OBC leadership’s secret sauce

With Oriental Bank of Commerce staging a turnaround , some hacks were keen to know the ‘management mantra’ behind this success. Believe it or not, the answer, according to an OBC insider, lies with the leadership. Mukesh Kumar Jain , who has been OBC’s Managing Director and CEO for nearly three years, always carries a pocket sized ‘Bhagavad Gita’, drawing lessons from it to bring the bank back on track. No wonder Jain expects his employees to focus on selfless duty, a thought, however, not relished by public sector bank employees in the current times.

Mostly full or half empty?

The joint declaration signed at the end of the two-day informal meet of developing countries and LDC members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) hosted by India took more than 10 hours to be given the final shape, according to some persons associated with it. Despite the painstaking efforts by Indian officials to arrive at a language acceptable to all, five countries including Brazil, Argentina and Turkey preferred not to endorse it. The Commerce Ministry, however, prefers to see the glass as mostly full rather than partly empty.

“Given the fact that developing country unity has almost disappeared at the WTO over the past few years, the fact that we could get 17 countries representing 100 members to sign the text is an achievement,” an official said. While important sectors such as the e-commerce are missing from the text, one may only hope that going forward there would be convergence on such issues as well!

Pre-emptive excitement

Central government employees have been ecstatic lately. With the Lok Sabha elections coming to an end, the possibility of a coalition government coming to power is gaining momentum. Some employees see this as a relief from the current iron fist approach of ministers. One such ecstatic employee said, “The election has already ended and the remaining phase is the bonus for us.” He was referring to the lower than anticipated increase in allowance that the employees received during the NDA-II tenure.

NITI Aayog or Planning panel?

On May 23 India will decide who will be in power for the next five years. But some who are in power centres are worried. Walk down the corridor of NITI Aayog and all you hear is “will it be Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi? That will decide whether we will be NITI Aayog or Planning Commission.”

Excessive regulation

Managements of listed companies have been vocal about the higher regulatory compliances they have to adhere to. During the fourth quarter earnings press conference, Petronet LNG officials faced similar issues. The press conference started late, despite the company board approving the results earlier. This was because the results had not been intimated to the stock exchanges and the company management was gagged by the Company Secretary till then.

Playing with numbers

Humour or is it playing it safe the Booking.com way? The top management of online travel platform Booking.com, in its presentation, claimed that India was among the top 20 markets for the company.

When asked about where India figured in the top 20, he said, “Let me put it this way, if it was ranked between 1 and 15 or 1 and 10, I would have said that the country is among our top 15 markets or top 10 markets”.

Our Delhi Bureau

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