The last stumble

This refers to ‘Australia wins sixth World Cup title after Head’s hundred sinks India’ (November 20). Australia winning the World Cup for a record sixth time smashed the hopes of 1.4 billion Indians.

The Indian bowlers lost the steam after scalping three wickets for just 47 runs.

Travis Head and Labuschargne with their astute game plan turned the tide. But it was the endless hype and law of averages that hit Team India

But in the end Australia thoroughly deserved its victory.

SK Gupta

New Delhi

The freebie menace

The article, ‘Illusionary benefits of freebies’ (November) presents facts which the provider as well as the beneficiaries are aware of. But some facts are missing in the analysis. First, none of the freebies are demanded by voters.

Political parties, indulging in competitive populism, offer freebies to lure voters, which is why their viability is never explained to voters. Nothing comes free as freebies are often funded by the resources collected from the same beneficiaries.

The AP government is taking more from people by hiking power tariff, bus fare, property tax. Though there is no loss to government, huge resources lost due to concessions, exemptions, and loan waivers?

AG Rajmohan

Anantapur

US-China ties

Apropos, Editorial ‘Chinese checkers’, (November 20). The US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly discussed the wide range of issues from Taiwan to the South China Sea, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, economic relations, military-to-military communications, artificial intelligence, and the opioid epidemic.

The scope of the agenda reflects the perilous state of the world and the importance of a functional U.S.-China relationship to addressing international challenges or at least ensuring they do not get worse. Viewed from another perspective, though, the low expectations that both sides set for the meeting is a stark reminder that the world’s two largest economies disagree on nearly all the issues.

Biden’s reiterating comment that Xi is a dictator, in the solo press conference is seen as casting a shadow over a tentative progress in advancing dialogue between two powerful nations.

N Sadhasiva Reddy

Bengaluru

‘Attritional’ woes

This refers to ‘RBI takes stock of high attrition in private banks’ (November 20). The banks mentioned are high end private sector banks which have cutting edge technology in handling routine banking operations.

The reason attributed to attrition is ‘work pressure’. Most private bankers employ highly qualified MBAs who just gain basic experience and tend to switch over resulting in sudden vacuum. Bankers need to have a pragmatic review of their recruitment policy giving preference to graduates and post graduates who will stick on to their job. It is surprising to note that the private bankers have requested the regulator to come forward in suggesting streamlining of the workload at the branches.

It is the job of respective Business Re-engineering departments overseen by CFOs and CEOs in reviewing, defining a new workflow and not that of the regulator.

Let the banks focus on core business of only accepting deposits and lending money and let subsidiaries deal with allied business operations.

RV Baskaran

Chennai

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