Grin and grim
While India’s dream economic team winged back grinning from the G-20 meet the State Bank of India was also grinning. Apparently the bank is attracting Rs 1,000 crore deposits every day. Clearly the present economic turmoil has benefited public sector banks. Of course, it helped that the Finance Ministry pushed the government-owned companies to park their surplus cash with state-owned banks. According to an estimate, SBI and other public sector banks are expected to get a rejuven .....

Competition panel hangs fire

The pace of recruiting members for the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had been slow since June this year when acting chairman Vinod Dhall put in his papers around the same time when the ministry initiated the selection process. But now it seems to have picked up pace again with coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta, corporate affairs secretary Anurag Goyal and former Chairman of the CBDT, P.K. Mishra tipped to be members. Some insiders insist, the panel will .....

An oily issue

Barack Obama’s electrifying victory has evoked some nervous reactions in the capital, based mostly on the US President-elect’s views on outsourcing and Kashmir. But for the moment it is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposed state visit early next month that has got Delhi’s establishment in a state of high-energy activity.
For, if there is one big theme underlining Medvedev’s visit, it is actually energy. The Russian president will ink a civil nuclear pact, whic .....

‘Dis-orderly’ conduct
More deeper than the shock of their ‘downgraded’ status in the new pay scales, Army officers are horrified at the prospect of losing their sahayaks or orderlies. According to reliable sources, the latest report of the parliamentary standing committee on defence has called the sahayak tradition as “a shameful practice” and a “vestige of the colonial era” and sought its immediate abolition.
Apparently the panel of MPs discovered that sahayaks, once known as .....

P3& me?!

The after-effect of too much partying — over-exposure, has hit home, and it's now crass and uncool to be spotted everywhere. Everyone wants to be

seen less. Even our shutterbug confesses, "Celebrities don't want to be photographed from 20 different angles like they used to. All they say is "please photo mat lo!" Is the Indian celebrity cooling off?

The disappearance of the socialite has been one of 2008's 'lifestyle' trends, with celebrities globally making an effort to .....

Babus say ta-ta
Here’s one the Reds won’t be able to pin on Mamata Banerjee! It’s not only the Tatas who found the West Bengal environs inhospitable, even babus are disenchanted with the state. Evidently, the state is no longer the preferred choice for several senior IAS officers.
Of late, West Bengal has witnessed a dismal trend of babus on deputation showing great reluctance to return to their karmabhoomi, or in some cases opting out all together to join the corporate world. Neera Sagg .....

Driven to change

Is to goodbye to Dilli’s notorious kerb crawl? Those impaled by the bus corridor known as the BRT may cheer the BJP election campaign insists BRT stands for Bahut Rulaiya Tumne. But while BRT may have made some weep, this new idea may make you creep. Authorities in the capital are launching a pilot project that they say can, potentially, change the traffic scenario.
They plan to revitalize the ‘ethnic’ mode of transport - the humble cycle-rickshaw - and offer it as an .....

Cop versus cop
The Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was set up to combat terrorism and gather intelligence, has been at the receiving end of flak for failing to solve the bomb blast cases. This, because it has become just another police department pre-occupied with routine procedures like arrests and court remands. Apparently all the arrests made in the bomb blasts were made by the Mumbai Crime Branch. You, dear readers, know our view on this - encouraging red tape can throttle even the .....

Cheerless on Diwali

There are all indications that this year’s Diwali will be a low-key affair.
The massive market slump has cast an unusual chill on traditional pre-Diwali splurging by corporates and individuals. Car sales already down by 20-25 per cent across retail markets in Dilli has infected two-wheeler sales by a 50 per cent drop. Worse, gold sales have dropped now by about 40 per cent.
The somber mood will result in a slump in corporate gifting for the eager receivers of Delhi. Wi .....

High-flying babus

First came the pay hike, and now the government has sweetened the deal with babus further by relaxing the existing travel rules to enable senior babus such as the Cabinet secretary and other secretary-rank officers to fly first class on international airlines. Those a peck or two lower in the order will travel business class. It’s economy for the rest.


According to the Department of Personnel and Training, which has issued the new directive, even domestic official tou .....

Crash!

The ‘terror’ contagion that inflicted Dilli has now spread to other places.
Mumbai continues to reel from the ripple impact of the US financial ‘terror’
. The ‘Lehman Effect’, as some locals have labeled it, has begun to unfold.
At least 1,200 employees at the investment firm’ back office in Powai, on Mumbai’s outskirts, have now been laid off. More job cuts, whisper insiders, are in the offing.
Meanwhile India’s largest private bank, ICICI Bank, has scrambled to .....

From babu to neta

What does a disenchanted babu if he falls out with his political bosses? He turns to netagiri himself! Ever since high-profile IAS officer T.
Chandrashekhar was removed from the Maharashtra Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), all eyes were on his next move. Not surprisingly, therefore, Chandrasekhar resigned from the civil service only to plunge into active politics.

