Missing the wood

With reference to ‘Maggi on the boil’ (June 4), lead remains in the soil for hundreds of years. Children may be contaminated more by play than food intake. Nature has seen to it that even when lead levels are high in the soil, it is not taken up by the plant beyond a limit. High pH level and organic vegetable matter in soil will reduce this further.

Thus Maggi is no different from any other human intake, cooked or raw, water and air. Our concern should focus on lead and other natural contaminants, not on a product because then we miss the wood for the trees.

R Narayanan

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

It is a lesson to celebrities to insist they be briefed on the salient features of the product before accepting to do advertisement. It is the advertisements that attract people to buy. It is time manufacturers in the food products business took measures to ensure that healthy and safe ingredients are used. Keeping the consumer’s interest in mind is paramount. Celebrities promoting the products cannot be equated with the manufacturers; they cannot be accused of wrongdoing.

HP Murali

Bengaluru

Unfair to pensioners

It appears that in the just concluded wage settlement for bankers, the interest of pensioners have been subsumed by the serving bank employees’ wage revision. Many existing pensioners stand to lose a portion of their pension if the agreement arrived at is implemented.

Hope better sense prevails and a proper governance mechanism is put in place while implementing the wage revision to bank employees, both serving as well as retired. After all, all serving employees will eventually become retired employees one day.

RS Raghavan

Bengaluru

Give RBI a break

The market is still not satisfied with the third repo rate cut since January 2015. The stock market tanked more than 660 points though the RBI has obliged business and industry on expected lines. Raghuram Rajan has based his assumption on hard reality and data. He has also said that the weak monsoon, rising oil prices, and fed rate uncertainty can play havoc with growth prospects.

But handling these uncertainties are not his area of operation; it is the domain of the government. If the government initiates a proper course of action to handle these national problems in a timely manner, inflation may remain under control as was done last year when the monsoon was weak. Even in 2003-04, the monsoon was weak but with better planning and action, food inflation was contained. The governor has also said his job is to create a situation for reducing rates so that the cost of taking loans become cheap for industrial groups. But here again, the RBI’s hands are tied as the benefits of rate cuts are not transmitted to customers by commercial banks.

It is well known that against a repo rate cut of 75 basis points, till date only a marginal cut of maximum 30 basis points have been passed on to customers, and that by a few banks, after a lot of pressure from the RBI.

It is ironical that India Inc is not satisfied with even three repo rate cuts. The bulk of Corporate India's problems today has to do with overcapacity, weak demand and excessive bank debts in their books. It has been recently argued that the RBI should cut repo rate by more than 200 basis points or so but looking to uncertainty in the global markets, the RBI cannot afford to open its purse so fast. The considered policy decisions of the RBI deserve to be appreciated.

KK Mishra

Ahmedabad

Erratum

The report titled ‘Hungarian co ties up with 2 car-makers in Chennai for navigation systems’ (May 27) had mistakenly stated that nearly 50 per cent of cars manufactured in Chennai will have its navigation systems. The Hungarian company NNG has clarified that while the tie-up with a third car manufacturer will increase demand for its navigation systems significantly, it did not suggest that every second car made in Chennai would have its navigation system. The error is regretted.

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