Power’s conundrum

With reference to ‘Kumaraswamy’s government gets a breather’ (July 10), the fact that 13-month-old JD(S)-Congress government got a breather on Tuesday with Karnataka Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar seeking more time to decide on the resignation of 12 legislators did not come as a big surprise.

However, his plea averring that “he has sought time as he does not want to set a wrong precedent” while adding that “future generations should not look at me like I am an accused”, deserves to be applauded by all those who firmly believe in the “honest” observance of the relevant democratic norms, if he really means business?

It’s a different matter that this move is also seen in political circles as buying time for the ruling coalition to keep its flock together and reach out to its rebel MLAs. Perhaps, such a scenario, seems more plausible which could merely delay the “inevitable” but may not be able to avoid it completely.

But, curiously enough, Rahul Gandhi is also understood to have (for the first time) joined his partymen in raising slogans against the Centre for “stage managing” the resignations of the disgruntled MLAs belonging to the Congress and JD(S). While the BJP leadership has along been refuting all such charges but the fact still remains that the Congress must also own up its failure to keep its flock together.

New Delhi

With reference to “Dealing with disasters” (July 10) it is true that we have accumulated little knowledge in spite of recurring floods, droughts, earthquakes and man-made ones like stampede in places of worship, falling bridges, careless driving, houses collapsing and the like. Some of them measured alone look like micro accidents but cumulatively they take a heavy toll of lives.

We do have The Disaster Management Act, a National Disaster Framework, disaster prevention strategy, early warning systems, disaster mitigation and preparedness in place, but when it comes to implementation, lack of co-ordination and delays make the results much less effective. The chaos during Kerala floods last year is a case in point.

There is a need to create a knowledge management system for collating information of such events, analysing them and sharing them with the agencies concerned.

Pune

At a time when the aviation sector is confronted with multiple impediments, a lot more than fare-hike and tax-incentives is required to prioritise sustainable revenue-growth and profitability.

Optimal utilisation of credit, diligent allocation of financial resources, brand-refreshing exercises, large-scale governance-reforms and talent-hunt initiatives are pre-requisites.

It is prudent to attract top-talent besides reducing staff-turnover in order to inculcate a sense of ownership and motivate the workforce.

Promoters and top-management ought to collaborate in order to establish an optimal structure backed by high market-goodwill. This can not only facilitate the sourcing of additional capital at a low cost and timely payment of current liabilities but also promises to levy a greater focus on performance/throughput and enhance the user-experience.

Strategic measures are needed to ensure business-viability, provide job-security to employees, generate value for shareholders and efficiently manage customer-relations.

Investor confidence demands that Regulators should develop a market for distressed assets to safeguard lenders and preserve borrower-goodwill.

A profit-oriented, compliant and competitive financial/operational-framework can go a long distance to hedge capital-risks, render robust corporate-governance and boost income via seamless service-delivery.

New Delhi

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