Deepak Parekh, the respected head of Housing Development Finance Corporation, who has been vocal about the ill-effects of drift in country&rsquo;s leadership talks about the issue and what needs to be done with Karan Thapar on television channel CNN-IBN&rsquo;s Devil&rsquo;s Advocate programme.

Q&A: Deepak Parekh, HDFC

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Sources close to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi say for the last six months the Gujarat strongman hasn't had a single conversation on the phone with his national party president Nitin Gadkari. Why? Because Modi is said to be angry that his bete noire Sanjay Joshi was inducted into the central party organisation by the national president a couple of months ago. Joshi and Modi have been adversaries for some time now and a CD featuring Joshi surfaced in Gujarat though Joshi vehemently denied he was the one featured in it. Suffice it to say the two aren't exactly the best of friends.

Modi miffed

If tax officials thought only other people are obliged to disclose their assets and earnings for tax assessments, they will have to think again. Following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's insistence on property disclosures by ministers and bureaucrats, officials of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Excise and Customs have also been asked to file asset details with the government. Though they are reluctant, they have assured the authorities that they will do so soon.

Taxing demands

Apropos T N Ninan&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Do-gooder economics and the Lokpal&rdquo; (January 7), the author&rsquo;s silence on private sector corruption at the top speaks volumes. Maybe the author can explain why any government intervention at the bottom of the pyramid is invariably labelled as &ldquo;market distortion&rdquo; or &ldquo;fiscal adventurism&rdquo;, while government intervention at the top in the form of sops to India Inc is always a &ldquo;fiscal stimulus&rdquo;.

Letters: Bleeding heart reformists

Minister of Road Transport and Highways C P Joshi managed to turn intended praise for Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee into a faux pas at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. Speaking at a plenary session about Mukherjee&rsquo;s excellence as a finance minister, Joshi said when he began his career in politics in the 1980s, Mukherjee was the finance minister and 30 years later he held the same office. Hearing a guffaw from the crowd, an amused Mukherjee looked at Joshi, at which the highways minister, realising what he had said, couldn&rsquo;t do much but look down.

FM forever

Indeed, the finance minister could have taught the highways minister a thing or two about the art of flattery. When he asked overseas Indians for their feedback, one of them asked him to focus on how to bring more women into the finance sector. Mukherjee promptly replied that he believed women were far better managers of money than men and declared he was ready to vacate his seat for any woman.

Woman on top

A near-bankrupt civic body, the Greater Bangalore City Corporation, has found a novel way to squeeze out property tax from those reluctant to pay up. They have employed drummers to tom-tom the defaulters&rsquo; misdemeanours. The drummers will arrive at the defaulter&rsquo;s front door and start a round of drumming after which someone will read out what he or she owes the civic body. What if one still doesn&rsquo;t pay up? GBCC has the ultimate solution to that as a mall owner discovered the hard way &mdash; or rather, the stinky way. The civic body parked a couple of garbage trucks in front of the mall at peak hours. No surprise, the Rs 5 crore the builder owed the civic body was immediately forthcoming.

Raising a stink

This refers to T N Ninan&rsquo;s article on market distortions and its calamitous impact. Only last week, I paid a Haryana cop Rs 500 to escape &ldquo;a mobile use while driving challan&rdquo;. I paid this sum without any bargaining, without demur and I do not grudge the cop his money. Living in the millennium city surrounded by obscene money in the name of property, Esops and high salaries, only the very principled would not be swayed by the need to keep up with the Joneses. And yet going by Ninan&rsquo;s article, workers must draw lower minimum wages and live in slums. The same developers and private companies have not taken even a small step to compel the government to develop the environs in which they live. And it is not that they do not have the influence. They do not care.

Letters: ...and the 'India story' farce

The government&rsquo;s enthusiasm in pushing votes for NRIs is misplaced.

Voting across the sea

The pressure to redeem foreign-currency bonds makes 2012 a difficult year for India Inc.

Time to repay

An index fund and index ETF both track a particular index and generally give similar returns mirroring that index, barring their tracking errors. While an index ETF is listed and the units are traded on exchanges, units of an index fund are normally purchased and redeemed directly from a fund house. Investment needs should determine your choice.

Investing: Rishi Nathany

The name Dal Bahadur Kori might not ring a bell to many. He was &mdash; until recently &mdash; a staunch Congressman who completed his Class X in 2010 after being inspired by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi. The 54-year politician was so enamoured by Gandhi that he had decided to finally become a graduate and join his team. However, it seems the plans to study further are not going to take shape, as the politician has switched to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in this election season. Kori had joined the Congress in 2007 from the BJP. Although he had not even completed Class X then, he was a minister in the Kalyan Singh government.