Once the blue-eyed boy of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, the 1987 batch IAS officer, was removed as S .....

CAT has more lives

Clearly the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) and the various state administrative tribunals must be doing something right for my favourite tribesmen to attempt to reduce their powers. Babus are busy amending the Administrative Tribunals Act. What perturbs them is the power of these tribunals to invoke the Contempt of Court Act for non-compliance of its orders.

Unfortunately for the babus, a parliamentary standing committee headed by E.M.S. Natchiappan, a Rajya Sabha .....

Engineering blues for 2010 games

While all eyes are on the Beijing Olympics, the clock is ticking away for 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, giving sleepless nights to the sarkar. The organisers are already behind schedule with the preparations. The latest revelation is unlikely to bring much cheer to the Delhi government.
Apparently the Public Works Department (PWD) is facing an acute shortage of senior engineers to oversee the various projects the department is undertaking.
Sources reveal .....

An oily mess

The new Petroleum Secretary’s appointment was apparently a slap in the face of the old one. Whether it was just yet another expression of the Ambani vs Ambani war over oil wells will depend on who you are asking. But with government settling into business once again, there is more trouble around the derricks. The fledgling Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board is also wracked by internal strife. According to those in the know, practically all members of the board are up in .....

Lobbying is still emerging as a science. Forget its functionality

Pradip Saha talks to Dilip Cherian, founder and consulting partner of image management, firm Perfect Relations, about the clash between public relations and public interest

There is a political process to public policy. Does corporate lobbying go against that democratic norm?
There is always the juxtaposition of parties within the state process. There will always be individuals or interested parties. I would t .....

Save babus from Baalu

Babu watchers of course are familiar with the functioning of Union Shipping Minister T.R. Baalu, who is currently at the centre of a controversy. But there is no indication that the controversy over his action has made him change his ways within his own ministerial set-up. So now the ministry is once again facing a crunch of 26 senior level posts. The NHAI high-powered board has deferred a decision on the appointments three times since last year. Now, Baalu is facing fla .....

Clash of knowledge or culture

It’s time when the spotlight is clearly on the education babus. While most of the attention is riveted around the SC judgment on reservations and on the IIM fee hike, there is another quieter development that has pitted the University Grants Commission against the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). At the centre of this tussle is UGC secretary Raju Sharma who was repatriated to his parent UP cadre.
This move, according to those in the know, has not gone down wel .....

No tata bye bye

Defence Minister A.K. Antony is a stickler for the rules. It’s something the “babus” in uniform are beginning to realise now. After turning down the request of former air marshal P.S. Ahluwalia to join the GMR group, Antony has now turned down a similar plea of former IAF chief S.P. Tyagi, who plans to join the Tata Group in an advisory capacity.

Tyagi applied for a no objection certificate with Air Headquarters just a month after his retirement. While the request was .....

Clueless at CIC

The Chief Information Commission (CIC) that is supposed to tick off public authorities that fail to maintain records, has been caught on the wrong foot. The CIC, which is meant to exercise our right to know has just told us that it maintains no record of the status of appeals and cases pending with it.

Given the ability of the CIC to never respond to a query on time, the number of queries answered will be much lesser than the number of the ones attended. How difficult would .....

Courting controversy

There is more to it than meets the eye. The Brahmin ranks may be seeing early dissension. Mayawati may have backed down on the controversial appointment of her cabinet secretary, but only when it appeared inevitable that the Centre would oppose it in court where it had been challenged as “unconstitutional”. So if eyebrows were raised when Mayawati appointed Shashank Shekhar Singh, a non-service officer, as Cabinet Secretary, she has now set another precedent by taking .....

Oh, for a pay hike!

Babu circles are buzzing with talk about the impending salary hike since the Sixth Pay Commission headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna is likely to submit its recommendations to the government any day now. And, by all accounts, is likely to be a bag of goodies. Finance Minister P Chidambaram himself has confirmed this in his budget speech saying he was ‘confident’ that the Sixth pay commission report due at the end of March will meet the legitimate expectations of the gov .....

Ronen will stay as ambassador

It’s official. Ronen Sen will stay on as India’s ambassador to the US. Evidently, the government felt that as India’s negotiations with the IAEA enter a crucial stage, Sen’s presence as a key interlocutor is vital. So will Manmohan sign the deal? Will the government then survive? All of Delhi wants to know.

Of course, there are also some who say that Sen has been asked to stick around only in the absence of a consensus on his successor. Sen’s term wa .....

India's soft power: Why women are on top


Who is the Indian woman? What image does the nation have of her? Who are her role models, what are her dreams, aspirations and how is she changing? On Republic Day when India saw history being made - with the country's first woman President taking the salute - CNN-IBN discussed the definition of modernity and debunked the myths of a 'modern' society.
In a grand finale of the four-part CNN-IBN-Indian Express State of the Nation Poll conducted by CSD .....

