Postscript

Over-hyped institution

Perhaps contemporary India’s most over-hyped institution is its loudly proclaimed independent judiciary. Despite the plain truth that it is the world’s most archaic and slowest judicial system, there’s no shortage of delusional nationalists ready to sing its praises. Yet the plain facts are that currently there are 33 million cases pending in the country’s too-few […]

Socialism fallout

It’s a time of reckoning for the leadership of the Congress party. The seeds of corruption which blossomed into the toxic undergrowth that now threatens to strangle this 134-year-old political party, were sown soon after independence under the leadership of the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru — the over-indulged son of a wealthy Allahabad […]

Career move heartburn

The appointment of three Indian origin members of Parliament in the UK as cabinet ministers in the new government of prime minister Boris Johnson has caused considerable heartburn within your editor. As a law student in London over four decades ago, I was fairly active in British politics, first as an office worker for the […]

Downhill truck ride

On the subject of investment in equity shares quoted and traded on the stock exchanges which serve the socially beneficial purpose of channelling the savings of prudent citizens into nation-building enterprises and projects managed by the country’s most competent ‘capitalists’ who can multiply investors’ savings many times over, a caveat emptor warning needs to be […]

Connect the dots!

When the Narendra Modi-led BJP/NDA alliance was returned to power in New Delhi for a second term with a greater majority in General Election 2019, the general expectation was that the economy was set to experience a prolonged boom. Yet as the newly elected government’s first 100 days in office milestone is about to be […]

Cadillac communist fall

The recent notice issued by the Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) banning Prannoy and Radhika Roy, Lutyens Delhi’s original power couple and founders of New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) — India’s pioneer English language television news channel — from functioning as directors of the publicly listed NDTV Ltd, and also from all key managerial positions […]

Magnanimity & morality

Undoubtedly Azim Premji, promoter-chairman of the Bangalore-based computer software and IT enabled services giant Wipro Ltd (annual revenue: Rs.50,692 crore; headcount: 171,425), is India’s most exemplary philanthropist and a role model for the country’s multiplying tribe of weight challenged billionaire businessmen engaged in an orgy of conspicuous consumption. Premji has irrevocably transferred 67 percent of […]

Incredible rankings

The rating and ranking of education institutions by media publications has become quite the fashion these days. Yet the league tables of media publications and HRD ministry vary widely because of divergent methodologies employed in ranking HEIs (higher education institutions).

We believe that the institution evaluation methodology used by EducationWorld is the best because it is […]

CISCE cautions schools about fraudulent websites

CISCE losing lustre

In recent months as the start of the new academic year approaches, several privately-promoted primary-secondary schools ranked respectably in the authoritative annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables, have complained that the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and its long-serving secretary-general Gerry Arathoon in particular, are rejecting affiliation applications of high-potential, capital-intensive schools […]

Back-stabbing culture

The death of Yogi Deveshwar in Gurgaon on May 11 after serving as chairman of the Kolkata-based cigarettes, hotels, agri-products multinational ITC Ltd (annual revenue: Rs.51,500 crore) for several decades, attracted considerable media comment and well-deserved encomiums for him.

Yet the plain truth which everybody seems to have forgotten is that the foundations of ITC’s prosperity […]

Red carpet treachery

With over 65 percent of the country’s population engaged in farming and related occupations, India should have been the world’s largest agriculture and processed foods economy. Seven decades later, 40 percent of the horticulture produce of rural India rots before it can get to urban markets, inflicting an annual loss of Rs.60,000 crore on India’s […]

Too clever by half

The collapse of Jet Airways Ltd (estb. 1994) is a latter day morality tale of the rise and fall of Naresh Goyal, founder-chairman of this crashed airline. Right from the start there was considerable speculation about how Goyal, given his modest background as travel agent, was able to pay for his 60 percent equity stake […]

Positive development

Not surprisingly, an event of landmark significance in Indian politics has escaped adequate interpretation by academics and media pundits. On April 18, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private company (revenue: Rs.6.23 lakh crore in 2018-19; payroll: 255,000) publicly endorsed Milind Deora, Congress party candidate from the prestigious Bombay South […]

Mean accidental billionaires

On April 12, TCS and Infosys Ltd (estb.1981), the latter promoted by N.R. Narayana Murthy and several others including Nandan Nilekani, architect of the Big Brother Aadhar ID card, declared their annual 2018-19 results. TCS with a sales revenue of Rs.146,463 crore and net profit of Rs.31,472 crore beat Infosys with Rs.82,675 crore and Rs.15,410 […]

Happiness Report downer

Time to put the bubbly back into the fridge. Enthused by the rosy picture of the economy drawn by spokespersons of the establishment and the BJP/NDA government in particular — globally highest GDP growth for the five years past, fantastic albeit unrecorded employment growth in the medium and small-scale industry and self-employment, huge increase in […]

Politics best business

The intent behind the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules 2019 notified by the Election Commission of India on February 26 that all candidates for the Lok Sabha election beginning on April 11, are obliged to file their income tax returns of the past five years and provide details of foreign assets held by them, is […]

High meridian schadenfreude

Alas, poor Chanda Kochhar, who reluctantly resigned her office as managing director of ICICI Bank last October.
Yet there is some merit in the assertion that all too often, success doesn’t sit lightly on women who rise to high positions. They fall precipitously from grace because they easily succumb to the sins of hubris and […]

Curious contradictions

With GDP growing at 7 percent-plus per year, the Indian economy is the fastest growing worldwide, China included. This claim is being made from every available roof top by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is readying for General Election 2019. But while this claim is accepted by the IMF, World Bank and even The […]

