Below the line

The Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), the apex body of banks in India, organised a conference in the national capital to launch the third phase of technology driven-initiative EASE (Enhanced Access and Service Excellence).

Launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, this event was supposed to promote more use of IT for better banking services. However, ironically, it was marred by serious technical glitches.

A consultancy group was slotted to make a powerpoint presentation on the video wall, especially placed to act as a backdrop on the stage. However, when the person concerned started speaking, the slides did not appear on the screen. Almost 5-7 minutes after speech, technicians managed to bring up the presentation.

This was not all. Later, too, when some videos were to be played, the same problem issue recurred.

Finally, when the Finance Minister came to address the gathering, she acknowledged the use of technology but insisted on the importance of ‘branch connect’ for a personal touch between banks and customers. Although she later clarified that she was not undermining technology, the message had already been delivered.

One must commend senior Finance Ministry officials for the deft handling of inconvenient questions from hacks. One such instance played out last week, when a curious hack sought to corner a senior Ministry official about the downward spiral of global crude oil prices, and when the government would pass on the benefit to domestic consumers of petrol and diesel. Pat came the reply: “You must ask this question to the Petroleum Ministry — after all, they are your friends too.”

“It is not normal practice for me to handle downstream questions. I can consider only upstream ones!” added the senior official, leaving the hack stumped.

Here is one more example To another hack’s question on how the government plans to deal with the telecom AGR issue, this Finance Ministry official said: “You should put this question to the Telecom Ministry.” Bottomline — there will be no hints from the Finance Ministry on economic developments to keep the hacks in good cheer!

After engaging for a long time in whispers behind closed doors and off-camera meetings, the coal and power sector has now started openly saying that no “coal scam” had happened at all. At a recently held conference in Delhi, stakeholders batted for return of the nomination regime for coal mine allocations. Some braver sections of the industry went to the extent of saying that the coal mine allocation scam never really happened. A common view at the conference was that the auction regime has failed to achieve its purpose.

We never seem to care about rising prices of luxury items such as shoes, cars or watches; however, if prices of onions soar due to untimely rain, we cry ourselves hoarse, quipped Union Minister for Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution at the recently concluded BusinessLine Agri Summit. In a poetic manner, he continued: “Farmers are in a very bad shape. It is unfortunate that a manual scavenger stays in the dirtiest locale, a labourer who constructs palaces does not have a roof over his head, and a person who works in a shoe factory does not even have hawaii chappals to don.” Without mincing words, he stated that the ‘act’ and ‘fact’ are very different on the ground, in a good-humoured but impactful way.

That truck drivers have to pay bribes at checkpoints during their trip is largely known. But, here are a few interesting insights about the extent of such bribery, as revealed in a study done by the MDRA for SaveLIFE Foundation.

Driving a truck through Guwahati costs the most in bribes, followed by Jaipur, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai and Vijaywada.

Now, that the survey is out, one just hopes that authorities in places demanding higher bribes start to lower their prices.

Our Delhi Bureau

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