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“Power” struggle The case of a slip disc |
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Disquiet
over outsourcing
Why wield the knife on IOC?
Ten golden rules to a woman’s heart
Legal Notes
Delhi Durbar
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“Power” struggle LIKE most other power boards in the country, the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board is deeply in the red. It has accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 269 crore. Yet, it has neither filed an application before the state electricity regulatory commission for tariff revision for the past two years nor taken other necessary steps to improve the functioning of the board. Instead, the government has increased the electricity duty for various categories of consumers. Domestic consumers have been spared but commercial, agricultural and industrial consumers will have to pay higher duty. Farmers consume barely 1 per cent of the total power, considering that there are very few tubewells in the state. So, they will not be affected greatly. The hike is to fetch additional revenue of Rs 5 crore per year. This money will go to the government's kitty and not benefit the board. The only way the board can be nursed back to health is by rationalising the power tariff and cutting down the operational cost of generating and distributing power. This is a bitter pill which every leader dreads to administer. On the contrary, he wants to indulge in populist measures like keeping the rates artificially down. The whole idea of bringing about a regulatory commission was to ensure that such populism was not resorted to at the cost of the boards. Under the rules, the board is required to file its annual revenue requirement before the commission for the fixation of tariff. It has not done so for the past two years despite heavy losses. At the same time, the employee cost of power generation and distribution continues to be among the highest in the country. It is imperative to reduce it. Again, it is a question of annoying powerful employee lobbies. Things are not much different in the neighbouring Punjab and Haryana. The anticipated autonomy of the power boards has yet to become a reality although everyone agrees that they have to be run professionally. As long as electricity is sold at a price lower than the production cost, there is bound to be trouble. The old government mindset of keeping the boards — which are seen as milch cows — under its thumb continues. Board officials too consider it wiser to be on the right side of the government. So, they hesitate to take even essential steps, if these happen to be politically unpopular. The situation of drift has gone on for too long. The consumer wants quality electricity supply and is willing to pay a rational price for this basic facility. There is no escape from reforms. The sooner these are implemented, the better it is. |
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The case of a slip disc THE death of seven persons and injuries to over 50 following the derailment of five coaches of Mysore-Bangalore passenger train on Thursday once again brings to the fore the question of railway safety. Paradoxically, though people are scared of travelling by train because of the increasing number of accidents in almost every zone, most have no choice as it is still the only affordable mode of transport, especially for long-distance travel. Moreover, surveys over the years suggest that officegoers and students generally prefer to travel by local train rather than by bus or other mode of transport to reach their offices or educational institutions early with comfort and safety. It is indeed unfortunate that the railway authorities do not seem to have to learnt any lesson even after so many accidents. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar and his mandarins in New Delhi’s Rail Bhavan do not miss an opportunity to mouth platitudes on safety, but they have little to show on the ground. Clearly, the image of the railways is bound to take a severe beating after the latest accident. It would be too early to draw inference on the cause of the derailment. One has to wait for the detailed investigation by the authorities. Mr Nitish Kumar has attributed it to the wheel disc failure. Preliminary inspection of the derailment site by top officials pointed to a defective wheel in one of the rear coaches of the train. The cracked wheel split and snapped even as the axle broke sending the entire compartment cartwheeling over the track. The chain reaction led to the overturning of three other coaches, while the remaining bogies got uncoupled. However, this cannot be the only reason for the accident. What about operational drawbacks such as poor maintenance standards and trackworthiness? Surely, the Railway Ministry cannot be absolved of the blame because, by Mr Nitish Kumar’s own admission, the wheels of the Mysore train were manufactured at Durgapur Steel Plant which has the dubious distinction of rolling out some faulty wheels causing accidents in the Central Railway and other parts of the country. If this was indeed the case, the issue calls for a thorough probe. The people are also entitled to know what concrete steps the railway administration has taken in replacing the faulty wheels as also rectifying the technical errors noticed at the manufacturing stage in Durgapur. Clearly, all the so-called safety drives or comprehensive plans will be of little value if the authorities do not rise to the occasion and plug the loopholes in maintenance and other wings of the railways. |
