Your editorial comment on the economy was apt (&ldquo;Little hope for 2012,&rdquo; January 2). The year 2011 will go down in the history of our economy as the worst performing year since India&rsquo;s economic liberalisation. The reason you have given for the poor performance &ndash; the mismanagement of the economy by the government &ndash; shows your unbiased approach and openness in assessing an economy and that is commendable. But it should be noted that the growth potential of our economy remains strong and a little more attention from the government and other institutions, particularly the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), can make 2012 a better year. Inflation is softening and the situation may improve with a favourable monsoon and credit support. RBI can consider reducing the interest rates and improving the liquidity further to ease monetary conditions and attract fresh investments. RBI and the government have to make a joint effort to instil economic confidence by all means.

Letters: Together they can

Business Standard

Big business is entering the news media, creating new challenges for regulators, viewers and producers.

No business like news business

A leading corporate group headquartered in north India has accused a south Indian lobby of running the country&rsquo;s top regulators. The group has written to the prime minister saying this lobby, which worked across the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and ministry of corporate affairs, has managed to add provisions in the Companies Bill that are harmful to north Indian business interests. The grapevine has it that this letter was instrumental in preventing the Bill being passed in Parliament. The group has also demanded MPs of its choice be part of the standing committee that will review the Bill. Now, if these MPs actually end up being members of that standing committee then we can be sure that writing letters to the prime minister is a good way to get things done.

Due south

It is not just old mansions or castles that are the preferred haunt of ghosts and spirits. Once the night advances, no security guard will venture on to the eighth floor in the Bangalore office of one of India&rsquo;s largest multinational consultancies. &ldquo;Legend&rdquo; has it that three employees committed suicide by jumping off that floor, and people claim that they can feel &ldquo;something&rdquo; pushing them if they step on to the terrace. But if you are an employee who needs to work late on that floor, your concerns are more mundane: there won&rsquo;t be anyone around to fetch you coffee or tea. An irate employee who had to work late by himself finally got a security guard deployed, only to be informed by the latter that he would not be hanging around and to please have mercy.

Wanted: Ghost busters

Yes, provided the financial health of banks is not impaired; but there is a great risk of companies misusing rescue funds.

Should banks bail out companies?

Bayern Munich's visit for the farewell match for former Indian football captain Baichung Bhutia has been widely publicised. But an unpublicised event in the capital a day ahead of that match on January 10 is expected to attract large corporate interest and, the organisers hope, money. This is an auction of football memorabilia of Europe's best footballers, organised by Indian NGO, Khushii, which is chaired by former cricketer Kapil Dev and has patrons such as Aman Nath, Naresh Trehan, Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, R K Pachauri and Narain Karthikeyan. Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid, is expected to attend as well.

Off the ball

Reforming the cooperative sector needed Central action.

Board of political control

India&rsquo;s public-sector management had its share of visionaries.

More Sreedharans

The visa regime for an Indian citizen to travel to Schengen countries is quite cumbersome. Documents that are required to be furnished in support of visa applications are, in many cases, unnecessary.

Letters: Visa shenanigans

This refers to Malini Bhupta&rsquo;s piece &ldquo;Infrastructure sector: Twelfth plan holds promise&rdquo; (December 29). Given the poor infrastructure, especially, the pathetic condition of roads in most villages, towns and cities, a big-ticket road construction project is long overdue. In this context, the government should consider various factors like the relaxation of bureaucratic rules, adherence to a time-frame and maintaining transparency and accountability while awarding contracts. Only firms with impeccable reputation and experience in the road sector should be engaged for the project. And timely completion should be rewarded with incentives. Finally, any corrupt practice should be dealt with stringently to ensure the fruitful realisation of the project.

Letters: Road to development

We have just left behind a year that caught stock traders and investors  by surprise. In 2011, bears called the shots all along and dwarfed the  bulls in the manner not seen in the past several years.

Can the stock markets reverse the downtrend in 2012?

As was widely reported, the &ldquo;midnight drama&rdquo; in the Rajya Sabha last week touched a new high (or low?) when Rashtriya Janata Dal member Rajniti Prasad (pictured) tore a copy of the Lok Pal Bill after snatching it from Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Narayanasamy. An &ldquo;orchestrated&rdquo; event, as the Trinamool party has claimed? Though the man himself has insisted the act was &ldquo;spontaneous&rdquo;, Prasad&rsquo;s curriculum vitae, as available on the Rajya Sabha website, may raise doubts on that score. In the column titled &ldquo;Special interests&rdquo;, the CV says Prasad &ldquo;has received awards for roles in drama and in sports&rdquo;.

