Give LIC a break

With reference to the editorial “Listing a leviathan” (June 16), it is true that funds available with the LIC have been used for purposes that don’t always have policy-holders’ interests at heart.

LIC has been reduced to ‘investor of last resort’ and forced to invest in government companies or on the government’s direction to prop up the market. Diluting government holdings in LIC will lead to better fiscal consolidation and give policy-holders better returns on their investments.

S Kalyanasundaram

Email

The call to go public with LIC is sensible. Given its towering status, the response to any prospective LIC IPO will be a success.

Greater functional autonomy and free access to market/public funds will only further enhance its status. A more liberated and less restricted LIC will come up with relativelyless costly life insurance policies. LIC thoroughly deserves a break.

CG Kuriakose

Kothamangalam, Kerala

Need of the hour

It’s high time regulations were put in place for multilevel marketing (“A selling proposition”, June 14). Lured by the prospect of making big gains, people get fooled and lose their hard-earned savings, as happened with the Saradha chitfund scam and Sahara.

Manoj Singh

Sonebhadra, Uttar Pradesh

Passport goof-up

It is reported that a large number of passports are pending for issuance on account of shortage of security paper used for printing them. It is the responsibility of passport offices to ensure that required stocks of paper are maintained to ensure uninterrupted issue of passports within the stipulated time. Since this is the second time in recent months that such a situation has arisen, it shows that passport offices have not taken timely steps.

GG Kamath

Mulki, Karnataka

Useless aadhaar

While trying to renew a passport which had expired, and which had earlier been renewed and delivered without police verification, the police have been insisting on an affidavit for proof of age in the absence of a birth certificate. Not Aadhaar card nor voter id nor ration card was considered valid. Why then was the Aadhaar exercise undertaken?

PV Nathan

Coimbatore

Rajan matters

Even though the Government has not done anything to keep the economy on the right track, Raghuram Rajan has done his job with urgency and sensitivity (“Why Raghuram Rajan matters” by A Srinivas, June 14). He was instrumental in reviving the rupee. Rajan knows the Government has no magic wand to correct the supply position and hence he is keeping a tab on demand by holding interest rates. And wherever he finds an opportunity to boost growth, a special window for financing is being provided which does not interfere with the demand.

RK Arya

Faridabad

Long journey

This is with reference to “Time for a structural shift” by TCA Ranganathan (June 14). The journey from low/medium-tech to high-tech is quite a long one for India and requires some basic changes and shifts — right from the education system and improving scientific talent to increasing R&D budgets and encouraging innovation. We cannot remain software coolies. Our children must be taught to innovate, think differently and become entrepreneurs. Huge investment has to be done in our engineering and medical colleges. Smriti Irani’s idea of IITs in every state is a bad idea.

Major foreign investment into India post-liberalisation has been due to low wage/manpower cost and not necessarily due to high skill sets. There has been hardly any copyrights and IP registered by Indians. When we can launch a Mangalyaan and be a leader in space technology why can't we excel in other areas too?

Sridhar Narasimhan

Email

COMMENT NOW