Also, the author mentions the state&rsquo;s willingness to provide protection to M F Husain should he have decided to return to India. That he refused to accept the offer is a different matter.

Letters: State matters

Apropos the edit &quot;Tears over spilt onions&quot; (January 24), the act of dumping potatoes on the roads was an expression of farmers' frustration. Maharastra and other states, too, have seen such forms of extreme protests that are often well-arranged affairs. In all of this, it is small farmers and consumers that suffer the most. The political leadership has simply not shown any interest in organising small farmers since almost all political parties are keen on protecting and furthering the interests of the lobby of the medium and big farms and wholesalers. Before the government goes about reforming the sector, it is necessary to understand that farmers and consumers' interests do not clash. Infrastructural development in rural areas and establishing a mechanism to protect consumers and producers in cases of supply shortages or bumper productions are two important steps in this direction.

Letters: Farming woes

Apropos &ldquo;Students brace for digital storm as e-book revolution likely&rdquo; (January 25), the paperback still wins over the e-book purely on economics. Assuming an e-reader costs Rs 12,000, an average paper-based textbook Rs 300, and a 25 per cent discount on the digital edition, the break-even still works out to be 160 books, a significantly high number for any student. Moreover, digital editions do not provide the unbridled sharing experience of printed editions, since they come with short and limited loanable periods. Sharing buddies must also possess the same expensive e-reader, making the experience technology-dependent. Unlike music, students generally read, at best, five to eight textbooks in a semester/calendar year, so portability is not too much of an issue either. Unless computer-based testing is made mainstream and e-books afford efficient note-making on the margins similar to pens, e-books will hardly dislodge the primacy of paper in education circles.

Letters: Paperback vs e-reader

As the days tick down to the January 31 Republican presidential primary in the American state of Florida, the three remaining mainstream candidates would like to think that it is still an open race. The former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, has always been the candidate to beat; but of the three completed primaries so far, he has only won one, in New Hampshire. The Midwestern heartland state of Iowa went to a former senator, Rick Santorum, after a closely-fought election that was, at first, awarded to Mr Romney. And socially conservative South Carolina, in which Mr Romney initially built a commanding lead, gave the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, a 12-point victory. Hammered by these victories, the rest of what was a crowded Republican field dropped out; these three candidates steam into Florida with honours evenly divided. Of course, it is not that simple.

The elephant races 

For Manishankar Aiyar who recently led a delegation of the Members of Parliament to Pakistan, the most startling, enlivening and enlightening moment of the dialogue came when a Pakistani participant said, &ldquo;The most basic and fundamental issue between India and Pakistan is . . . (oh ho, here comes Kashmir, Aiyar thought!) . . . the need for a change in mindsets.&rdquo; Aiyar hopes this is a new turn in India-Pakistan relations. But he fears, it might not be.

Moment of truth?

Not many people know this, but the responsibility of appointing former judge Markandey Katju as chairman of the Press Council of India rested solely with Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Rajiv Shukla. Justice Katju and Shukla&rsquo;s father were close friends. It was Shukla who had suggested Katju&rsquo;s name to the government after he retired. Katju, who is now well-known for his controversial views on censorship and freedom, recently called Salman Rushdie a &lsquo;substandard&rsquo; author.

'Crowning' controversies

The President&rsquo;s &lsquo;At Home&rsquo; at the Rashtrapati Bhavan &mdash; her last in this term &mdash; opened to a glorious day, with early tulips pushing out of the earth and flowering orange trees scenting the air. But, quite unusually, dignitaries were penned in according to their standing and rank. There was a separate pen for diplomats, another one for the Supreme Court judges, and one for ministers. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was seen sitting huddled on a chair in one corner of the pen. When asked if he was going to walk about, he laughed, &ldquo;There is no requirement for it.

At home with the President

At the end of the post-policy conference call between the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and researchers and analysts, most participants found themselves left with a lot of homework &mdash; given by the Governor himself. During the call, participants made suggestions to RBI to improve the quality and speed of data analysis and dissemination.

Subbarao sets homework

The dramatic management change at smartphone maker RIM (Research in Motion) is an act of desperation. Between July and September of 2011, Gartner estimates RIM&rsquo;s market share via the Blackberry (BB) range slipped to 11 per cent from 15.4 per cent a year earlier. RIM&rsquo;s Playbook has also failed to make an impact in the tablet market. Unsurprisingly, the company&rsquo;s share price has declined by 75 per cent in the last 12 months. It appears consumers are developing a preference for products from Apple and Nokia, as well as those from manufacturers like Samsung which use the open Android platform. RIM&rsquo;s business customers, in particular, have also been spooked by a massive server outage. Developers say that the long-delayed BB10 operating system has a difficult programming interface and new RIM products may lag in offering useful independent applications. BB&rsquo;s &ldquo;killer apps&rdquo; were its encrypted push-mail technology and its messenger service.