Dramatis personae

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon is not normally known for intemperate statements. So when she is quoted in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine as calling Pranab Mukherjee a &ldquo;jackass&rdquo; who &ldquo;needs his head examined,&rdquo; it can be expected to go viral via Twitter in no time, more so because it was reported by Ariel Levy, one of the magazine&rsquo;s most respected journalists. But Ms Mazumdar Shaw has been quick to clarify. &ldquo;I am wrongly quoted, My comment to New Yorker magazine was abt a hospital tax levy which Finance Ministry shd well examine,&rdquo; she replied to the tweet a day later. And in case no one got the message, she followed it up with: &ldquo;I was wrongly quoted by NewYorker I have extreme regard for Pranab Da, Apologies for hurting his sentiment by wrongful quote.&rdquo; Biocon says not only has the company sent a &ldquo;letter of clarification&rdquo; to the New Yorker, but a similar note has been dispatched posthaste to North Block.

Quote, unquote 

Jagan Reddy&rsquo;s overtures to Congress unwittingly strengthen the case for an autonomous CBI.

Freeing the CBI

I am quite surprised that your paper also picked up the issue of General V K Singh&rsquo;s date of birth (&ldquo;Govt&rsquo;s next battle: Against army chief,&rdquo; January 1). The matter has already been discussed at various levels and the defence minister himself has gone on record saying there was no question of changing the date of birth at this stage. If the General had a problem, he should have corrected his records earlier. What has he been doing all these years? This only projects the reluctance of those in power to give up their position and the perks that come with it. This mentality should change. The court should summarily reject the application without wasting any more public money and judicial time on such a trivial issue.

Letters: Much ado about age

The burgeoning fisc is making itself felt on government departments and offices and, now, policy-making bodies as well. The latest casualty, we are told, is the Planning Commission&rsquo;s offsite to re-strategise its priorities and objectives for the 12th Five-Year Plan. The meet, planned for January-end, was called off at the last moment and re-located to the Planning Commission&rsquo;s offices. Though members declined to officially confirm this, sources said the original venue was the Neemrana resort, two hours from New Delhi. Hopefully, members will get the same enlightenment within the functional walls of Yojana Bhavan.

Unplanned change

Is govt ready for a European crisis? Plans to ensure macroeconomic liquidity must be in place.

Prepare for the worst

H Vasanthakumar, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, may wear his political heart on his sleeve, or rather on jacket ads in newspapers, for Congress President Sonia Gandhi but here is more evidence that the culture of sycophancy in the Congress is alive and well. Recently, an official of a commerce ministry-associated institution decided to &ldquo;leak&rdquo; a story about Commerce Minister Anand Sharma. The &ldquo;story&rdquo; he wanted to propagate was that Sharma lived in a small house and had been so good as to decline to shift to a larger one, saying all his needs were met.

Public relations for free

Apropos Mihir S Sharma&rsquo;s satirical and informative piece &ldquo;Screaming to be heard&rdquo; (December 31), the trio of news reporters, anchor-editors and experts have perfected a style of news presentation on TV channels in which everyone speaks a lot but says nothing. The situation in Hindi channels is much worse where you have to read the important developments on the fleeting news ticker at the bottom as you watch trivial information dominate the screen. The growing number of these news channels shows they have succeeded in generating a class of viewers that keeps their TRPs going. However, in this game they are underestimating their social role and losing the opportunity to inform and educate the masses on serious social and political issues &mdash; avoiding deaths due to illicit liquor or stampede, dowry, the declining quality of parliamentary debate and so on. If only they could read TRP as Trend Resetting Planning.

Letters: Tamed by TRPs

Debate rages in Parliament and in the Team Anna camp on the anti-corruption ombudsman and the need for autonomy or otherwise for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Meanwhile, a con-man called Ashwini Kumar has managed to build a career out of extorting money from wealthy, dishonest businessmen posing as a senior CBI officer. Kumar has been arrested by the CBI three times before for blackmail and extortion. Each time, he reverted to his old ways as soon as he was released. Last week, he was arrested for a fourth time &mdash; but this time he was put in police custody for seven days.

Star con-man

The Indian IT industry may be a key foreign exchange earner for India but to former ISRO chairman U R Rao, it is only high tea, fit for discussions that scientists may have during a break in a seminar. Rao, who is now chairman of the governing council of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, was speaking at a conference on chemical engineering at which he advised students to stick to the discipline rather than switch to IT, as many have been doing in recent years.

Business Standard

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