VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 253 Date: 15.10.2018 skamatblog.blogspot.com or aamadmivoices.blogspot.com
Contents:
1. IL&FS Financial Travails & More Lessons Therefrom
2. Maneka Gandhi Should Appoint A High-Powered Committee To Go Into
The Rape Of The Girl Child
3. Goa Is In A Mess & It Is Only Goans Who Can Find A Solution To This
IL&FS Financial Travails & More Lessons Therefrom
The IL&FS financial travails have been hogging the financial headlines for quite some time now. The private sector Co. with its associates ran up a debt of a whopping Rs. 91,000 crores. The road-building arm of IL&FS particularly borrowed about 27 times of its equity and with defaulting projects has required that NHAI take it over. Not only that the head of IL&FS was paying himself, albeit with sanction of the board of directors, a salary of close to Rs. 25 crores a year. With LIC holding 27% of the equity in IL&FS, our government has found it 'wise' to take over the Co. and nominated a new board of directors with Uday Kotak, the noted private banker, to lead the rescue of the ailing Co. The plea for this action is supposedly not only to protect the equity stake of LIC but as put out by the Finance Ministry to stop the NBFC sector particularly the Mutual Fund arm from collapsing. These are all very elevating motives but it essentially means that the common man's money or what is generally called 'public money' is being thrown to the dogs. The same thing is being done by writing off NPA's with PSB's. One can say there is no choice but to take such action and to justify it, but it is necessary to also take corresponding punitive measures against the board of directors of IL&FS and particularly its MD & CEO. The latter for not informing its lenders on time and more so for misinforming them about the likely debacle the firm was facing. Clearly he should be put behind bars which will set an example so that other firms in similar circumstances will be wary. What is happening now is that promoters and senior management people create financial problems and irregularities and then wash their hands off on the matter and seek legal protection by hiding behind their employment contracts or fly away abroad, fleeing the coop so to speak. This culpability should also be extended to bankers who should be charged for indiscriminate lending. When a Co. is already overloaded with debt there is no point in further lending. One is not sure how more loans are sanctioned when the lender is just not a single bank but a consortium of bankers in the case of large loans. There seems to be massive collusion between the lenders and the loanees with sweet deals probably being closed in between. In the hope of recovery, good money is being thrown against bad debt without any sense of caution compounding the problem and complicating it unnecessarily. Loans to small Cos. by the banking sector are given with excessive rigour while the same emphasis does not seem to be applied when loans are given to the large sector or known business groups. Caution is then thrown to the winds. This shows up the lopsided emphasis on target setting by financial institutions where the focus seems to be clearly on achieving high numbers rather than concentrate on the quality of lending and dispersing the profile of loans so that the risk to the lender is reduced. We are having in India one too many of financial scandals lately and it is time that the government and the RBI steps in to regulate the lending sector and brings some sense to it.
Maneka Gandhi Should Appoint A High-Powered Committee To Go Into
The Rape Of The Girl Child
Maneka Gandhi, Minister of Women & Child Development has announced the setting up of a 4 man panel of retired judges to probe the allegations that have emerged in what is called the India #meToo scandal which involves primarily established women in the entertainment field complaining of old sexual complaints against ageing film stars and celebrities to take out their dormant grievances. This movement is being dubbed as a battle of women for their rights. While the NCRB - National Records Crime Bureau reports that every hour, 2 girls below the age of 18 were raped in India during 2016. 44% of kidnapping of girls in that year were from the same age group who are trafficked for labour and prostitution. For child rape, despite the increase in reported cases the conviction rate is low at around 28%. The disposal rates of cases are also low with the police able to clear only 64% of the cases. Such instances of child rape with killings are continuing to this day with increasing frequency. Just recently after the molestation and rape of an infant in Gujarat by a migrant worker from northern India thousands of migrants from that region had to flee the State after a major law and order situation that enveloped northern Gujarat. These victims of rape and sexual abuse come from the more economically deprived strata of our society. Do these victims not have the same rights as those claiming sexual attacks in the #meToo movement? Why has Maneka Gandhi not woken up to the fact of child rape in the country as on date and announced a panel to go into why these are happening and to put an end to it so that all our girl children are able to grow into mentally scar-free women? Even in matters of sexual attacks will we bend to the claims of privileged women while neglecting similar and in fact more grievous attacks which sometimes result in death against the poorer females in our society? The Minister should therefore immediately appoint a high-powered Committee to go into the causes of rape of the girl child and take steps to reduce its incidence on topmost priority.
Goa Is In A Mess & It Is Only Goans Who Can Find A Solution To This
Goa is in a mess. It saddens one to say this. But it is the truth. You can question who is at fault but one must set the ball squarely in the Goan people's court. No amount of blaming one or the other, like the politicians or the import-from-Delhi bureaucracy or the out-of-State businessmen mostly North Indian or the bahelyos or the ghatis from across the Western ghats can be blamed for the situation that Goa is in today. The fact remains that the Goans have brought this situation upon themselves.