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Disquiet over outsourcing FOR far too long, votaries of free market economy have been asking developing countries to let the market forces function fully. However, it seems that some economies are more equal than others, as recent protests over outsourcing policies of major international companies indicate. How else would one be able to explain the shrill message from the West against the companies which have been outsourcing their back office processing work to Asia, primarily India, Malaysia and China? The latest provocation is apparently the decision of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to move around 4,000 jobs from the UK. There have been protests in Swansea, which lost 130 call centre jobs to Asia recently. Such disapproval is to be expected from other affected places too and is but natural, though the increasingly shrill intercession of elected officials is hard to explain. Outsourcing has always been a part of economic rationalisation, whether it is within a country or outside. The core always is cheaper labour and more efficiency. What has prompted more and more businesses to shift their back office processing to Asia is the advantage of relatively cheap, skilled, English-speaking workforce, which helps cut costs and compete. In fact, the HSBC has said that it decision has been taken to "remain effective and competitive". Outsourcing to India is not a new phenomenon. American Express, GE and Swissair were pioneers in 1992. There was not much reaction in the West then, but now it would seem that the not-so-robust western economies are becoming increasingly protectionist. The USA, for example, imported workers, on temporary work visas. The option was abandoned due to domestic pressure and a downswing in the IT market. The same economic downswing, however, forced many companies to look for more inexpensive ways of doing work. It led to the boom in outsourcing. While call centres represent the low end of outsourcing, there has also been progress on highend research and the software development front. Indians need jobs. They should acquire skill sets which will enable them to move up the value chain. For the western companies, they provide much-needed solutions. This is a win-win situation for all the players. Asian economies that were rightly labelled statist are now showing dynamism and innovation. It is time the West stopped using double standards and accepted Asian workers as major players in the global market. |
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Thought for the day Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun Tzu |
Why wield the knife on IOC? THE manner in which Union Minister for Disinvestment Arun Shourie has gone about trying to privatise high-profile, profit-making public sector oil companies has left him with few friends in government. True, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee may be supporting him and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani has not publicly criticised what many would consider a rather intransigent style of working. Nevertheless, Shourie is finding himself getting increasingly isolated within the BJP and the larger sangh parivar with organisations like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (which owes allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) openly opposing him. Many of the partners of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance are also uncomfortable with his methodology of privatisation. Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Ram Naik has made no secret of his displeasure with the way in which Shourie is seeking to privatise Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited as well as his recent proposal to break up the country’s single largest corporate entity, Indian Oil Corporation. Those supporting Shourie — and this section includes much of big business, the chambers of commerce and industry associations as well as most of the financial media — argue that the Petroleum Minister’s pique is on account of the prospects of his vast empire getting whittled down. But the reality is more complex than that. There are some who believe in the ideologically blinkered notion that everything about the public sector has to be necessarily bad and conversely, that the captains of private firms are invariably dynamic, enterprising and efficient. Shourie appears to fall into this category of individuals. Otherwise, there seems to be no cogent explanation for his actions. Out of the 230-odd Central public sector undertakings in the country, roughly 100 are chronic lossmaking PSUs while the remaining earn profits. Over the last decade or so, the losses of loss-making PSUs have gone up at a far slower rate than the profits of profit-making PSUs. Yet Shourie’s privatisation efforts have focused largely on profit-making PSUs. Take the recent cases of IOC, HPCL and Bharat Petroleum Corporation. On December 9, 2002, at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment, Shourie had wanted both HPCL and Bharat Petroleum to be privatised but he was staunchly opposed by Naik. A compromise was arrived at during the meeting and the government decided that whereas the larger HPCL would be privatised, the shares of the smaller BPCL would be offloaded to the public. As India’s largest petroleum refining and marketing company with an annual turnover in the region of Rs 1,18,000 crore, IOC had earlier successfully bid for managerial control over another PSUs in the same sector, IBP Limited (the erstwhile Indo-Burma Petroleum). Last year, the IOC management had lodged a strong protest when it was disallowed by the government from bidding for the shares of its smaller sisters, HPCL and BPCL. The former IOC Chairman and Managing Director MA Pathan had argued that it would be clearly discriminatory on the part of the government if a private corporate group like Reliance was allowed to bid for Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited while denying IOC the opportunity to bid for HPCL and BPCL. The government allowed IOC to bid for IPCL — managerial control over which was acquired by the Reliance group in May 2002 — but subsequently barred one PSUs from bidding for the shares of another on the ground this bid not result in “genuine” privatisation. On September 16, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that the Union Government should be restrained from privatising HPCL unless the prior approval of Parliament was