Below the line: JJ is supreme

Was it intentional or just a coincidence? The unveiling of former Chief Minister and AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa’s memorial on the same day (on January 27) when her close aide VK Sasikala was released from jail after serving a four-year sentence in a disproportionate assets case has raised many eyebrows.

Some say, the unveiling of the memorial was intentional as the ruling party (AIADMK) wanted to send a strong signal to its cadres that Jayalalithaa was always their supreme leader, and none (including Sasikala who was expelled from the party in 2017) could replace her and shake the party. It was a strong message to hold the flock together.

Some say, it was just a coincidence and that the memorial’s unveiling was done on an auspicious day, which also happened to be the day of Sasikala’s release.

With the Assembly elections in the State in less than three months, the two events do have a lot significance for the ruling party.

Public sector banks (PSBs) have heaved a sigh of relief with government employing a ‘deeming fiction’ to make their boards perform functions of committees in cases of insufficiency of quorum.

By a Department of Financial Services order last week, PSBs were informed, where director vacancies are not filled in, or for recusal of a director, quorum is not met in committee meetings, then boards are empowered to performing tasks specifically assigned to such panels.

Many corporate observers, who were amazed at this turn of events, even wondered how SEBI as a regulator would respond to this reversal of governance norms in PSBs all of which are listed!

Parsadi Lal Meena, Minister for Industries, Government of Rajasthan, has an ear for industries’ woes. At a recently-held online global meet between business leaders and the Rajasthan Government, Meena was quick to sound off his own government to aptly address power tariff issues in the interest of the industry.

Directing Arvind Mayaram, Economic Advisor to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Meena said, “You are an advisor to the Chief Minister. So, advise him that (our progress) is stalled just on one issue of electricity (tariffs). We need to correct it. (Then) There will be a lot of industries coming to State.”

“I ask you to give right advise to CM sahab , we have to bring industries (to invest) here,” Meena told Mayaram as the global business community looked on in delight.

Work from home is the order of the day in the post-Covid world. In fact, such a remote work initiative has helped develop a platform to decentralise the e-commerce marketplace for local communities. Anup Pai, CEO of the eSamudaay (an SaaS platform for local e-commerce entrepreneurs), said that the entire process of eSamudaay initiative — from ideation to product development — took place with the team members never meeting in an office location.

The team — which includes members from Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Udupi, Mysuru and Varanasi among others — was meeting on virtual meeting platforms.

Launching a local commerce (LCommerce) company on eSamudaay platform in Udupi recently, Pai said that most of the team members were meeting under one roof for the first time at the Udupi event.

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