Creating an artificial market with no-strings subsidies and electricity supply at state-supported rates is no prudent way to meet energy needs. The proposed arrangements actually seek to create a win-win situation for foreign vendors by ensuring there is no downside to their business. By rigging commercial terms in favour of select foreign suppliers, the arrangements, in effect, promote unfair business practices and cartelisation.
“We are aware of this issue and we will look into it. While I've got you, we are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully. I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship.”Natural partners in crime.
Even a cursory analysis of every private sector power project financing would prove most of the debt funding is from public sector banks and equity is from the market. What we seem to be paying for is the ‘managerial' expertise of a businessmen with the right connections who is ‘packaging' a project that can be done more cheaply in the public sector.
A smooth passage in Parliament of the proposed nuclear civil liability Bill was ensured by the Union government on Tuesday after it took on board most of the suggestions made by the Bharatiya Janata Party.Among the changes agreed upon are trebling of the operator liability cap from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 1,500 crore and specific exclusion of private operators in the nuclear sector.
The Left had raised four issues: India should not be part of any international convention, which, it felt, would limit the options to hold the suppliers liable; expand the scope of the proposed legislation to include non-civilian nuclear installations since in the case of an accident it might impact civilian population too; raise compensation cap to Rs.10,000 crore; and bring the supplier within the ambit of liability against the provision that mentions of such a clause in case of wilful problem in design.
In their new life in the village, Naren and Uma learnt about the plight of farmers in the most authentic way possible: by becoming farmers themselves. The questions for which they sought answers were: why are farmers continuing to commit suicide, even while our country is poised to record growth of nearly 10 per cent annually? And is it a historical inevitability that as we ‘ develop', our farming population will have to be reduced from 60 per cent to 15 to 2 per cent, as it has happened in ‘developed' countries? If so, where will they go, what will they do? What is the future of 600 million people engaged in farming?
The company, that is keen to enter India in front-end retailing, has pointed out that the clause seeking investments into agriculture infrastructure, if made into law, would limit foreign investments.Government sources told Business Line that the world's second largest retailer was willing to comply with regulation on local hiring and sourcing out of the country. It had, however, raised its reservations on the proposal asking foreign investors to invest in agriculture infrastructure.It may be recalled that the DIPP had sought stakeholders' views on foreign direct investments in multi-brand retail trading.In the paper it had detailed mandatory investments in “improving post-harvest management, cold storage and improving crop processing, among others.”Though Carrefour's Executive Director Growth Markets, Mr Thierry Garnier, had met Indian Government officials recently and welcomed the DIPP's discussion paper on opening the sector, the company does not seem keen on the mandatory clauses.
Maintaining that the U.S. viewed India as a “natural partner,” the Pentagon official indicated Washington's wish list. It includes purchasing more American-origin defence equipment, “realistic” joint exercises and stepped up visits by Indian armed forces officers.
I think it is the crisis of values that denotes the Indian condition. Moral values of all kinds seem to have rapidly and irrevocably declined. The second, of course, is external control, which the Government can exercise to take care of law and order and make corruption a very dangerous exercise. As an Indian, I am concerned with the second part.The fact that a lot of our citizens intentionally disobey the laws of the land — which if enforced, as they should be in a typical society, will give us a better and more organised country — is a reflection of the insanity and breakdown of law and order.By this I mean in its totality — not just motorists, highway and railway dacoits, armed robbers and militants, Naxalites and extremists but also corrupt officials in Government, industry and specially the arrogance in those bestowed with sudden affluence....Looking at our systems in India today, corruption is encouraged by the following reasons: There continues to be immense red tape and bureaucratic delay. There is a lack of transparency from the governments.Our judicial system cannot guarantee justice, fairness and equality. The police cannot protect. The lawmakers break the laws. Casteism and nepotism thrive among the corrupt to protect each other, as with the idiom “thick as thieves”.Most kleptomaniac cream of the crop, bureaucrats and politicians lack empathy and are psychopaths, therefore they rarely feel compunction, regret, or fear the consequences of their misdeeds. This only makes them more culpable and perilous.Again, examples abound currently with those indicted or arrested pulling strings to get rid of evidence, getting anti-corruption chiefs removed or even resorting to “eliminating” witnesses.
The disclosure of their names in a public forum (such as Parliament) will make the banking industry more sick, Mr Mukherjee told the Lok Sabha on Friday. He also highlighted the aspect of confidentiality clauses (in loan agreements) coming in the way of releasing the names of defaulters.
“If this (disclosing names) is done, a person will be declared insolvent even before the Court declares them (defaulters) as insolvent. And whatever possibility of recovering money from them will go. It will be depositors' money that will be lost (if we disclose)”, he said.
No scandal has rocked the Indian media more in recent decades than that of paid news. Most of all when it emerged during the last Lok Sabha and subsequent Maharashtra polls that hundreds of crores of rupees had been spent to buy “news” in large dailies and television channels. Major parties and candidates overshot poll spending limits many times over on this one expense alone. It was and remains a nauseating form of corruption.
Outrage grew over the idea of the media acting as extortionists — the very term that many a candidate used to describe the practice of “paid news” during the last Lok Sabha polls. Indeed, a few top politicians complained of it in those terms. The political class did not, as some imagine, go out and “seduce” the media. The media went out and sought “package deals” with them whereby they forked out huge sums of money — or were simply blanked out of the coverage of the paper or channel. The “selling” points were: this way, you can spend as much as you like and not get caught by the Election Commission of India for mocking the spending limit. This way, you are able to take your campaign to millions of voters — for millions of rupees. You can also have your opponent blanked out — or trashed, if you pay that little extra. And neither you nor we attract the taxman's knock on this all-cash transaction.
Acting promptly at the time, the Press Council of India suo moto set up a sub-committee to probe the phenomenon of paid news. The two-member sub-committee of Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and K. Sreenivas Reddy produced a devastating report (see The Hindu April 22, 2010). One that observed all the norms and ethics you could demand of such an exercise. It did not carry a single allegation without full attribution. It took no recourse to “sting” journalism, going for a thorough inquiry instead. It spared no effort to obtain the responses of the groups accused of playing the paid news game. Laying the charges squarely before them, it gave them ample right of — and space to — reply. It recorded depositions from scores of individuals. In one instance, a media organisation apologised for what it had done. In another, a candidate from Andhra Pradesh placed on record the results of his own “sting” operation against a major media group. Some of these depositions were in the form of affidavits.
The sub-committee finds passing mention in the “final” report. Its outstanding effort stands reduced to a footnote (yes, a footnote) in that report. The footnote says the sub-committee's report “may remain on the record of the Council as a reference document.” That's right. It goes to the archive. There is no sign of this “reference document” on the website of the Press Council. This is the standard the PCI sets for the Indian media?
Over the months since the scandal hit the fan, some members of the PCI — mainly those representing media owners — worked to scuttle the explosive original report. They had two basic issues with it. First: Why name names? Why get into the ugliness of that? Fascinating, at a time when the media are baying for names and blood on the corruption in the Commonwealth Games scam. So firstly, we now have a double standard: exposure for corruption in the Games, privacy for it within the media. Secondly, they fiercely opposed any reference to the Working Journalists Act. In this, they acted as owners and employers. Not as members of the PCI guarding the integrity of the press and its standards.