Blackberry down

In the end, Salman Rushdie could not even speak over video-link from London to the crowds that had assembled to hear him at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The festival&rsquo;s organisers, visibly overwrought, said the Rajasthan police &mdash; while supportive &mdash; had warned that angry protestors were marching towards the festival, and in some cases were already inside. Rushdie had already been warned not to come to Jaipur, following threats to his life issued allegedly by militant groups.

Intolerant India

Dinesh Trivedi said he is determined to revamp the railways, but we have little hope considering the experience so far (Coffee with BS: &ldquo;All leaders must beware their chamchas,&quot; January 24). Modernising the railways is undeniably necessary. But as long as political parties will continue to use the railways portfolio to further their interests and ambitions, due attention will not be paid to the problems that ail the Indian Railways.

Letters: Tough chance

Apropos Sanjaya Baru&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Energising growth&rdquo; (January 23), power cuts have become a menace in the country. Tamil Nadu has been facing frequent power cuts for a long time. In particular, the state&rsquo;s southern districts like Tuticorin, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari have been severely affected. And these districts have been in the news due to protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. As a result of long blackouts, business activities have come to a standstill, not to mention the inconvenience it causes to people. But the state government remains apathetic towards this dismal situation. It has blamed monsoon failure and low wind-power production for power breakdowns. But this is not the first time the government is dealing with this issue &ndash; the state has been facing power shortages since 2007 &ndash; surely it can draw some lessons from the past and handle power generation in a better way.

Letters: Power struggle

Elections always see voters being offered freebies by political parties wanting to come to power. One such &mdash; expected &ndash; offer ahead of the Assembly elections promised continued free water and power to farmers in Punjab. Commenting on this vicarious generosity &ndash; since it is the state-owned utilities that must literally pay the price &ndash; an official from the fertiliser industry was moved to comment, &ldquo;Thank god these people do not give fertilisers as freebies to farmers, otherwise the government and the industry would both face huge losses.&rdquo; Fertiliser prices, though still partly subsidised, have risen steeply in recent years, but the irony is that this has not had a noticeable impact on the subsidy bill.

Freedom from freebies

Arvind Subramanian&rsquo;s interpretation of China&rsquo;s growth ignores the enormous support that Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and China received from the US for strategic cold war reasons (&ldquo;Learning from Chinese mercantilism,&rdquo; 25 January).

Letters: China's real growth story

How far is Rabindranath Tagore from Bhagat Singh? If you can&rsquo;t understand the question, take a ride around the Salt Lake city in Kolkata. After a series of confusing name changes of Metro Rail stations when she was Railways&rsquo; minister, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is on another spree. This time her target is the 17 tanks in the planned Salt Lake city. The new names include Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Uttam Kumar, Meghnad Saha, Rammohan Roy, Ambedkar and Netaji. This has now created problems for the locals who used to identify these tanks by their numbers. Didi&rsquo;s answer to this problem was, &ldquo;They will get used to it. This is the way to pay obeisance to great people.

Numbers up at Salt Lake

With the interest rate cycle peaking, which debt mutual fund categories would be good to invest? I want to invest Rs 60,000 for two-three years.

Investing: Paras Adenwala

Lessons from the fiasco over Team Anna member Kiran Bedi skimming ticket upgrades ostensibly to benefit her NGO do not seem to have rubbed off on other social activists. Recently former Team Anna member Swami Agnivesh was scheduled to fly from Delhi to London on the national carrier Air India. Since he held an economy-class ticket, he called a senior bureaucrat in the civil aviation ministry asking for an upgrade. When the bureaucrat concerned asked why he should be given one, Agnivesh&rsquo;s answer was to impress his identity on him. To which the bureaucrat&rsquo;s nonchalant reply surely had him stumped. &ldquo;So what?&rdquo; he said.

No 'self' service 

The lure of finance sector has lost its dominance with undergraduate engineers who are recruited for their analytical skills while it continues to be favourite with the management graduates. With the glooming economic atmosphere, undergraduates prefer to hold on to their core engineering stable jobs.

Student's corner

The controversy over wages paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is getting knottier by the day. Social activists, as also the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, have always favoured aligning MGNREGA payments with the prescribed minimum wages in different states. The government has, however, avoided doing so, maintaining that MGNREGA is a social security measure, not a substitute for the existing employment opportunities &mdash; and hence need not follow the minimum wage norms. But the issue has now been confounded with the Karnataka High Court recently ruling that the remuneration under the statutory MGNREGA scheme cannot be lower than the minimum wage.

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