Scholarly dreams!

Over a year after the contentious Commonwealth Games were held in New Delhi, the swanky building that housed its organising committee will now have the home ministry as its prime occupant and some departments from the health ministry. Finally. These ministries were scheduled to move to these premises in early 2011 but were stalled by the scam. Papers and material related to the Games were under the investigative agencies&rsquo; scanner, so the building had to be vacant until the scrutiny was complete.

Home run

Videocon promoter R N Dhoot (pictured with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee) is always alert to the fact that he is not just another businessman but also a Rajya Sabha member and, in that sense, a representative of the people. At a recent press meet that he addressed as the president-elect of industry lobby group Assocham in New Delhi, he found himself being forced to disagree with his fellow speaker&rsquo;s view that drug price control was not needed in India since prices are already among the world&rsquo;s lowest. Interrupting Kewal Handa, chairman of Assocham&rsquo;s Drugs and Pharmaceutical Council and managing director of Pfizer India, Dhoot said he could not favour decontrol because he does not want to be seen advocating an increase in medicine prices. Dhoot is in the Rajya Sabha as a Shiv Sena nominee from Maharashtra.

Dhoot, 'people's representative'

The New Year seems to hold a special place in the hearts of the mandarins of the Planning Commission, the country&rsquo;s apex policy-making body. Yojana Bhavan, its headquaters, has been decked out with floral garlands and lamps and so on, unlike any other government office. This prompted a senior official to quip that the problems of the country have started engulfing the Commission. He pointed to the fact that for over two years now the Commission lacked a proper drinking water supply - officials depended on water bought from outside. Yet, it appears to have the funds to fritter on such extravagances as new year decorations.

Non-plan expenditure

This refers to the debate &ldquo;Should banks bail our companies?&rdquo; (January 4). If a company has an incentive to go broke for profit by &ldquo;getting a bailout package&rdquo; at society&rsquo;s expense, then it is pure loot. Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulations and low penalties give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations. In economic literature, this strategy has got many colourful descriptions: &ldquo;heads I win, tails I break even&rdquo;, &ldquo;gambling on resurrection&rdquo; and so on.

Letters: Bankruptcy for profit

In the near future, every company will need to come to terms with the phenomenon of social media. Employees, customers and other stakeholders will expect and demand it. Against this backdrop, it is important today to understand the capabilities of a social organisation and analyse the importance of mass transparency, according to this extract from the book The Social Organization.

The extended enterprise

Recent reports of the acquisition of a foreign rock phosphate mine by an Indian fertiliser manufacturer through a joint venture with a Japanese firm &mdash; in order to secure the raw material supply to its domestic phosphatic plant &mdash; should be viewed as part of a trend that needs to be sustained. India is critically dependent on fertiliser imports, since the availability of raw material for indigenous production is woefully poor. While almost 25 per cent of the requirement of urea, the most-consumed fertiliser, is met through imports, this proportion is almost 100 per cent for potassic fertilisers and nearly 90 per cent in the case of phosphatic fertilisers. Urea is, indeed, the only fertiliser that can potentially be produced without any imported content. But the paucity of natural gas, the most preferred feed stock for its manufacture, is coming in the way of doing so, necessitating the setting up of joint ventures for urea production in gas-rich countries.

Fertile fields elsewhere

Praful Patel&rsquo;s seven-year tenure in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, before he was moved to the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, was far from uneventful.

Flights of fancy?

Here&rsquo;s another one from the indefatigable Shree Mani Shankar Aiyar, Honourable Member of Parliament. When the Lok Pal debate reached the Rajya Sabha and indications that the House would sit till late night &mdash; possibly even after 12 midnight &mdash; were strong, Aiyar was heard observing rather gloomily, viz a thought process all his own, &ldquo;Well, look at the brighter side: Thank God, we&rsquo;re all men in there. Otherwise, we&rsquo;d all have turned into pumpkins.

Gauge what?

When the Hissar Lok Sabha by-election returned Kuldeep Bishnoi by a huge margin, relegating the Congress to third place, a great deal of the blame was put on the Anna Hazare effect. India Against Corruption (IAC) had campaigned against the Congress and, as a result, the Haryana Janhit Congress had benefited. Others said it was a straightforward Jat versus non-Jat fight and the non-Jat votes consolidated to back Bishnoi.

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