1)‘2009 vote share may be reversed in 2014’
A large-scale attitudinal survey shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has gained significantly across most parts of the country as well as among most social groups. The only exceptions are the Scheduled Tribes and Muslims.Five-year surveyThe survey, released on Tuesday, suggests that the NDA and the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) vote share in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections could be reversed in 2014.The study, an ongoing five-year survey of 75,000 rural and urban households across the country, was conducted between October and December 2013 by the Lok Foundation in partnership with the Centre for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Endowment.Change in fortunesThe researchers found that the UPA’s vote share was down to 23 per cent from 31.5 per cent in 2009, while the NDA’s climbed to 31 from 21.5. Among upper castes, OBCs and SCs, the NDA was the clear favourite, while among STs and Muslims it was the UPA.Goal“Our goal was not to predict who is going to win in the election, but to determine who is shifting and why,” CASI director Devesh Kapur said. The data will be put online, he added.
2)Raghuveera, Ponnala to head PCCs
Banking heavily on the social justice plank the Congress, keen on reviving its fortunes ahead of the elections, on Tuesday named former Ministers N. Raghuveera Reddy and Ponnala Lakshmaiah -- both Backward Classes leaders -- as presidents of the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Congress Committees.Mr. Lakshmaiah will head the Telangana unit upstaging former Ministers – C. Damodar Rajanarasimha, K. Jana Reddy and N. Uttam Kumar Reddy – who were tipped for the top post, while Mr. Raghuveera will lead the beleaguered unit in the successor State of Andhra Pradesh. The Congress leadership on Tuesday night announced creation of two separate PCCs and also named leaders for the election, campaign and manifesto committees for Telangana. It named a 23-member Pradesh Election Committee for Telangana and a 21-member team for Seemandhra.Earlier, selection of the new team had its share of intrigue and drama. The leadership finalised the names of Mr. Rajanarasimha to head the campaign committee and Mohd. Ali Shabbir as his deputy. Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy is the chairman of the manifesto committee, while former Minister D. Sridhar Babu and Deputy Speaker Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka will be chairman and vice-chairman of the Pradesh Election Committee.On Tuesday night, AICC president Sonia Gandhi telephoned Mr. Raghuveera and congratulated him. A beaming Mr. Raghuveera said he would strive hard to strengthen the party, which is facing large-scale defections. He appealed to senior leaders to reconsider their decision to walk out of the party. He said loyal Congressmen should be prepared to face defeat also.Earlier in Delhi, PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana met AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh to finalise the list of leaders for the two PCCs in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. He also called on AICC president Ms. Gandhi in this regard. In Seemandhra, the race had narrowed between Mr. Raghuveera and former Minister Kanna Lakshminaryana, a Kapu strongman from Guntur. Mr. Satyanarayana, who was initially touted to continue as the PCC chief till the elections, is said to have expressed his inability to remain in the post. It is learnt that he told Ms. Gandhi that he would like to concentrate on his home district of Vizianagaram. Former Union Minister K. Chiranjeevi will be the campaign committee chairman for Seemandhra, while the manifesto committee will be headed by Anam Ramanarayana Reddy.
3)Sahitya Akademi awards presented
Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Awards in New Delhi on Tuesday.— Photo: Sandeep Saxena
Famous poets Javed Akhtar (Urdu), Subodh Sarkar (Bengali) and Ambika Dutt (Rajasthani) were among the literary giants who were felicitated by the Sahitya Akademi at the ongoing annual “Festival of Letters” in the Capital on Tuesday.Novelists Mridula Garg (Hindi), Manmohan (Punjabi) and R.N. Joe D’ Cruz (Tamil) were among those who accepted the awards from the Sahitya Akademi president Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari.Presiding over the ceremony, Dr. Tiwari said: “What the Sahitya Akademi is offering to these literary greats is merely a gesture compared to their immense contribution to Indian literature.“We are privileged to be able to salute their great works in the form of this felicitation, which is not to be considered a prize but an apt recognition for their efforts, dedication and the perfection that they have achieved in their works.”Welcoming the awardees and literary connoisseurs, Akademi secretary K. Sreenivasarao said: “If only we spent a little more time reading and pondering the profound literary works that Indian authors and philosophers have produced over centuries, each one of us would benefit by their wisdom and be a better person than we are today.”The award winners included Rabindra Sarkar (Assamese), Anil Boro (Bodo), Sita Ram Sapolia (Dogri), Temsula Ao (English), Chinu Modi (Gujarati), C.N. Ramachandran (Kannada), Mohi-ud-Din Reshi (Kashmiri), Tukaram Ram Shet (Konkani), Sureshwar Jha (Maithili), M. N. Paloor (Malayalam), Makhonmani Mongsaba (Manipuri) and Satish Kalsekar (Marathi).Javed Akhtar,Subodh Sarkar andR.N. Joe D’ Cruzamong those felicitated
4)Infosys steps up hiring, but visits fewer campuses
IT services major Infosys has made over 16,300 campus offers in 2013-14, up from less than 5,000 last year. Though the overall campus hires figure has gone up, the number of campuses visited has reduced drastically by over half.These figures will not only bring cheer to fresh engineering graduates and final year students but also indicate that better times are here for the bellwether, which had deferred campus offers made in 2013 and significantly reduced its campus intakes by at least two-thirds last year.In an interaction with this correspondent, Srikantan Moorthy, Senior Vice-President and Group Head of Human Resource Development at Infosys, said that the company had achieved its recruitment target from around 250 campuses, compared to over 600 institutions every year.The focus had been on top-tier institutions and those that had a “deeper engagement” with the company, he said.Meanwhile, he said, the standards of the evaluation process had only increased, and more company leaders were part of the process now. This time the company “looks forward to on-boarding them as soon as they complete their education.” Entry-level salaries