Honest Talk

The world is reeling under financial crisis and trying its best to avoid a disaster. But in the sub-continent, there is another kind of crisis building up. Ever since the 26/11 terror attack, India has been building enormous pressure on world community to isolate Pakistan for its involvement and promotion of terror activities. Amidst this India today successfully test-fired the nuclear-capable BrahMos missile with a range of 290 km at Pokhran in Rajasthan’s desert in a planned launch for the army.

The missile is capable of touching a speed of 2.8 times that of sound, was launched during the trial in its vertical mode. Defense Minister clarified later that it was a pre-planned test and is not aimed at any country. BrahMos is a missile that India is developing in collaboration with Russia and is named after river Brahmputra and Moscow. The two countries have reached an agreement to development of a hyper-sonic missile during late last year.

Pakistan and China, both will be concerned about this. Particularly in Pakistan where the administration is under pressure from every quarter. Its to be seen how pakistan responds to this test firing of missile. Possibility is that they too test fire to satisfy their false ego. This will only further the arms race in the sub-continent.

Ever since Industrialist Anil ambani made the statement that Narendra Modi is the right person for Prime Ministership, there has been lot of rumours going around. Anil was backed by Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel. There seems to be some kind of confusion going on in the political circles, especially Congress and other pseudo secular parties. Everybody knows that Modi is a magnetic personality. He knows his priorities and do not hesitate to speak out his mind.

Ever since 2002 Godhra incident, Modi has been in the bad books of the world. But his return to power for a second term has shocked all the pseudo secular, minority communal and left parties. Modi is a person who is above the petty politics his rivals play. He is a clever politician and an able administrator. Gujarat did not witness another communal violence after godhra. Muslims who generally jump into rioting at the drop of hat has been shown their place. Is that a bad thing? Certainly Not. Unnecessary bloodshood has been put to stop once and for all. Its true the islamic terrorists have been targetting towns in gujarat with frequent bomb blasts, but he has been able to keep things under control and prevent another communal riot. Minorities and pseudo secular parties did try to add fuel to communal fire, but most of it were nipped in the bud by Modi’s swift actions.

I feel that the youth of India is looking for a man who is courageous enough to act on serious issues facing the nation without being apologetic. Only Narendra Modi has that quality. Knowingly or unknowingly, Anil was right in his utterances. Many feel his ascendence to Prime Ministership is only a matter of time and Advani has to make way for him sooner than later. I feel its better if Advani can make way for Modi after a few months as PM, if BJP led coalition comes to power in the General Elections to be held in April/May 2009.

A man with purpose and ability to act firmly is the need of hour for India and its citizens. He has shown results in Gujarat. Minorities may not like him, but majority Hindus will definitley back him. They have got fed up with the terror attacks on them and the inaction of the UPA led government for the sake of securing muslim and minority vote bank politics, Modi’s rise to the highest post of the land is only a matter of time.

For some time Satyam Computers was in news for all wrong reasons. This is the company that has won many awards from  world over for corporate governance, quality and many other categories which I do not want to mention here. It has always had a good reputation in the IT space and is the fourth biggest IT company in India. The company was in news for the wrong reasons many times during the last decade. Every time it has been some how buried quietly. The final trouble came out with the proposal to acquire Maytas Infra, a company promoted by their relatives which was vehemently opposed by the Institutional shareholders. Satyam immediately dropped the idea of acquiring Maytas and thought the matter will end there.

But things took a different turn soon. Shares pledged with brokers were sold in market leading to a fall in the share prices. The shareholding of the promoters fell from 9% to 3% in a short time. Then there was an exodus of independent directors from the board. The Chairman held together all the while trying to put a brave face. There were proposals of a share buy back as they were available very cheap and they had about $1.20 billion in cash. Then suddenly on December 29th, 2008 they postpone the announcement of buy back to meeting scheduled on 10th January 2009. Markets in the meantime went up thinking something cheerful will come of that meeting in January. When market was hopeful of something like a buy back or a new management will come in, the Chairman dropped the biggest bombshell which led to 77% drop in the share value in a single day. Nobody wants to hold Satyam stock. Hell broke loose, when the Chairman admitted to committing fraud and resigned.

This is the first time a scam of this magnitude hit Indian corporate sector involving just one company. The previous scams of Harshad Mehta in 1992 and Ketan Parekh episode of 2000 were involving several entities. The biggest loser again is the individual investor who did not know what is happening to his investments in these blue chip companies.

Now that the Chairman has resigned and is sure to go to jail, authorities are trying to find out how others like auditors, bankers, key executives and the independent directors were not aware of these things. Many of those who independent directors who resigned few days ago must have been aware of these things. Then why did they kept mum all the while. They cannot claim that they were unaware of these. The auditors and bankers too were negligent and violated every rule of law. Without the help of these entities the Chairman could not have done it alone.

This brings the question as to who are responsible for such incidents? And what is the solution?

Usually Pakistani press is very interested in who win at Jammu & Kashmir. Last time they were happy because the PDP which is entirely muslim dominated came to power with the unreliable Congress Party. This coalition always suited the powers in pakistan. The election results were expected to catapult PDP on to power on its own, or so was the pakistani press was believing. But it threw a surprise with PDP not able to get through the halfway or a sizable chunk of seats eventhough it gained. National Conference too did not make the mark, but was able to cobble together a coalition with Congress party under the leadership of NC’s Omar Abdullah.

For most of the pakistani press the results were like a sour grape. Their expectation of a coalition which is sympathetic to islamic seperatist elements did not materialise. Also the performance of Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu area did not go well with the pakistanis. Hindus voted the Hindu party, even though they cannot make anything matter in deciding who will rule at Srinagar.

The Lahore based publication, The Nation did not carry any news on kashmir.  The Dawn,The News International carried small news items. Normally these newspapers were obsessed with anything in the terrorist infested valley. This looks like a precursor to stepping up violence in the valley! Who knows?