obtained. HPCL and BPCL had been nationalised in the 1970s after taking over the assets of foreign oil companies. After the Supreme Court judgement, Shourie went to town about how the court had derailed the entire privatisation programme of the government. At one stage, it even appeared as if the executive was hell-bent on confronting the judiciary. Eventually better sense prevailed and the government asked a larger Bench of the court to review and clarify the earlier judgement. Even as Shourie railed against the court decision, Naik described the judgement as a “historic” one. On October 3, after a CCD meeting, Shourie claimed the government would seriously consider a proposal to split IOC into smaller companies before privatising its marketing arm. If a decision is eventually taken to privatise IOC, the Cabinet would have to reverse its own decision since it had earlier resolved that certain PSUs like IOC, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and GAIL (formerly Gas Authority of India Limited) would not be privatised. The government’s move to allow the Ambani family-controlled Reliance group to take over the management of IPCL resulted in the formation of a private monopoly that accounts for a more than 75 per cent share of the country’s market for petrochemical products. Shourie’s critics argued that if a public monopoly was bad, a private one was much worse. Whereas politicians and bureaucrats running a public monopoly could be changed over time, a private monopoly could remain in the hands of a particular family for all time to come. Defence Minister and NDA convener George Fernandes wrote to the Prime Minister protesting against this move. Having failed to privatise HPCL because of the intervention of the Supreme Court, why is the government now so keen to break up IOC, the only Indian company in the Fortune 500 list? The eagerness of the powers that be is questionable because petroleum companies the world over are merging and not splitting. The IOC management, with the overt support of Naik, decided to throw a spanner in the works by suggesting yet again that it be allowed to pick up the government’s shares in HPCL for a princely sum of Rs 10,000 crore. This would bridge the budgetary gap in expected receipts from disinvestments during the current financial year, it pointed out. IOC and HPCL together share around three-fourths of the country’s market for petroleum products. Among various private corporate groups, Reliance and Shell are extremely interested in acquiring the distribution facilities of either HPCL or IOC. Reliance has established one of the largest petroleum refineries in India and Asia but it has no marketing infrastructure worth talking about. The multinational Shell explores for oil and distributes imported petroleum products. The fact that most retail outlets of IOC and HPCL are at prime locations makes these two PSUs rather attractive for private oil companies. While Shourie would like to repeat the IPCL “strategic sale” experience with HPCL and IOC, it seems unlikely that in a pre-election year he and the government would be able to weather the political storm that is bound to ensue if indeed IOC and HPCL were to be
privatised. |
Ten golden rules to a woman’s heart MY son turned 13 in October. Suddenly my girl-hater little boy was a young man with a new gleam in his eyes. That gleam, I realised with a sinking heart, was brought on by the female of the species. Whatever happened to “Oh girls, they’re disgusting!” After the initial despondency, the mom in me took over and as always, I wanted my son to excel in this new arena in his life too. That is the reason I decided to educate my son in the finer aspects of impressing girls. I proceeded laboriously through how girls were impressed by thoughtfulness, courtesy and sensitivity and that training in the said qualities should begin by practicing on his old mom at home: by helping me lay the table, complimenting my cooking and pulling out the occasional dining chair for me. My husband who had been watching the interchange with disbelief, intervened then, with, “Allow me dear, surely I am better qualified” and relieved me of my travails. “Remember son”, he proceeded smoothly, “the ten golden rules and you won’t even need the Axe deodorant to get all the girls”. Rule 1: “The truth never gets you far with women but neither do patent lies. Never tell a fat woman she’s fat, neither can you tell her she’s thin: a smart man tells her she’s voluptuous. Rule 2: Compliments get you everywhere with women. There isn’t a woman who doesn’t like being called a girl and most girls are delighted to be told they’re almost women. Rule 3: Gifts help you score with women of all ages. There isn’t a woman who doesn’t “adore” gifts. Rule 4: The new woman likes to be in charge; let her make the first move but then take over.No woman likes to pay her own bills. Rule 5: Every woman is papa’s girl. They all think their father is the greatest: make sure you let her know you think so too. Rule 6: Never take what a woman says at face value: when she says she wants to go, it usually means she wants you to ask her to stay. Rule 7: Don’t argue with a woman. Just agree to all she says but then go on and do just what you want to. Rule 8: Never forget a woman’s birthday but never ever ask her how old she is. Rule 9: Do take care of B.O: don’t smell like a “bakri”. Rule10: Finally watch out for “trick questions” and use the “silence is golden” maxim. It was my turn to stare in disbelief. Men are from Mars and women from Venus etc etc …. But is that how men see women? Vain, conceited, gift happy and sensorally challenged? I recognise that I cannot be objective here. It takes all sorts to make up the world. There are girls and there are girls. I hope my son meets that one woman who will make him realise there’s more to the female of the species than the ten golden rules. But I have to admit, howsoever grudgingly, that the husband’s rules work well. I realise now that they are perhaps the formula for our 15 years of togetherness, with only minor
hiccups.
