This refers to the article ‘Business laws should be decriminalised’ (December 26). Some factors need to be considered while aiming at removing the fear of imprisonment from the minds of business persons. One, there are unscrupulous elements in the business community too who escape prosecution by exploiting the loopholes in the present stringent laws.

Two, the impact of liberalisation of penal laws on the victims should be the guiding principle in changing the penal provisions — economic offences which bring misery to common people (like failure of banks or breach of trust in business dealings) or which endanger the safety of people (such as in Factories Act) should be excluded from review.

Three, penal provisions should be added in matters like high tax evasion or climate change. It is not enough to simplify the laws, they should be enforced also.

YG Chouksey

Pune

Tackling corrupt officials

As per media reports, Union Minister for Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw has sacked 10 DoT officers for non-performance and corruption issues. He is also working on streamlining and simplifying various processes in a time-bound manner.

Notably, around 50 more officers are also learnt to be under the scanner for similar action, under Section 56 (J) of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972. Since this Minister also holds the charge of the railways and IT, he had cleared the forced retirements for about 40 Railway officials including some top ranking one, for alleged non-performance and doubtful integrity but ‘none’ from the IT Department.

It’s time the other Ministries got cracking on errant officials.

SK Gupta

New Delhi

Mis-selling menace

Apropos ‘Remove the ‘*’ in banking’, unsuspecting customers are often coerced into buying other products in a bid to improve the profitability of the PSBs. Bank managements are guilty of setting targets for employees in selling products unrelated to banking.

The PSBs are caught in a bind. On one hand the government is merging banks and branches citing the lack of profitability, and on the other hand use them to further their aims and objectives. Anyway, as the government intends to privatise all banks, the distinction between private and public banks is futile.

Anthony Henriques

Mumbai

RBI’s ‘staff’ concerns

This refers to the brief but exhaustive review of C Rangarajan’s recently released book by YV Reddy.

It’s shocking to know that Rangarajan is not being paid any pension for his 15 year service in RBI, in a country where personal staff of ministers in states become eligible for government pension after less than 5 years of service! I remember an earlier occasion when RBI employees unions took up the case for improvement in the family pension of the spouse of a retired Deputy Governor.

It’s time RBI overhauled and professionalised its HR department, picking up a lesson or two from corporates like Tatas or at least by following central and State government norms in staff welfare measures. Neglect of the basic needs of staff and families affects the morale of workforce.

MG Warrier

Mumbai

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