Now that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman herself has openly admitted that pre-packaged insolvency for MSMEs has not taken off, there is little hope this facility will be a reality for large corporates. Buzz in corporate circles after her speech at IBBI event on Saturday is that Finance Ministry may not open the doors for large corporates to avail themselves of such a facility anytime soon.

Large corporates are longing for such a dispensation as it brought the best of the out-of-court resolution efforts and the judicial finality of a resolution plan approved by an Adjudicating Authority!

One may now infer that the hopes of large corporates lay shattered. Reason: Finance Ministry may not be inclined to innovate till it resolves the glitches in the current insolvency framework!

What’s in a name! 

The recently released draft of Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022 has already drawn flak for re-introducing Licence Raj for governing India’s fast-growing communications ecosystem and for providing religious slant to the draft document by comparing spectrum with atma.

Now, there is more trouble is brewing for the draft Bill as some legal experts have pointed out that even the title of the Bill in prefixing “Indian” is reflective of colonial era mindset when Britishers used to prefix name of the colony to the laws applied to respective colonies.

The examples are: [Indian] Evidence Act, [Indian] Penal Code etc. The irony gets further magnified when one parses through the underlying objectives of the Bill, which was to replace colonial era Telegraphs Acts with a modern legislation!

Buzz in the corridors of power is that this lapse may be due to lazy drafting through cut paste mode by babus in Sanchar Bhawan and further rubber stamping by legal eagles while vetting the Bill!

AI and currency counting

A few years ago, bank clerks used to be promoted depending on the number of currencies notes he/she counted accurately. However, the currency counting is now done by machines.

IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti drew a parallel on the currency counting machine and Artificial Intelligence (AI) — a simulation of human intelligence processes by machines like computer systems — a hot topic in the information technology industry.

He said like the counting machine which replaced manual counting of notes, AI will help replace many other mundane tasks that people do every day.

Painful virtual meetings

Virtual meetings proved to be a boon during the pandemic. Now it is fast becoming a pain. This is more so when people are insensitive to others in the meeting.

For example, at a recent press conference, an official of a leading recruitment company was not only late by nearly 10 minutes but addressed the meeting travelling in his car.

The journalists struggled to hear him due to the traffic noise. Once he reached his office, the official asked everyone to wait as he switched from his phone to a laptop.

In another instance, the speaker, a seasoned entrepreneur, did not turn-up for nearly 25 minutes.

When he finally came, he was online with a chapatti roll in his hand and finished a quick meal while continuing to talk. Our Bureaus

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