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Legal Notes AMIDST the cases related to Gujarat riots, disinvestment, foreign companies’ investment in India via the Mauritius route to get tax benefits under a mutual treaty between the two countries, stealing the limelight before the Supreme Court during last fortnight, some very important matters went unnoticed or got less media attention than they deserved. The apex court, which issued notices to the Centre and the state governments on “financial indiscipline” for their spending over Rs 1.91 lakh crore without the approval of legislature, in an important ruling aimed at saving the detariorating environment of the country, directed the Union Government to firm the implementation of rules relating to the dumping of hazardous waste here from around the globe. The court took serious note of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, quoted in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) by former MP Era Sezhiyan that the Centre and state governments had accumulated unaccounted expenditure of Rs 1,91,554 crore during the past decade. Sezhiyan, a former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee alleged that up to March 31, 2002 the total unregulated expenses by states stood at Rs 1,79,351 crore and by the Centre at Rs 12,203 crore. West Bengal topped with the unaccounted expenses of Rs 23,408 crore, followed by UP (Rs 23,248 crore) Assam (23,206 crore), Maharashtra (Rs 10,385 crore), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 8,342 crore), Bihar (Rs 6,964 crore), Orissa (Rs 6,750 crore), MP (4,872 crore), Tamil Nadu (Rs 4,374 crore) Haryana (3,982 crore) and Kerala (Rs 3,590 crore). The other states whose unregulated expenditure was above Rs 1000 crore included Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Punjab and Tripura. The court cautioned the Centre against making India a dumping ground for hazardous industrial waste from around the globe and directed it to take steps either to dispose of such material lying at ports or send it back to countries of its origin at their cost. It also issued a series of directions regarding proper management of the hazardous wastes generated in the country, mainly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Further, the court sought details from the Centre as to how much grant was given by it to the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working among HIV/AIDS infected patients. The information was sought by the court during the hearing of a bunch of petitions alleging that certain “fake” NGOs were misappropriating the grant which ran into more than Rs 200 crore. *** Jayalalithaa in focus
The corruption cases against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa continued to remain in focus in the apex court as it reserved its judgement on opposition DMK’s petition seeking transfer of two disproportionate assets cases
against her outside the state alleging no fair trial under her administration was possible as 64 witnesses, including some senior officers had turned hostile under pressure from the government. In the case registered by the previous DMK government, the Chief Minister and her close associates are accused of acquiring assets worth Rs 66.65 crore in the state and of a huge value abroad. The apex court is yet to pronounce its judgement in appeal against her acquittal in Tansi land scam case. ***
Trial in Katara
murder case
Taking into account the prosecution’s handicap in dealing with the menace of coersion of witnesses in the absence of effective laws to provide protection to them, the Delhi High Court recently has laid down certain guidelines for providing security to them till Parliament enacts a legislation in this regard. The legal battle on this front was taken to a logical conclusion by the mother of business executive Nitish Katara, who was allegedly murdered by the son and nephew of Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, D.P. Yadav. The trial in the Katara murder case was transferred to a Delhi court from Ghaziabad on the Supreme Court’s order following Neelam Katara’s plea that she would not get justice in the murder of her son alleging that open threats were held to her and some key witnesses by Yadav’s men. Though witnesses resiling their statements in the courts has attained alarming proporation during the past two decades and cited as a major cause for the fall in the conviction rate to a dismal 6 per cent, the phenomenon was more evident in the cases involving high profile people and
gangsters. Some of these important cases in the city courts in which majority of witnesses have turned hostile included Naina Sahni murder case
