The synonyms for the word &lsquo;omission&rsquo; are more than for &lsquo;commission&rsquo;, but the range of interpretations of the word &lsquo;commission&rsquo; is wider than for &lsquo;omission&rsquo;. An omission, says the dictionary, can be an oversight, lapse, slip, error, blunder, faux pas, something deliberately or accidentally left out or not done, something neglected, involving apathy toward or neglect of duty.

Omission and Commission

Business Standard

The recent crisis in the micro-finance industry, brought about by some incidents in Andhra Pradesh, has led to the development of a new concept in the Indian thinking on development &mdash; that of &ldquo;responsible finance&rdquo;. Responsible finance is supposed to mean financial activities by companies that make just about enough returns to stay in business and charge rates of interest on loans to the poor that are only marginally higher than what the banks charge their prime customers. Many of the people pushing for this approach are the very same ones who had at one time firmly believed that micro-finance institutions will be the panacea for all those households that are financially excluded.

Responsible finance

The fate of Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s (BJP&rsquo;s) Chief Minister in Karnataka, B S Yeddyurappa, may get decided before this comment is out in print, but the run up to the denouement has embarrassed the country&rsquo;s main opposition party at a time when it is seeking to occupy a high moral ground on the issue of corruption in Congress-ruled states and at the Centre. While Mr Yeddyurappa has sought to retrieve lost ground by getting his family and relatives to return the government land allotted to them preferentially during his chief ministership, it is unlikely to win him any long-term reprieve. The leader of the opposition Janata Dal (S), which has been spearheading the campaign against the BJP-led administration by producing documents in support of its allegation of a land scam involving the chief minister, has demanded his resignation, arguing that returning the land amounts to an admission of guilt.

Caste in corruption

Politicians, business persons, civil servants, a range of professionals, including doctors and organisers of sports events, and even the judiciary have been in the media spotlight on charges of corruption, nepotism, sleaze and worse. It was to be only a matter of time before the media and media professionals came under public scrutiny for similar acts of omission and commission. The expose on paid news content in the media was the first important investigation into corruption within the media. If that was about the greed of media barons, selling space and time to those who were happy to buy publicity for themselves, the recent expose on the nexus between media professionals and corporate lobbyists shows professional journalists in poor light. It is true that a journalist has to meet all manner of people as part of her professional work. A journalist must go where the news is, and often news comes from unsavoury sources.

A bonfire of vanities

As with almost any government-run company, political interference has been a perpetual source of Air India&rsquo;s problems. The induction of four representatives from the private sector as independent directors to oversee the national carrier&rsquo;s turnaround was supposed to leaven the weaknesses associated with political control with wise and disinterested counsel.

Same difference at Air India

The idea of a new international airport for Mumbai is almost as old as the present name for Bombay! Responding to suggestions made in the mid-1990s, the civil aviation ministry began the search for a site for the proposed new international airport in 1997. Thirteen years and several hurdles later, the plan has finally got a new &ldquo;estimated time of departure&rdquo; (ETD). The original project proposal of 2007, under which the first phase of the new airport was to have been completed by year 2012 and the last phase by year 2028, had estimated the total cost to be Rs 9,968 crore. (Rs 4,200 crore in the first phase, Rs 1,896 crore for the second phase, Rs 1,600 crore in the third phase and Rs 2,272 crore for the fourth and final phase). With the project now likely to take off sometime in 2011, it remains to be seen what kind of cost escalation there would be and how much would be the slippage on time targets.

New ETD for Navi Mumbai

All is not well with agricultural credit in India. The numbers on paper are impressive. There has been a steady rise in institutional finance to the sector since 2003-04, and in 2009-10, the agricultural credit target of Rs 3,25,000 crore was even exceeded, with actual disbursement being around Rs 3,66,919 crore. But nearly half the public and private banks failed to meet their respective targets in the year. It is worth noting that the slippage is solely in meeting the goals of direct agricultural lending, where the loans go straight to the farmers for crop production and other farming-related activities. Indirect lending for supportive infrastructure, such as warehouses, cold stores, irrigation, rural electrification and the like, which is also treated as agricultural credit, is seldom a problem for the banks and this is what has gone up. Separating out direct and indirect lending tells a clearer tale.