Question by Juhi Shah, Jaipur:

It is important to me that I deliver beyond the client expectations for the satisfaction of performing a task well done and not just to renew the account?

Answer:
Internal delivery expectation standards are always based on our own internal pursuit of excellence. At the manager and client executive level, the benchmark is always internal. If you don’t perform beyond expectations, don’t expect to be either noticed or encouraged. You have to perform be .....

The buzz is about SDZ

Budgetary implications and signals aside, it is curious how the government’s SEZ policy only seems to lurch from one controversy to the other. Apart from all the political heat it has generated recently, mostly to the detriment of the UPA government, even the commerce and revenue departments - at the heart of the entire SEZ policy - are now publicly deadlocked over the latter’s plan to withdraw tax breaks from these special economic zones. There are going to be no ho .....

Maya makes an exception

Can Mayawati tame the corrupt? UP chief minister Mayawati’s much touted campaign against administrative corruption seems to have run aground almost expectedly. Why else would a former state chief secretary Neera Yadav, known for her proximity to Mayawati’s sworn political foe Mulayam Singh Yadav, and who was removed from the post on charges of corruption by none other than the orders of the Supreme Court, now be exonerated by the next government? Onlookers are wond .....

Babu exodus
Truth be told, Maharashtra is facing a virtual exodus of senior babus, who have either put in their papers or are in the process of doing so. At least seven senior babus have been weaned away by the private sector in the last three months alone. They include industry secretary V.K. Jairath, who follows his predecessor Vishwas Dhumal, former food and civil supplies secretary A. Ramakrishnan and former transport secretary R.R. Sinha, among others. However, Maharashtra Housing and Area .....

Baalu at sea
Besides being obstinate and sometimes badly advised, Union Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways is also a hard man to please. Or else why would he go overboard in his obsession to get the “right” man for key senior positions in his fiefdom. So it transpires that at a time when the Sethusamudram project is in the thick of a national debate, the crucial position of shipping secretary is lying vacant. Clearly, it is Baalu’s “high standards” that have, once agai .....

Babus misuse RTI Act

Nowadays the Central Information Commission (CIC) is busy playing ‘agony aunt’ to a score of babus whining over various promotional and compensation matters. That seems to be the big new bugbear of the CIC.

The trend in babudom, insiders share, is that many bureaucrats are now actually using the RTI Act for their own personal vested interest. Ranging from scrutinising file details of being superseded to petty complaints on out-of-turn allotment of houses makes for .....

MEA ready for reshuffle
Stirring events are afoot at the Ministry of External Affairs and they have nothing to do with the media frenzy over the visit of French President Sarkozy. According to MEA watchers, a reshuffle is in the offing, and involves more than the appointment of a new permanent representative to the UN at New York and a new joint secretary for external publicity in Delhi. Maybe Menon’s reshuffle will be more definite than Manmohan’s, which has seen a dozen postponements.

.....

Nitish talks tough

Clearly, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s New Year resolution is to come to grips with the state’s intransigent babudom. To achieve this end he has, reportedly, come up with an ambitious plan called ‘Task 2008’. In other words, Nitish has announced 2008 as “the year of implementation and consolidation”, with a mandate for babus at all levels to get cracking on discharging their duties diligently.

According to the CM’s firman, “armchair” babus will no .....

Sobering tales

New Year revelry “under the influence” in Mumbai and Dilli in recent years has become an increasingly dangerous pursuit, as discovered by two women in the busy streets of Juhu on New Year’s Day who were molested by a mob. The fact that this is a repeat of a similar outrage a year ago at the Gateway of India shows that Mumbai can perhaps no longer boast of being the safest city for women or filled with ‘sober’ humans either! In Dilli, too, it was an inebriated reveller .....

The next Money-Penny

Though Governor Y.V. Reddy’s five-year tenure ends only in September 2008, the race for the top post at the Reserve Bank of India of India (RBI) is well underway. According to those in the know, the selection panel has already short-listed five candidates, including Finance Secretary D. Subba Rao, the current deputy Governor of RBI, Rakesh Mohan, the current executive director Asian Development Bank, Ashok Lahiri, and even that old chestnut, executive director of Intern .....

Concern about a sense of community and the capacity to cope


My central thesis is that goading by government to achieve something that is both voluntary and really good is something we cannot rely on, as a robust mechanism. Ultimately it must be the propulsion of innate impulses of either generosity or guilt that drives corporates, which ultimately means the individuals who manage them, into substantive giving. So, what will propel the citizenry of Indian into becoming philanthropic in a .....

http://www.dilipcherian.com/pics/PHDCCI.jpg .....