of campus hires remained unchanged, he added.AttritionWhen quizzed on attrition, an area where the company has, in recent quarters, been ahead of its peers, Mr. Moorthy remained non-committal on any impending exits or downsizing at the company. Last quarter, attrition at Infosys rose to about 18 per cent — well ahead of the industry average — with the company seeing not just high-profile exits among the top management but also attrition among mid- and senior level management.Mr. Moorthy said that he did not think these exits had had an impact on employee morale as it wasn’t a “performance crackdown”, but a continuous performance-linked evaluation process.NRN effect on HRSince the return of company founder N.R. Narayana Murthy to an executive role in July last, the company has stepped up its employee engagement activities across channels. Mr. Moorthy pointed out that the newly-introduced JAM sessions (where employees meet top execs over lunch) and more frequent communication over multiple channels — blogs, Infy TV and radio and through ‘townhall’ talks — had been effective in keeping employees informed of the happening at the company. “As an employee, you want leaders to talk to you and you want to know what is happening. Mr. Narayana Murthy recognised this, ” he said.Other HR initiatives undertaken by the company to quell attrition included introducing a “fast track” for employees who were experts in technical areas, so that irrespective of their overall experience, employees would still have the opportunity to grow into senior roles within the organisation, he said.The focus has been on top-tier institutions and those that have a “deeper engagement” with the company
5)China opens up banking sector
China said on Tuesday it would allow, for the first time, the setting up of five private banks on a trial basis, and also move to liberalise deposit rates in the next two years, as regulators grapple with the rising pressure on the banking sector from a newly booming online finance industry.
The head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), Shang Fulin, told reporters here the first five private banks would be set up in Tianjin, Shanghai and the provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong as a pilot project.
The CBRC would work with ten private firms, including Internet giants Alibaba — the e-commerce giant — and Tencent.
He said the banks would be subject to the ‘same regulation and supervision’ as existing state-run banks, but would be focused more on small and medium enterprises. SMEs have complained of the struggle to obtain financing from the major banks, which tend to lend preferentially to other state-owned enterprises — an increasing source of frustration for entrepreneurs here.
In another deregulatory move, the governor of the Chinese central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, said on Tuesday China would also loosen its grip on deposit rates in the next two years and move gradually towards liberalising interest rates.
The moves come amid a churn in China’s banking sector, driven in part by an unprecedented expansion of Internet financing products in recent months.
Only this week, the Alibaba-created Yu'ebao fund, which offers a 6 per cent annualised yield — almost double that offered by state-run banks — was reported to have garnered a remarkable $500 billion in capital in the nine months since its founding last June.
A research report this week said Yu'ebao, as of last month, had 81 million investors, surpassing the stock exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen, who list 67 million and 65 million shareholders.
The flexibility and ease of using Yu'ebao has prompted many Chinese to pull deposits out of the ‘big four’ traditional state-controlled banks — the Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China.
Among Yu'ebao's new users is one Beijing-based construction executive, who said, he was moving a sizable amount of his savings because of the low rates offered by the major banks. The ease of managing one’s account through sophisticated Yu'ebao applications was another attraction, he added.
“This is also more stable than other high risks products that are now getting into trouble,’’ he said, referring to recent defaults of high-profile trust products linked to real estate and steel sectors.
But one downside, he said, was the daily limit of depositing only 50,000 yuan (Rs.5 lakh).
To liberalisedeposit ratesin the nexttwo years
6)Bharatiya Mahila Bank opens branch in Goa
Bharatiya Mahila Bank Limited, the first women’s bank and a wholly-owned government institution, proposes to open 55 more branches in Tier 4, Tier-5 and Tier-6 cities in 2014-15.Chairman and Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian, who was here to inaugurate the bank’s 14th branch on Tuesday, described the bank as a channel for women’s education, employment and empowerment.The bank will open its 15th branch in Jaipur on Wednesday. It is expected to be present in all States by month-end.The CMD said that keeping working women in mind and to help them continue their jobs, the bank had designed a special loan product to set up day care centresIn Goa, the CMD said, the bank would take advantage of the existence of Common Civil Code by virtue of which women got equal ownership of immovable and other property along with their spouses.In other parts of the country, bankers faced this problem while financing as women did not have ownership of houses, immovable properties, she lamented.
7)IRDA asks SBI Lifeto refund Rs.275 cr to policyholders
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), on Tuesday, asked SBI Life Insurance company to refund Rs.275.29 crore to the policyholders as the amount was collected from them in violation of norms.SBI Life Insurance, a joint venture between State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Cardif, has been asked to refund the amount within six months.The order was issued after an enquiry that revealed SBI Life Insurance was charging the second year premium along with the first year premium on its Dhanaraksha Plus Limited Premium Paying Term (LPPT), a group insurance policy.It relates to polices issued during 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11.“...the premium collected in more on lines of a single premium than two yearly regular premiums against the approved file and use features,” the order said.
8)Raina looks for redemption in World T20
CRICKET / The southpaw is the lone Indian to score a ton in the competition
BACK ON THE PROWL:: Suresh Raina, who lost his place in the Test and ODI formats of the game, is back in the Indian squad led by M.S. Dhoni for the T20 event.— PHOTO: AP
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