Some food for thought
"A fool must now and
then be right, by chance."
—William Cowper (English
Poet, 1731-1800)
Word for the day
Tsuris (n)
Trouble; Woe
First thought this morning
On the 10th anniversary of the heinous Mumbai terror attack, the
mood in Mumbai at least should have been somber. But it did not appear to be.
Save for some customary official rituals and mostly sartorial tweets, Whatsapp forwards,
and FM radio notes, nothing much was visible. Outside Mumbai, no one seemed
concerned any bit.
A close observation of the Mumbai city behavior highlighted that
the only thing that has changed in the city is the public entry procedures in
large hotels. There are X-ray machines to scan the baggage of people entering
the premises and a couple of security guards with automated weapons. It is
mostly a small enhancement to the procedures followed since the terror strikes
in 1993.
There is little change in the attitude of people towards the
security of public areas, except that they appear little more tolerant to the
scanning at the entry to hotels and malls.
There is little effort in training of security staff deputed at
public places. Most of the "guards" are outsourced from placement
agencies. They have little commitment to the place they are guarding or the
outsourcing agency itself. They are inadequately trained. I managed to speak
with 10 odd guards who are deputed to check the vehicles entering the premises.
None of them has ever seen an explosive device. They open and shut the car
bonnets and trunks mechanically without knowing what they are searching for.
Women and minors are usually let go without proper search. Moreover, the guards
are usually not fit to fight trained terrorists.
None of the establishment that were targeted during 26/11 have a
professional "security audit" in place, to continuously assess the
lapses in security procedures and upgrade in the system to equip for emerging
security threats and challenges.
If the two police personnel, I managed to speak with, are to be
believed, they have received just a few reports from people about the
suspicious activities in their surroundings in past 10years. Worst, many of
such reports have turned out to be mischievous.
We the people need to accept and imbibe that praying to god
alone would not be sufficient. To protect our life and property, we would need
to develop an attitude and adequate security apparatus.
Chart of the day
Leave nothing for later
The government of India has laid significant emphasis on the
"ease of doing business" matrix in past few years. Consequently, the
ranking of India on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index has improved
to 77 from 142 in 2015. This may in fact have resulted in material change in
the perception of the global businesses towards India, as evident from the
incrementally higher FDI flows in the country.
A closer study of the improvement in India's ranking suggests
that the following three factors may be responsible for most of it:
(a) Development of
the telecom infrastructure, especially availability and speed of internet. This
has helped significantly in reducing the time & effort taken for various
procedures and services, and improving the transparency of the procedure
itself. A lot of services are now provided online. ISRO and
entrepreneurs/investors who invested hugely in developing telecom
infrastructure in past 25years; and IT companies who developed enabling systems
and software share the major credit for this.
(b) Improved physical
infrastructure, especially electricity and logistics. This is consequence of
the massive investment in energy, roads, and ports/airports sector in past two
decades, after these sectors were deregulated and freed from government
monopolies. NDA -1 government led by AB Vajpayee should get major credit for
this effort.
(c) Statutory
changes like GST and IBC have also contributed materially in the improvement in
India's ranking. The incumbent government in particularly gets credit for these
changes in the legal and regulatory framework, even though the past governments
and a host of professionals who worked tirelessly to bring it to the
implementation stage also need to be commended.
One thing that has not changed, or has arguably worsened, in
this context is the transparency and predictability of the regulation. Some
unconventional policy measures like demonetization; frequent changes GST
framework, unnecessary tinkering in the direct taxes, e.g., taxation of LTCG,
imposition of a variety of cess, indiscreet use of enforcement procedures, etc
may have made the investors and businesses wary of the intent.
I would cite one small example that indicates lack of holistic
thinking on part of the government in development and management of the
regulatory framework for the business, making it subject to frequent and
unpredictable changes.
It is widely accepted that e-commerce is the future of retail in
the country. As per some estimates, the total ecommerce business in India may
grow more than 2x in next four years to cross US$52bn form the present US$25bn.
Presently, more than 70% of the Indian ecommerce industry, at
least in product retail, is dominated by the two US-controlled companies:
Flipkart and Amazon.
The government had issued a draft National Policy on Ecommerce (see
here) few months back. But reportedly, the plans to implement the policy
have been shelved for now (see
here).
The government has the global experience of more than two
decades available to it. At national level also, it is more than a decade since
we started buying online. The government has accepted that in future this
sector is certainly going to grow exponentially. The litigations in the matters
relating to taxation, pricing, quality control, customer services etc are
piling with each passing day. Ad hoc solutions to all these issues will result
in a messy regulatory framework, like in many other cases.
One issue in particular is bothering me in this. The last mile
of the delivery chain in the entire ecommerce is totally uncontrolled.
A huge number of young boys have been employed to
"deliver" the online shopping to the ultimate customer. There is
absolutely no regulation for this entire workforce. Most of these delivery boys
are contract workers, who in many cases are not even verified. They do not
enjoy any job security, social security or any other benefit usually available
to a worker in the organized sector. Many mafia type unregulated agencies have
mushroomed, which control the supply of delivery boys.
Most of these delivery boys are under-paid, Some of these are
also risk to the 'customer' to whom they are going to deliver.
Shockingly, the draft policy on ecommerce makes no mention of this
segment of the ecommerce. The worst, the ministry of labor is not even
mentioned as one of the implementing agency, in the draft policy document.
It appears that the regulatory framework for ecommerce delivery
chain would evolve casually. Knee jerk reactions to each protest/strike by
workers, accident, rape, murder, act of violence, etc. will add to the
regulations, keeping it as unpredictable as anything else.
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Trivia
India is popularly known as the diabetic capital of the world.
It has the dubious distinction of having the largest population of diabetic
people in the world. Many of the key politicians (including the union finance
minister, union road minister, CMs of Delhi and Maharashtra and even BJP
president) are known to be diabetic.
But only a few important metro stations in Delhi and Mumbai have
provision for urinal. The famous 302kms long Lucknow-Agra expressway has no
urinal.
How these diabetic leaders, could not think of the plight of
millions of diabetic people whom they are supposed to lead and serve?
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