Credit for farmers

The report of the Bimal Jalan committee that reviewed the ownership and governance of market infrastructure institutions (MIIs) must be viewed against the larger context of the changing role of the stock market in India&rsquo;s financial sector. Equally, the committee&rsquo;s recommendations must be viewed in the context of the lessons learnt from the trans-Atlantic financial crisis and the impact that distortions and mis-governance in the financial sector can have on the real economy.

Taking stock of exchanges

An impressive vote of confidence from the voter and a return to office for the second term are no guarantee of good times. This is a lesson that the victorious Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, should remember every day of his historic second term in office, drawing the appropriate lessons from the wayward course of the second United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi. All the clich&eacute;s in the media about Mr Kumar&rsquo;s return to power are factually correct. A focus on development, rather than caste or communal identity, on better governance (if not entirely good) and on the future rather than the past has given Mr Kumar a new lease of political life. Whatever doubts he may have had about the wisdom of his alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is now firmly linked to them. The Congress party may yet woo Mr Kumar, hoping to get an all-in-one unity in Bihar against the BJP, given its own dismal performance.

Opportunity for Bihar

The unending travails of Prasar Bharati Corporation, now made worse by allegations of corruption in high places and a threatened strike by its employees, point once again to the need for new thinking on public broadcasting. The 38,000 employees of the holding body for Doordarshan and All India Radio are right when they say that the Prasar Bharati Act should go. That is because the whole notion of having an &ldquo;autonomous&rdquo; corporation which is then beholden to the government for taxpayer money to survive defies logic. Prasar Bharati should either be a completely independent corporation which has nothing to do with the government, or simply be wound up. Otherwise, it should be a public service broadcaster that uses taxpayer money on stuff the taxpayer is at least proud to watch or hear, a la BBC and the increasingly interesting CCTV of China. The UK television market is one of the smallest ones in the developed world.

Reinventing DD and AIR

In the run up to the next global jamboree on climate change, in the tourism-cum-summitry town of Cancun, Mexico, the government has come out with an Indian view of global warming, based on indigenous research. The upshot of the effort is a much more worrisome portrayal of the challenge of climate change. The Indian studies forecast that mean temperature will rise in India by around 2&ordm;C by 2030, rather than the 2050s as earlier projected by the UN panel on climate change. This is precisely the level at which the Copenhagen declaration of last December binds countries to cap further increase in temperatures. Since no one country can by itself take measures that would save it from global warming, the Indian study adds to the global urgency for dealing with the challenge of climate change. It remains to be seen how seriously these new warnings will be regarded at Cancun, and indeed in India itself.

Local view of global problem

Saina, Sania, Preeja, Ashwini, Kavita, Humpy, Mandeep, Jwala&hellip;the list of sportswomen who have won medals and honours for India can go on and on. Kalmadi, Modi, Malhotra, Darbari&hellip;and the list of men who run sports organisations and associations and have earned disrepute for India can go on too. Women win honours, men win the dishonours! Nothing captured this ignominious gender imbalance in sport better than a visual last week of the president of the Indian Olympic Association, Suresh Kalmadi, patting a medal winning sportswoman on her cheek at the Asian Games in China. Ugh, she must have felt.

The sportswoman's hour

The message from Mohali is that the people of India and Pakistan want to live in peace and amity and that the two prime ministers have committed their governments to work in that direction,&rdquo; said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. If this is the message, then it is time Dr Singh fixed a date for his first visit &ndash; as prime minister &ndash; to Islamabad.

Message from Mohali

Even as concerns are emerging about generalised inflation gripping the economy, with reports of rising wage rates, food price inflation remains the citizen&rsquo;s core concern. Macroeconomic authorities have been chasing a variety of targets &ndash; monetary, fiscal and supply-side constraints &ndash; to get a better grip on prices. It is often hoped that higher prices would translate into increased production since farmers would respond positively to price signals.

