Wise decision

The bold decision of the Government to privatise loss-making PSUs is welcome. We have seen how steps initiated for revival of these units, including restructuring of the bad debts they carry, fail in the absence of concrete plans. Inefficiency, dishonesty and corruption at all levels of management and the inborn lethargy and natural disappointment of PSU employees have pushed even well-run and profit-making undertakings to the edge. The Government should only take care to see that there are no job losses except to the extent of the inevitable and the PSUs are not sold a throwaway price to favour anyone.

Tharcius S Fernando

Chennai

Reform the only way

With reference to the editorial, “Break the shackles” (November 6), salaries and unions will be the main factors against attracting talent from private sector/ top notch financial institutions in PSBs. They have to undergo a reform — manpower rationalisation, automation and improvement in infrastructure — which will put them at par with private sector banks. Once that is done, the Government should slowly stop interfering and make the banks more autonomous. It would then be easier to attract good lateral candidates and improve the banks’ financial health, governance and service.

Sridhar Narasimhan

Email

It is a welcome move on the part of the Government to constitute a committee for selection of the CMD. The role of top executives is very crucial as they safeguard public money. Any partisanship on their part will only erode the confidence the public reposes in PSBs. Even the “missing middle” have to be brought back through proper recruitment of middle level management which plays a major role in the loan process mechanism.

Sureshbabu

Hyderabad

You have assumed that board members are independent and act on their own wisdom. But the board members of government banks are appointed by the Government and mostly on political consideration. Hence this cannot be a workable solution. To make it workable first of all the selection process of the board members must undergo change. They can be selected by a committee constituted of heads of various regulators such as the RBI, SEBI and so on.

S Kalyanasundaram

Email

Cash in

With reference to “Look east for energy” by G Parthasarathy (November 6), India should take advantage of its unique geographical location to diversify its energy imports. The energy market dynamics are changing with the US, Canada and Australia increasing their capacity to export gas. Our Prime Minister should use this opportunity to cash in and make agreements to import LNG.

Sunny Manchanda

Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra

Consider this too

This is with reference to “The land of a million datasets” by Sandeep K Gupta (November 5). There could be some duplication in the process of collection, analysis, and reporting between agencies as the human element often results in collection bias and misreporting. Selection of a data miner across the sector might address this concern.

Also, to deal with the monitoring and control of erroneous dataset, people need to be system-literate. There is need to be alert and careful while accessing the required data and regulators can educate the general public on this.

Kushankur Dey

Ahmedabad

Modi in Forbes

Narendra Modi's debut among the world’s most powerful people, ranking 15th and putting to the shade Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who was the highest ranked Indian last year should come as no surprise.

His penchant for hard work and initiatives like ‘Make in India’, ‘Smart cities’, ‘Jan Dhan Yogna’ and ‘Clean India’ managed to strike the right chord with the people. Industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Lakshmi Mittal, also making it to the Forbes list is another reason to cheer.

NJ Ravi Chander

Bangalore

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