Ugly face

The Pune-based Bajaj family which owns and manages the eponymous Bajaj Group of companies is riding high these days. In January, the Delhi-based Business Today certified it the country’s fourth biggest business group in terms of market capitalisation (Rs.3.77 lakh crore). Moreover on January 23, the House of Bajaj was voted the country’s #1 family […]

Fradulent hero

Fiery trade unionist, socialist and former Union minister George Fernandes who passed away on January 29 was given an indulgent, even laudatory send-off by the editorial writers in the media. The reality that he was one of the most self-serving and turncoat politicians in the history of post-independence India, was interred with his bones. Your […]

Devalued award

Some political pundits interpret it as a grandmaster’s move on the political chessboard of the country in the final run-up to General Election 2019. But in your editor’s ’umble opinion, the conferment by the BJP-led NDA government of the Bharat Ratna — independent India’s highest civilian award — upon former President Pranab Mukherjee has devalued […]

R-Day reflections

Sobering data for reflection on Republic Day (January 26 when this note is being written) is provided by the UK-based charity Oxfam International which released its Global Inequality Report 2019 on January 20, to coincide with the start of the five-day World Economic Forum 2019 convention in Davos, the annual meeting point of the world’s […]

Curious triumphalism

Although your editor has been in the media business for over four decades, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to retain respect for the schizophrenic, illogical and partisan pundits and journos crowding the print, television and social media. On the one hand, many of them tend to be drum-beating hyper-nationalists proud of the illusory achievements of this […]

Compounded sin acquiescence

The AgustaWestland helicopters scandal in which kickbacks, estimated at Rs.3,700 crore, have allegedly been paid to several middlemen — including Air Marshal (Retd.) S.P. Tyagi, former chief of the Indian Air Force, and Dubai-based broker Christian Michel, now in CBI custody for customising the Union government’s tender specifications to suit the Anglo-Italian AgustaWestland — seems […]

Eminent birds of passage

During the past few months, several well-researched books on the Indian economy written by émigré academics based in blue chip American universities have received good reviews and exposure in the Indian media. The authors of these learned tomes — Kaushik Basu (The Republic of Beliefs: A New Appraoch to Law & Economics (2018)), Arvind Panagariya […]

Land of rising sons

The unexpected emergence of Rahul Gandhi, president of the Congress party which has ruled at the Centre and most states of the Indian Union for over half a century since independence, as a prime ministerial candidate in 2019, has given a new impetus to dynastic politics. After the December legislative assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya […]

National hero memories

A flood of memories relating to one of the greatest entrepreneurs of post-independence India rushed through your editor’s mind on November 26, which was half-heartedly celebrated as National Milk Day in memory of the late Dr. Verghese Kurien (1921-2012), promoter-chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF) and the National Dairy Development Board […]

Schadenfreude surge

Undoubtedly, considerable discomfiture is being experienced by former Hindi television news anchor Vinod Dua whose news and current affairs video show on The Wire platform has been suspended indefinitely following his “trivialisation” of sexual harassment charges pertaining to 1989 made against him by Nishitha Jain, a film producer.

Jain recently outed Dua for stalking and attempting […]

Rising lumpen bourgeoisie

India’s democracy experiment and especially the ill-advised decision to introduce universal adult franchise without any education qualification, has enabled the worst elements of urban and rural elites — a lumpen bourgeoisie driven entirely by self-interest and aggrandisement — to rise to the highest offices of the nation.

If not, how does one explain that as soon […]

Postscript

Big picture myopia

The sudden downgrade of the rating of the Infrastructure Leasing & Finance Services Ltd from AA to junk bond status in early September which triggered a panic on the stock exchanges and has wiped out investors wealth valued at Rs.2 lakh crore, is a riddle in a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.

But there is reason […]

Postscript

Brilliant & stupid

The detailed sexual harassment charges made against former star editor and media columnist M.J. Akbar, who was obliged to resign his office as Union minister of state for external affairs on October 17, have come as a great shock to your editor who worked conterminously with him in the Kolkata-based Ananda Bazar Patrika media group […]

Postscript

Limpet idiocracy leaders

There’s a peculiar armour-plate quality about India’s politicians whose lust for power is in inverse proportion to their capability to use it for the public good. No shame or scandal can disturb their determination to cling to seats of power, come hell or high water.

In the Congress party’s 1946 election for the post of president, […]

Postscript

Irrational prejudice

One would have thought that the prime purpose of a responsible newspaper, particularly a daily whose logo bears the injunction “Let truth prevail” is to report news as and when it occurs, without fear, favour or prejudice. But even within reputed vintage newspapers there’s no shortage of mean-spirited individuals in positions of high authority who, […]

Postscript

Deafening silence

It’s a comment on the times we live in that the pump price of petrol and diesel is over Rs.80 and Rs.75 per litre respectively, at a time when the international price of crude oil is hovering around $80 per barrel. In the bad old days of the Congress-led UPA-I government at the Centre (2004-09) […]

Postscript

Government choristers

With the multiplication of channels on the idiot box, and every Tom, Dick, Jane and Jenny reading news bulletins from teleprompters describing herself as a journalist, our tribe is fast losing social respect.

Moreover, the fact that the country’s largest and most prosperous media house whose flagship English language multi-city newspaper editions are awash with full […]

Postscript

Vanished charm

Bombay House, the impressively solid five-floor sandstone building of Tata Sons Ltd and the Tata Group (aggregate annual revenue: Rs.710,000 crore) sited in Homi Mody Street in the downtown central business district of Mumbai, reopened for business on July 29, after it was shut down for renovation last winter. However, with a new regime calling […]

Postscript

Lost opportunity

The death in London of celebrated writer and Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul on August 11 was not unexpected; he had been ailing for a long while. Although your editor who once knew him well, was estranged from him in the last decade of his life, one can’t help experiencing pain of loss because Naipaul’s acute […]