Women on top

The editorial ‘Women on top’ (April 14) is thought-provoking. The view that “women corporate leaders are not going to be made by top down quotas; rather they can be created only by fashioning a corporate ecosystem that does not prevent them from rising to senior management positions” is appropriate. In a reservation raj country, this kind of gender reservation is usual. While reservation may help in some instances, only knowledge and expertise will give results in a business environment. If, for the sake of compliance, a woman without the right qualification is on the board, what is the use? Also, this would go against the interests of stakeholders.

Gender reservation at the top management level is intended to give a leg up to women. But reservation only ends up tarning the image of women. How have well-known women in the corporate sector, such as Arundhati Bhattacharya of the SBI, Chanda Kochhar of ICICI, or Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, reached the top? Entirely through qualification, merit, hard work and enterprise. Instead of encouraging this, we have companies hurrying to induct women on their boards before the deadline runs out.

EG Suryanarayanan

Palakkad

We need visionaries

This refers to ‘India lacks a messiah for micro credit’ (April 14). Rasheeda Bhagat rightly rues the absence of a visionary person like Muhammad Yunus in India to motivate and encourage poor urban and rural women to open up their own tiny units by borrowing money from banks and standing on their own feet. In our country, there is a good record of successful women who have excelled in various fields. They are well educated and hold high posts at government and non-government levels and some of them are also leading business barons, but unfortunately, poor women representing urban and rural areas have not risen as expected even after 68 years of Independence. This appears to be mainly due to lack of proper guidance, dearth of microcredit and motivation. But the problem arises as we don’t have an enterprising person like Yunus who can guide them, educate them and help them become financially self-sufficient by taking credit from banks.

It is the responsibility of banks such as Mahila Vikas Bank to go to villages, approach poor ladies and provide them with financial assistance at low rates of interest for starting their own units after fulfilling the banking norms. If more and more poor women are made self-sufficient, poverty can be alleviated, spurring the growth of the economy. Our government machinery has an effective role to play in this direction for making nari shakti a formidable force in our country. If this can be made a reality, it will enable the empowerment of our women.

May I add that BusinessLine has undergone a transformation. It tops my list of 12 daily newspapers. It is not only a financial daily, it is a complete newspaper.

Jayant Mukherjee

Kolkata

Labour laws

This refers to ‘Labour has changed’ by Jinoy Jose P (April 14) reminding trade unions of the need to acquire new skills to protect workers’ rights in tech-driven work spaces such as the Uber taxi aggregation environment.

Uber or any other tech-driven application operates in accordance with the domestic laws of the country. While technology grows at a fast pace, responses from governments and trade unions have been rather slow and often work at cross purposes. For example, the government strives to facilitate factors of production such as land, labour and capital to businesses, either free or at nominal price under a tagline of ease of doing business. In this situation, trade unions need to strengthen and demand appropriate legislation to address the new challenges arising from tech-driven processes that control employment.

KVA Iyer

Kochi

Rating indicators

This refers to ‘What Moody’s failed to notice’ (April 14). There are more relevant positive factors ‘global’ rating agencies shut their eyes to. How Indian analysts and economists miss them or when noticed, use them only for defending certain positions, is a matter research scholars should probe.

India is a victim of foreign domination even today when it comes to assessment of the country’s self-esteem. Our credit-worthiness, poverty level, comparative position in several other human development indicators and ability to protect against environmental hazards are all decided by outside agencies which have no independent means to judge us other than data fed by our own agencies within the country.

It is comforting to see that a change in approach in Delhi through various initiatives, including the effort to promote slogans like ‘Make in India’, acceptance of the need for infusing professionalism in governance and better financial sector management have started yielding results.

Successive RBI governors have expressed their concern about reliable current data to base their policy decisions. These are areas where perceptible improvements can be made without ‘huge’ financial investment.

Now that the NITI Aayog has relatively less responsibilities, this body could be entrusted with the task of making the existing organisations responsible for compilation of statistics and rating the country in relation to other countries with reference to different parameters — factoring in purchase power parity and aggregate resources availability and institutions like banks using internationally acceptable standards. If existing organisations are irreparably incompetent, new ones should replace them fast.

MG Warrier

Thiruvananthapuram

Create the ecosystem

This refers to your edit, ‘Women on top’ (April14). We know what Krishna Palapu, a Harvard professor, was doing as an independent director in Satyam computers. Regulations for the sake of it will never work. We should clearly define the powers and accountability for independent directors. We don't have the ecosystem for women to make a huge contribution to our corporates. We need a lot of professional management led businesses that will be sensitive to the issues of gender equality in the workplace and recognise the need for woman leadership in businesses. Instead we have corporates controlled by families; regulations will not be followed by them in spirit. The nature of our corporate ownership plays a very important role in who occupies the director’s chair. SEBI can’t do much to change this.

CR Arun

Email

You have rightly pointed out that companies have flooded their boards with their kith and kin. There is no dearth of talent; SEBI should have given sufficient time to unearth the talent. The government and SEBI should revamp HR policies in such a way that interested women can aspire for these posts without affecting family life and exhibit their talent in improving the performance of their companies.

TSN Rao

Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh

Obsolete Rafale

Someone should tell the Prime Minister that France created and launched Rafale 15 years ago. Until now, France has not been able to sell a single aircraft to any country. Recently, they were in negotiations with Brazil and Peru and finally, both countries backtracked. There are many reasons for this commercial flop: its high cost and the obsolete technology. François Hollande and his team must be celebrating their success now.

Santhosh Veranani

Puducherry

We’re being exploited

‘Eating out? Check the bill before you pay’ (April 14) is so true. Due to our ignorance and also lack of practical knowledge many restaurants are abusing the service tax. The rule has to be clear and people need to be educated about this. What the restaurants are doing is applying service tax on food which is incorrect as VAT is applicable on food and Service Tax is applicable at a reduce rate on food, or 12.36 per cent on the service charge.

Kamal Anil Kapadia

Mumbai

Erratum

With reference to ‘Fund buying to boost prospects of Dish TV’ (April 10), Apollo India Private Equity has clarified that though it sold 3.2 crore shares of DishTV, it has not exited the company as it still holds 8 per cent in Dish TV by way of GDR. The error is regretted.

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