On their toes

The 100-day agenda will keep the ministers busy; it’s also a good concept to have an agenda for every 100 days. We have had ministers setting their agenda for 20 or 25 years, meaning they expect the electorate to keep them in saddle for that long.

This is nothing but another way of saying they cannot or will not do anything in the 5 years given to them. Modi has shown the right direction to his colleagues.

KV Seetharamaiah

Hassan, Karnataka

Right spirit

The article “Too lax an approach to fighting inflation” by SS Tarapore (May 30) doubles up as a background note on the RBI and a guide for those talking about expectations and fulfilment after the announcement of the monetary policy. One only hopes the views of the veteran economist who has had the opportunity to be at the highest level in monetary policy formulation during challenging times are taken in the right spirit by those in charge of fiscal and monetary policy formulation.

MG Warrier

Thiruvananthapuram

The transfer game

This refers to your edit “Operation clean-up”(May 30). The news that as much as ₹50,000 crore of bad assets were transferred to ARCs is not good. It amounts to a transfer game which will be played out in full in the coming years to green the books of lending banks. Accountability is weakened and the lending team will thrive on zero responsibility.

Although negotiations between the transferor and ARC may improve the realisable amounts of bad assets, the latter would always have a bargaining advantage. The RBI should frown upon such practices knowing fully well that the exercise soft-pedals the issue of recovering bad loans. Perhaps, the RBI has decided to bless the exercise due to the burgeoning pile-up of NPAs.

As ARCs belong to the private sector, the public sector owns up the losses but the ARCs gain all the way. The transfer of such bad assets does not improve the liquidity of the transferor and they have to wait till all the securities are realised. So the operation results in cleaning up only the books without the availability of real-time resources to lenders.

KV Rao

Bangalore

Joyrides must end

With the BJP in power, it seems the bureaucracy is becoming more corporate-friendly. It has advised the new environment, forests and climate change minister, Prakash Javadekar, to lift the ban on mining in forests and moratorium on new factories in heavily polluted industrial areas. Do the bureaucrats want to accelerate the pace of environmental destruction?

Aviation minister Ashok Gajapathy Raju is in no hurry to privatise Air India and the airline's employees have always resisted the move. All these parties have been enjoying their joy rides and pleasure trips on the airline, at public cost. Not only those serving, but also retired employees and their kith and kin are allowed to fly free of charge several times a year. Air India is the private airline of politicians, bureaucrats and its employees. This should come to an end if the airline is to be rescued.

Health minister Harsh Vardhan proposes to levy higher taxes on tobacco products. A healthy move indeed. A healthier step would be to increase taxes on alcohol also.

VV Vijayan

Mumbai

One shoe won’t fit

This refers to “The Gujarat model revisited” by Arup Mitra (May 30). India is a country of contrasts. Gujarat, which is entrepreneurial, close to the financial capital that nurtured it, and not known for agriculture as such, is well-suited to industry-led growth, especially manufacturing. This does not mean the Gujarat pattern will work everywhere.

Each state is endowed with human, material and geographical resources of its own, and has its own advantages and deficiencies. So each state should plan its own diversification and development programme.

There should be development strategies to concentrate on agriculture, industry and services depending on state-specific resources. The common factors are the building of infrastructure, educational institutions and modernisation programmes; they should be given equal priority everywhere.

KU Mada

Mumbai

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