Below the line

Is it a strong message to the rest of the world or just a PR disaster? Russian President Vladimir Putin was on a whirlwind trip to India, no surprises then that his posters were pasted across the key routes of the National Capital. But, what caught the attention was a life-size billboard thanking President Putin for visiting India, placed right in front of the US Embassy.

At a time when India is playing a balancing act between the two known rivals US and Russia, the billboard’s placement raised eyebrows.

The BJP-Congress tussle over the IL&FS mess has taken a new twist. The Standing Committee on Finance, which comprises both BJP and Congress representatives, has decided to step in to the scene. It has now been decided that this Parliamentary Panel will summon LIC and SBI officials on October 30 to ask them about why their nominees on the Board failed to raise alarm bells in advance and allowed the IL&FS to default in its obligations and send the financial markets into tailspin.

The RBI will also be asked to explain to the Panel on its supervisory role, given that IL&FS was registered as a systemically important NBFC with the central bank. The buzz is that the newly appointed IL&FS Board Members will also be asked to appear before the Panel too to share the roadmap for recovery. Now the question is whether 30 days are enough for the new IL&FS Board to untangle the complex web of 348 entities within the Group to chart out a recovery roadmap. A big challenge indeed for the new Board.

Recently, the NBCC had to face flak over cutting trees in the National Capital as part of its redevelopment work in some of the colonies. Defending NBCC, an official said, “We were planting trees in the colonies and after the protest we have also increased the number of trees being planted”.

In fact, thanks to the protests, in one of colonies, the park which was planned for children, now has been covered with trees, he said sounding helpless. The question now is whether trees should be planted everywhere, or should there be some place for children as well?

Indu Bhushan, CEO of Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana popularly known as Ayushman Bharat, recently visited Bihar to see the ground level implementation of the scheme and came back utterly disappointed with the slow empanelment of hospitals.

Bhushan said, “If the State official is sitting over a recommendation of a private hospital for over three days, without rejecting or accepting the proposal that clearly means that official is either inefficient or looking for gratification.” What makes the situation more worrisome is 10 per cent of the 15-crore beneficiary families in the scheme hail from Bihar.

The ongoing IL&FS saga has started biting the insurance firms. Fearing contagion, the insurance regulator IRDAI has now directed insurers to disclose to the regulator their debt and equity exposure to crisis-ridden IL&FS Group.

The main issue is the ratings downgrade of IL&FS. The regulator wants to see if insurers are holding default debt paper of IL&FS. Legally, insurers cannot invest in paper below a certain rating grade and given the downgrade there has to be regulatory check on whether investment norms are being met by insurers.