Startup support

Startup listing facilities provided by NSE through its NSE-EMERGE platform create visibility, enhance the market share of emerging corporates and the scope of raising long-term resources from investors. The stock exchange also provides grooming services to startups so they can approach the capital market for resource mobilisation. However, only the luckiest are able to secure investment support from big ticket investors. In the absence of properly structured tax incentives/benefits to investors in this segment, startup growth in the country will be on a low scale.

Bengaluru

The summoning of two leading private sector bank chiefs by investigation agencies shows that prima facie there is involvement of private sector banks in the LOU scam. It is a systemic failure due to the introduction of exotic products like buyers’ credit and LOU. There was no need to help billionaire business houses to have access to cheap funds with the risk factor loaded against the banks. The care taken for a MUDRA loan has not been in place for issuance of LOU. The failures are across banks. PSBs came out with facts when the scam surfaced; private lenders were fence-sitters. This calls for private sector banks to be nationalised.

Madurai

Much misunderstood, Trump is a leader ahead of his times. We look askance at his diktats on immigration, trade tariffs and so on though he is vested with powers to do so. Most nations are swinging to the far right, some to totalitarianism like China, Russia, Turkey, and some others are selectively discarding democratic traditions and institutions. Heads of state now lead from the front realising that less democracy is more useful.

Brexit, however, was a prime example of stretching the democratic ethos too far and refining it further with a referendum. The glorious mess that both Britain and the EU have landed themselves in is the result of abdication of responsibility by elected representatives, to hang the albatross on the neck of its people who end up paying a heavy price, both economic and political.

Trump could be the fore-runner of moving the cheese in a global rat race and engineering a custom -made governance that would still sport a democratic veneer. The art lies in getting by with the thinnest slice.

Navi Mumbai

It is amusing to see that those who make a hue and cry over the decimation of statues of controversial political figures do not care when the same is done to respected figures of society or even gods. The recent acts of desecration of statues is likely to be the handiwork of failed political vested interests.

Bengaluru

BJP cadres in Tripura, celebrating their election victory, toppled the statue of Lenin, leading to violence. The party’s national secretary made matters worse by posting on FB: “Today it is Lenin in Tripura, tomorrow in Tamilnadu, it will be casteist Periyar’s statue.” Though he removed the post and expressed regret, the damage was done. Periyar’s statue was vandalised in Vellore and the Opposition took to the streets to protest the post. While it is heartening that the Prime Minister and the party president have condemned the acts of vandalism, it is time they reined in elements within their party who are bent upon sowing seeds of discord through their provocative acts.

Sholavandan, Tamil Nadu

This refers to “Will give AP special category status if we win in 2019: Rahul” (March 7). The TDP chief N Chandrdababu Naidu is known for arm-twisting and his pressure tactics. During Atal Bihari Vijayapee’s tenure, he demanded and got his pound of flesh; now he is repeating the same trick to get special category status and industrial incentives for his State. Thankfully the BJP has a majority in the Lower House.

Bengaluru

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