Farmers and food prices

The tragic irony of the latest controversy pertaining to the ban on the sale of a book in India is that no one has actually either explicitly demanded it nor has there been any violence in seeking that demand. Imagine if the book in question (a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Joseph Lelyveld) was in fact about a leader like Ambedkar or Annadurai, or some religious leader, or just about any sectional political leader. Just imagine. Buses would have been stoned, books burnt, the media attacked, and so on and so forth. Mercifully, criticism of or irreverent comment on the Father of the Nation does not ignite such rage. That is the greatness of the Mahatma and his true followers. But this is just one silver lining to the large dark cloud of shame that hangs over India&rsquo;s head every time a book is sought to be banned.

Defending liberalism

India&rsquo;s population of 1.2 billion, according to the 2011 decennial census, is growing at the century&rsquo;s slowest rate of 17.6 per cent &mdash; four percentage points lower than in the previous decade. India is approaching, but has not yet reached, the replacement level. This means India&rsquo;s population will stabilise somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.6 billion by 2030, making it the world&rsquo;s most populous country.

An idea of India

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done well to reassure Indian business that his government is not only aware of their concerns but is also committed to addressing them. Given the composition of the audience at the last week&rsquo;s meeting of the PM&rsquo;s council on trade and industry, the prime minister could have easily lectured his audience about public concern over crony capitalism and the &ldquo;governance deficit&rdquo; in the corporate sector.

PM boosts confidence

The Indian cricket team deserves all the accolades, the love and affection, the wild enthusiasm and all the money it made for winning the World Cup for the country. This was a historic and well-deserved victory for, clearly, one of the world&rsquo;s best cricket teams today. The dancing and revelry across the country showed that the entire nation rejoiced together and felt a shared sense of pride in this great victory. India&rsquo;s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team played brilliantly in the finals against an equally good team from Sri Lanka. Mr Dhoni has shown exemplary maturity in the style of his captaincy. Cricket has become a sport of prima donnas and with all-time greats like Sachin Tendulkar playing, and playing well, it would have been difficult for Mr Dhoni to provide the kind of leadership he did. His low-key response to the exciting victory says it all.

Sport and nation

There was no reason why the Union finance ministry should have messed up succession planning at the country&rsquo;s premier bank, State Bank of India (SBI). If the idea was to allow the incumbent managing director, R Sridharan, a limited tenure in the top job, as a consolation since he missed out being considered for the job given the existing rules on age and eligibility, it is understandable. No harm done if you allow a senior person a brief term, before the regular appointment is made. In the past, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had such interim governors. However, if the reason for the present situation was lack of proper paper work by those responsible for the selection process, then it reflects poorly on the Union government and the Union finance ministry. Also, it is unfair to whoever finally gets the top job at the country&rsquo;s biggest bank.

Messing up succession

Social activist Anna Hazare wants an equal number of self-proclaimed civil society activists to be part of an official committee drafting a new Lok Pal Bill. &ldquo;There should be as many representatives of government as there are of the people&rdquo; is his submission.

The Hazare hazard 

India&rsquo;s policy makers react best when gripped by tension! Faced with the news of a 25 per cent fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 2010-11, at a time when Indian firms are happily investing overseas, the government acted finally to scrap Press Note 1 of 2005. This is a positive signal to foreign investors. There were several quirky points about Press Note 1. For one, it was a guideline &mdash; not a law or even an ordinance. It speaks volumes for the policy-making milieu in India that a guideline that did not have parliamentary approval governed FDI policy! It was essentially a backdoor means of protecting Indian joint venture promoters by denying the automatic approval route for foreign investors, who have or had previous joint ventures or technical and trademark agreements in the same field, from setting up wholly-owned subsidiaries.

End of an irritant

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 510 - Editorial Comment