Corporate reputations for fair play can be fluff when regulators sleep

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A 19 October, 2011 circular of the National Housing Bank says no penalty or fee for prepayment of home loans can be charged, provided the interest rates are floating and not fixed. The NHB is the regulator for housing finance companies like Housing Finance Development Corporation. Banks also lend home loans. They are governed by the Reserve Bank of India. On June 5, 2012, the RBI abolished prepayment fee on floating interest rates, to give old borrowers an escape chute from predatory banks. HDFC is a pioneer. It has enabled hundreds of thousands of Indians to own homes. It enjoys a reputation for fair play. Its top managers sit on government committees and their advice on policy is sought by our political leaders. What then is one to make of this notice in HDFC branches that customers must submit a six-month bank statement before foreclosing their loans? Such a....

Indian media prizes national interest over human rights, says Amnesty International

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Does Indian media place national interest above human rights? G Ananthapadmanabhan, chief executive of Amnesty International India, believes it does. At a lecture in Delhi on this issue, organized by the Foundation for Media professionals, Ananth, as we shall call him for the sake of brevity, says journalists see human rights as a touchy feely thing that can get in the way of the hardnosed pursuit of political and strategic interests. But he does not see a dichotomy if national interest is defined as the upholding of constitutional values and not (quoting a 2000 report of a US commission on the definition of national interest), as whatever the government of the day says it is, or the summary of current public opinion reports. Ananth finds the outrage over the death of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in a Pakistani jail disproportionately nationalistic. There is justifiable anger over Pakistan's failure....

What Arvind Kejriwal should actually fast for

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Are Delhi's three private electricity distribution companies gouging consumers as Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party claims? Ever since the state monopoly was abolished 12 years ago, power tariffs in the city have risen at a compounded annual rate of 7.5 per cent in the lowest slab and 5 per cent in the highest. This is more or less in line with inflation. In the lowest slab rate rates have more than doubled from Rs 1.70 a unit to Rs 3.70 over 11 years. For those consuming 400 units or more a month, the rates have risen by 66 percent to Rs 6.40. According to the distribution companies, Delhi's residents are paying less than those in other cities. Power outages are infrequent in the city, unlike when the government was supplying power. In Delhi's neighbourhood, power cuts are common and people pay as much as Rs 11 a....

Never trust the banks: CAG's message on cash transfers from loan waivers

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In February 2008, during a post-Budget press conference, I ribbed Finance Minister P Chidambaram that he had made all tax payers involuntary subscribers to the Congress Party's election fund. "The time has come to stand up and be counted," Chidambaram replied. He had just announced a Rs 72,000 cr farm loan waiver in the Budget. Together with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which he had announced a little after the UPA-I had assumed power this was supposed to be a game changer in the ensuring elections. For a while at least, it changed the image of the finance minister who is pro-market and pro-private industry and is perceived to have little feeling for the poor. (Few know that he started his political career as a trade unionist). When I followed him soon after the Budget to Sivaganga, his constituency in Tamil Nadu, the loan waiver had caught the imagination....

Rail Budget: As plain as Pawan Bansal

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I had not expected fireworks from the Railway Minister. My sources in Rail Bhawan, and those in the Planning Commission had said that he had failed to work up excitement in the ministry since taking over in September. The Railway Budget is evidence that there is no spark in him. The Budget is a clerical exercise devoid of any big idea. Even an independent rail tariff authority, announced by Trinamool's braveheart minister Dinesh Trivedi last year is to become the subject of further discussion - which is just a polite way of stalling it. The Railways are very poor executors. They set humble targets and trip over them. They were supposed to lay 700 km of new lines. They did just 470 km. They were supposed to convert 800 km of track to broad gauge. They did 575. They were supposed to carry 1,025 million tons of cargo.....

In India's 'North Korea,' also called the Railways, delays can be paying

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The Railway Ministry is a closed system. It likes to remain opaque and beyond the public scanner. Successive ministers from poorly-governed states have certainly hollowed it from within. But the Railway Board is no better. It privileges its own interests above those of the nation. Which is why, we have a primitive railway system that is failing passengers, transporters and the nation. While the rest of the economy has opened up in the past twenty years, the railways have resisted and succeeded. Here is an example: In 2009 and 2010, the Cabinet approved a procurement and maintenance agreement for electric locomotives to be manufactured in private partnership at Madhepura in Bihar. That agreement was for production of 800 locomotives and their maintenance for 15 years. For reasons that can be guessed, the Railways have now modified the agreement which the Cabinet had approved with its concurrence. In all,....

India must make Israel its partner in innovation

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I recently met Israel's chief scientist Avi Hasson. He was in Delhi to sign an agreement with an infrastructure company, which for reasons not disclosed, did not go through. Last year he had inked a deal with Infosys Labs in the emerging areas of cloud computing, analytics, information security, sensors and sustainability. Hasson's designation is a bit of misnomer; he is not a scientist. After serving in the Israeli Army's elite technology group, Hasson worked in start-ups and a large telecom company, before spending 10 years as a venture capitalist. The office of the chief scientist (OCS) is a funding agency. If there is an innovative idea that seems commercially promising in any area, whether Internet, plastics, agriculture, or advanced materials, it will get a look in (this excludes basic research). Those qualifying need not only be start-ups; even mature companies are eligible. Every year about 3,000....

By giving corruption a caste gloss, Ashis Nandy does not make it redemptive or acceptable

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In 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers', a true account spun off as a novel, about life in Annawadi, a slum adjoining Mumbai airport, author Katherine Boo says that 'for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained'. She makes this observation about Asha, the wife of an alcoholic construction worker and the squeeze of a Shiv Sena corporator. Asha is a fixer, who has a knack for getting things done. As reward for nursing his constituency, the corporator gets her a temporary job as municipal kindergarten teacher, though she lacks qualifications. Corruption in Annawadi, Boo says, does not have the negative connotation that Indian elite and those in the West associate it with. The corruption of those living a precarious existence is understandable. It is like Jean Valjean stealing bread in Victor Hugo's Le Miserables (currently....

Jairam Ramesh's Catechism on Maoism

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Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh spoke to a packed (and young) audience at Teen Murti Bhavan in New Delhi on the theme of Left-wing Extremism and how India can deal with it. Here is a lightly edited version of his speech in a question-and-answer format. Since so many people made the effort to come and listen to the lecture, I thought it would have a wider interest. (1) What is India's Maoist challenge all about? Ans: It is an ideological challenge which rejects parliamentary democracy and the political structure that we have built over the past 65 years. Over the years, the ideological basis of Maoism has got diluted. It has two versions now: one based on ideology and the other on extortion which can be called levy-based Maoism. (2) How do Maoists propose to accomplish their objectives? Ans: The Maoists are....

Farmer suicides, Bt Cotton and emotional journalism

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In a last May edition of the 'The Hindu', its Rural Affairs Editor P Sainath wrote an article about how Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (MMB), the Indian joint venture of an American crop science corporation, was trying to create opinion in favour of Bt Cotton, after the government failed to introduce a bill that would facilitate genetically-engineered crops. The company has sponsored a 'consumer connect initiative' (or advertisement) in the Times of India in 2011, which was the reprint of a 2008 report in the newspaper, itself based on a journalistic visit sponsored by the company. That report spoke about how Bt cotton had transformed the lives of Vidarbha farmers. Bt cotton is Monsanto's genetically-engineered variety spiked with the gene of a toxic soil bacterium, lethal to a pest that attacks cotton bolls. Indian farmers used to douse their cotton crops with pesticides, and if these were spurious, which was often....