The road to chief ministership is certainly not paved with roses for VK Sasikala with the disproportionate assets case against her looming large, a plea pending in the Supreme Court against oath-taking, and the opposition parties led by the DMK against her elevation to the top job.
Governor C Vidyasagar Rao has indicated that he will be seeking legal advice before administering the oath of office to her. The AIADMK would do well to wait and watch before promoting ‘Chinnamma’. Any setback would mean that O Panneerselvam will be back in the saddle again.
We want answers
London-based Dr Richard Beale has said there is no mystery or conspiracy in surrounding Jayalalithaa’s death. As a citizen, I say it was not natural. How she was in hospital is different from how she was at home. Why did her health deteriorate? It did not happen in the last 70 or 80 days. It had been happening for a long time. How was it allowed to happen?
S Ramakrishnasayee
Ranipet, Tamil Nadu
Accelerate reforms
This refers to the edit, ‘Rate cut on the cards’ (February 7). By no means is growth in the personal loan sector an indication of overall credit revival in the economy. It is only when MSMEs and large sectors see an upsurge in credit demand that we should assume that the economy is witnessing credit growth.
And for that to happen the Government must not only accelerate all policy reforms and remove all bottlenecks, it must also address the issue of NPAs. Just cutting repo rate will not solve the matter and cannot usher in the desired changes.
Bal Govind
Noida, Uttar Pradesh
The focus has shifted to agriculture and the rural sector where jobs can be easily created and consumption improved. Once agriculture is taken care of, inflation will be tamed; then reduction in interest rates becomes easy and MSME growth can be leveraged.
Whether tax collection is higher or lower the tax net is bound to be widened with the introduction of GST and improvement in direct taxes due to a better cashless regime. Since the Chinese economy is firing on limited cylinders metal and oil prices may not be so jerky as to create inflation in India. India has learnt to move with global standards and hence has stopped worrying about the dollar.
RK Arya
Faridabad, Haryana
Eye-wash
There is little to cheer about Pakistan’s house arrest of JuD chief Hafeez Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Pakistan has been demanding more proof of the charges.The arrest is only to silence the external pressure for punitive action against Saeed, and seems to have been done more to protect him than to punish him.
KV Seetharamaiah
Hassan, Karnataka
Man-days matter
This is with reference to ‘Budget bonanza may not save the day for rural job scheme’ by Muthukumar K and Seetharaman R (February 6). The writers conclude that there was drastic fall in man-days created during the NDA regime. Actually, as per records, the numbers were highly bloated up to 2012-13 in many States when they were handled manually. In the matter of bogus job cards and ghost card holders in one of the districts in Karnataka during 2009-2010, the rural development ministry had commented that the zilla panchayat was acting like a post office. Fake muster rolls were created for nonexistent works, and funds were siphoned off during this period.
For the last 2-3 years, after computerisation of the process of wage payment, the scope for artificial creation of man-days stands nearly eliminated along with the mandatory linking of the Aadhaar card to bank accounts of individual job card-holders and introduction of biometric attendance tracking. Hence, the man-days for the earlier period cannot become the basis for comparison with the present. The downward trend hardly reflects shrinkage in the creation of man-days.
VK Ramachandra
Mysuru
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