Factually wrong

APROPOS of 8216;Asleep at the Wheel8217; IE, September 16 by Mani Shankar Aiyar, there are several factually...

APROPOS of 8216;Asleep at the Wheel8217; IE, September 16 by Mani Shankar Aiyar, there are several factually wrong and misleading references to the functioning of the RBI. The author proceeds to describe the various events as per his impressions and makes personalised observations while ascribing them as views of the JPC.

For instance, the author states that the HLCC, of which the then RBI governor was the chairman, had a 8220;Broad mandate of keeping capital markets under review with a view to alerting all concerned to regulatory steps required to ensure the integrity of the capital market8221;. This is not factual. The primary task of HLCC, as per the terms of reference approved by ministry of finance, is to resolve any important regulatory and policy issues including divergence in approach of the different agencies at a high level.

The government in the Action Taken Report ATR submitted to the Parliament on May 9, 2003, has reiterated this position and has stated that 8220;Keeping informed the role of different regulators defined under the acts of Parliament, it is not practical for HLCC to monitor day to day developments in different segments of financial markets under different regulators8221;.

As regards Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank, the JPC report records that the RBI had forwarded its investigation report to the state registrar of cooperative societies, Gujarat para 5.60 of the JPC report. Here, while the RBI actually dealt with the case as per rules and law in force, the author has alleged that RBI was inactive.

Incidentally, the author had written an article on similar lines in the Economic and Political Weekly in its issue of March 8, 2003. In his letter to editor which was published by the journal in its issue dated March 22, 2003, B. Mahapatra had pointed out several factual inaccuracies. It is observed that while writing again on the same subject the author did not take any cognisance of the factual inaccuracies highlighted in the letter.
8212; Alpana Killawala
General Manager,
Press Relations Division
Reserve Bank of India
Mumbai

Poor power

THIS refers to your editorial, 8216;Jaitley8217;s Cancun8217; September 16. For the developing nations which were united at the WTO meet at Cancun, 8216;8216;no deal was better than a bad deal8217;8217;; and so they allowed the talks to fail instead of yielding to the blandishments of the powerful US-EU combine.

That they could stand firm under the most severe pressures exerted by the rich countries and 8216;8216;forged a surprising unity8217;8217; is indeed a gain in itself.

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The US and the European Union must realise that the massive subsidies they provide for agricultural operations, cotton in particular, besides being unethical, are against the interests of poor nations.
8212; K. R. Rangaswamy, On e-mail

AT the Cancun ministerial, India made its presence felt by voicing its concern and taking a bold stand on behalf of developing countries who till now were being taken for a ride.

Though the conference could not finalise the draft and failed miserably, we have made known to the whole world that nothing can move forward without the developing countries being taken into confidence.
8212; K.L. Batra, On e-mail

Nix the nexus

THIS is not smartness 8216;Mumbai gangster walks out of jail, with some help from James Hadley Chase8217;, IE, September 16. It is called the gangster-police-politician alliance. Or should that be nexus?
8212; Surinder Puri On e-mail