How one may ask? The unfortunate answer to that question is by being nice. By being pliable. By not speaking out. By not standing up for your rights. By allowing yourself to be used as a carpet to be walked upon. Goans by their very nature are friendly and helpful. And this trait has been exploited by the carpetbaggers who come to make their fortune in Goa known as the Dubai of India. That is why all Goans need to take a firm stand on their rights and beliefs and stick to them.
The other matter that requires introspection is that possibly the long colonial rule of Portugal almost 400 years has left an indelible mark on the Goan character not necessarily that only of Christians but all Goans and broken their spine.
Take the recent example of the formalin in fish issue which has been dogging Goa since early July 2018. The latest on this is that we are likely to have foreign agencies certify the fish that we get. Why are we doing this? Do we not have confidence in our local testing agencies or worst case from the rest of the country that we have to think of seeking the help of foreign testing agencies? India calls itself a technical power and for testing fish we seek help from Japan or Singapore! In effect this decision speaks of two things. The first that our ministers responsible for the decision are incompetent and the second is that the colonial mindset in us has not changed and we are still slaves to foreign influences as said earlier. One of the ministers present in the press conference where the foreign testing was announced was the first person who confused the initial testing of the fish in July 2018 by the FDA officials. Should he not have minded his own business? But we forget, he was actually minding his own business! Not only that we have had him say recently that Parrikar from Delhi should resolve the formalin in fish issue. This is the height of stupidity. What he cannot do here, how can Parrikar do from Delhi?
The formalin in fish issue can easily be resolved by clearly stating that Goa will allow only those fish trucks which carry a FDA certification from the State of origin of the consignment, otherwise the trucks will be sent back. This rule will apply to fish coming into Goa for consumption as also for fish processing and/or export. Fish in the markets will be tested additionally randomly by our own FDA and if found containing formalin the particular retailer and distributor will be black-listed. The retailers need to have documentation from their distributor if they are selling out-of-State fish. If our own ramponkars are selling the fish as a family business, the retailers involved should declare as such. This can be allowed to run for some time about a month and then if the majority of fish coming from outside is containing formalin then we should ban the export of fish from Goa to other States and also abroad so that the domestic needs are met. Within a maximum of 6 months you will see that the situation of formalin in fish is resolved since no one ultimately wants to risk his or her business. The principle underlying the above suggestion is that our ministers and authorities should not be wishy-washy in their decisions which leads to the people taking advantage of them like in the instance of no fish distributors registering with the FDA and then for namesake all registrations coming in a bunch which suspiciously could be from just one person and they should give confidence and support to our officials, in this case the FDA, to do their denominated job.
Here again considering that almost 3 months have passed on of the formalin in fish issue surfacing and there are still no clear signs of resolution. The same issue had come up in the States of Maharashtra, Orissa, Kerala and Bengal. All of them have sorted out the issue and moved on. It is only Goa that is still wallowing in it consistent with itssussegad approach. If such a lackadaisical attitude was adopted in other States then the people would have taken to the streets and ripped off the pants of the authorities. As said earlier this approach continues in the matter of having no Chief Minister for 6 months now. We are all sympathetic to Parrikar but Goa is suffering and one is sure he is acutely conscious of that. Claims that the government is functioning 'normally' are false since we all know in the absence of a Chief Minister the other Ministers and the bureaucracy can keep the status quo going but cannot go beyond their mandate like resolving the mining issue, recruitments in government etc. etc. But the people take all this lying down reading in the papers once in a while when Parrikar will return which date keeps getting pushed back all the time. It is time to put a firm deadline for Goa to have a functional Chief Minister, Parrikar or anyone else.
One hates to say this but in the first few years when we came to Goa we started using the local red boiled rice, buying it from the bais in the Mapusa market. But over time we found the bais changing and one or two would disappear resulting in our not getting the rice we wanted. This local rice was also not regularly available from the grocer shops. This forced us to change to the standard raw rice. We used to buy this from a reputed and old grocer shop in Panjim. But we kept finding that the rice when hot would give off a bad smell like it was old. After a few months we asked the grocer about it and asked him to give us rice that would not have this smell. His response was - 'Sir, That's not possible. All the rice coming to Goa of this brand will smell because the suppliers from other States send only this rice to Goa. And that is because people here ask for this.' The only logical explanation for this could be is that Goans had got used to scarcity during Portuguese times and having to make do with what was available, this habit has not gone even after close to 60 years after Liberation. The suppliers from other States gleefully exploit this situation and send the worst goods into Goa knowing that the people will accept it. The same applies for vegetables for which Goa is dependent on Karnataka and Maharashtra from where the worst quality of vegetables stuffed with fertilisers and pesticides are sent here knowing that the Goans will not only accept it but pay a good price for it.
The time for doing all this is over and Goans need to become more demanding and show more spine by standing up for their rights be it governance, be it the environment, be it local customs and traditions, be it fish et al and get what they want. Goans need to understand that standing up for what one believes in does not mean that you cannot be nice. That is what is called the steel fist covered with a velvet glove, which idiom Goans need to emulate.
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