involving her husband and former Delhi Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma, model Jessica Lall murder case in which son of a Chandigarh-based politician is the main accused and the journalist Shivani Bhatnagar murder case allegedly involving former Haryana IG (Prisons) R.K. Sharma. Under the guidelines, the government should appoint a competent authority which the witnesses could approach to complain against any threat to them. Till the government frames a law in this regard, the Legal Services Authority (LSA) would act as the competent body to provide assistance to the witnesses and coordinate with the prosecution and police for their protection. The moment any complaint about the threat or coersion of a witness was brought to the notice of the LSA, it would take up the matter with the prosecution which in turn would ask the police to provide him/her the required security, the court ruled. The matter has also to be brought to the notice of the trial court immediately. |
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Delhi Durbar PROBLEMS for the Congress are multiplying in the run up to the assembly elections. Even as the heads of Kerala Chief Minister A.K. Antony and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi appear to be on the chopping block, the situation in respect of Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh is taking some queer twists and turns. Senior CWC members believe the party high command will have to step in quickly before things go out of hand. Antony and Jogi have breathing space till early December. Antony has sought to take the battle to his senior rival K. Karunakaran’s camp by launching a frontal attack against the CPM. Antony who has a penchant of resigning at the drop of a hat, has decided to stay put till the Congress high command asks him to step down. The Congress leadership is worried that if Karunankaran’s demand of seeing the back of Antony is not met, then the old Congress war horse might float his own party in Kerala which can have a deleterious impact. Sonia’s foreign
origin Wary of its political adversaries raising the issue of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin at the time of general elections, the Congress wants to give it an early burial. The party, which called it a “non-issue”, has in the recent past not failed to get back at those raking it up. Unusually, Sonia herself took the lead in answering the NCP and the BJP. Her emotional response on following Indian traditions since her marriage drew satirical remarks from the BJP but the Congress seemed prepared with its riposte. Congress political managers perhaps feel that the issue would lose its steam if mentioned too often and that aggression was the best form of defence. It’s an internal
matter Recently during a luncheon meeting with a visiting parliamentary delegation from a Commonwealth country, a Samajwadi Party MP surprisingly came to rescue RSS spokesman Ram Madhav when a member of the delegation cornered him on the issue of minorities and the sordid incidents in Gujarat. Asked if the RSS was sponsoring BJP candidates, Madhav gave the time tested reply that his organisation was not doing it as the RSS was merely a cultural outfit. The Samajwadi MP from the minority community intervened saying that “we can resolve the issues within ourselves and it was our internal matter.” Show of big
names The high profile manner in which Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav crowded himself with captains of industry and matinee idol Amitabh Bacchan to industrialise the country’s most populous state is unlikely to make much of an impact. Though the high-profile meeting evinced interest in Delhi and Lucknow, it failed to raise expectations. Senior officials in the know dismissed the meeting as just another “road show of big names.” Bacchan was of course declared the brand ambassador of UP. The captains of industry — M S Banga of Hindustan Lever Ltd, Anil Ambani of Reliance, Adi Godrej of Godrej and Subrata Roy of Sahara — were all there in the photoframe. Contributed by T.R. Rama-chandran, Satish Misra and Prashant Sood
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There is Light among all; and that Light is God’s ownself which pervades and enlightens everyone. — Guru Nanak Greetings, O destroyer of hell, Greetings, O Eternal Light. O Form, O formlessness Whose Elements are indivisible. — Guru Gobind Singh The sage awakes to Light in the night of all creatures. That which the world calls day is the night of ignorance to the wise. — Sri Krishna (Bhagavad Gita) Light is the shadow of God. — Plato Moral light is the radiation of the divine glory. — Dick Light is the symbol of Truth. — J.R. Lowell Light! Nature’s resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom. — Thomson |
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