Below the line

Shuffle ke peechhey kya hai

The choice of Nirmala Sitharaman as defence minister in the latest Cabinet reshuffle, which is being seen as the last before the 2019 general election, sprang a surprise on everyone. Those in the know say that while Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who also held charge of defence, was clear that he wanted to shed the portfolio, there was also mounting pressure from the Opposition and critics on how a ministry could be without a regular minister.

Feelers were sent to many heavyweights in the BJP including a strong chief minister, a woman. But no one was willing to take up the job for reasons best known to them. The final decision was taken at a late evening meeting at the home of a senior minister.

Daughter of the soil

Women farmer leaders from India’s hinterland who came to the capital last week to make the powers-that-be listen to their grievances were in for a pleasant surprise. The two-day national convention, organised by Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch jointly with the National Commission for Women and UN Women, was a roaring success judging by the number of ministers and officials who came down to Constitution Club to listen to the woes of women farmers who had congregated there from faraway places.

As the meeting was winding down during the concluding session, some of the farmers began singing harvest songs. They were surprised to see Madhya Pradesh Women and Child Development Archana Chitnis join their singing. Later, at the lectern, the minister amazed those assembled at the meeting by waxing eloquent about farming. Very few were aware that Chitnis, who had been a college lecturer before she plunged full-time into politics, comes from a farming family.

Uneasy business

ACC, a cement major, hit a GST bump recently when its ₹17 crore-odd GST payment was not accepted by the system put in place by the GSTN. Reason: the online system saw the payment falling short by ₹1. This led to ACC being required to once again pay the exact amount (₹17 crore-odd). The company also faced the prospect of penalty being visited on it for the shortfall. Falling short by ₹1 and having to pay penalty for this is certainly not ease of doing business.

Thankfully for ACC, the company’s peculiar situation came to the notice of Arjun Ram Meghwal, Minister of State for Finance, who promptly intervened with GSTN to sort out the matter. Now Meghwal’s advice to industry is that although GST may have teething problems, they shouldn’t be unduly worried by penalties being incurred for initial glitches. Things will get sorted out as the systemic issues are addressed. Patience, in other words.

Quick results

You must hand it to Arjun Ram Meghwal, minister of state for finance, for turning PHDCCI’s annual convention on capital market into a ‘classroom’ session for a noble task. The task is to frame a Vision 2020 for capital markets. Meghwal wanted the assembled audience to give him inputs for arriving at SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) of Indian capital markets. Within a matter of half-an-hour, the nearly 250-odd participants gave so many inputs and so much feedback that PHDCCI (the organisers) now faces a “problem of plenty” in arriving at a SWOT which has to be submitted to the finance ministry.

Meghwal’s exercise to involve the audience prompted an attendee to quip: “Is this what ‘crowdsourcing’ means?”

Bottomline: Enough inputs were collected without shelling out a single rupee to any foreign consulting firms!

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