Edits | May, 2022
Satyendar Jain of Aam Aadmi Party and some BJP corporators have been in news for various corruption charges. This goes to show that a growing political party also needs to hook up corrupt just like others operating since decades, to make their ends meet. The grapevine is that Aam Aadmi Party has been raising funds through unscrupulous means in Delhi. There are many businesses, which are wary of AAP legislators now. They don’t appear as clean as are made out to be. Especially, the education department is targeting schools all the time bending rules which suits the party and, perhaps, its fundraising.
Free speech
Elon Musk’s endeavour to get into free speech has the social media escape revving to save itself. The person has so much wealth that he may decide to control ‘thought’. There is nothing wrong with it and it is a capitalist way of doing things. The most scared people would be politicians who use Twitter as their personal newspaper and quite effectively. Here is wishing Mr Musk his husk of Twitter. One needs to look at Musk’s artificial intelligence interface which is out in the public but not prevalent yet.
China again…
Covid has Shanghai isolated and not much news is coming out of it except for the fact that the country, and the city has been under a tremendous lockdown. Usually, such news transcends into the virus being all over the world once it begins in China. India has vaccinated its population which has been a great feat and it is advised that all the people should get their booster doses in time to either evade the new Covid variant, if any, or fight the disease in its milder form. Since this virus is ever evolving it is even difficult for medical science to decipher what would be its next move. Hence it is best to be cautious.
FM caught on wrong step
The MSME in India have been up against arms with the government and the banks. There has been no or very little support for the medium scale and the small scale industries during the Covid crisis. Either the government has been busy distributing freebies to the affected, the labour and the people who lost their jobs or it is benefiting only the top 500 or so businesses in the country. The rest have been left in the lurch. Many have been closed down by the banks, and many more are facing closure by the banks due to defaults during Covid time. Our finance minister has no clue as to what to do with them. On the matter of finance minister, she is spotted saying that since India has not been able to control the crypto currency menace, we might as well try and regulate it internationally. In an interaction with the IMF, she calls for a joint effort across the world to either ban or regulate crypto. This new development of the financial markets can be seen as a replacement to existing currencies wherein there is no role of central bank, and the value of crypto currency is technically a free float. To such an extent that no politician or government can influence it. It is not physically present at any one point where it can be picked up, and the code level programming surpasses the vigilance.
WFH basics
Work from home has been prevalent in most of the economies around the world. Especially, the women workforce has been opting more for work from home flexibility as they can manage children, family and home in much better way. Plus the added advantage of internet connectivity, seamless communication and nuclear families have enabled work from home culture. But at the same time, it needs to be seen that many of the crucial decisions in a corporate environment have to be taken in an environment which is more official than personal. To do regular work from home could come as a rescue for a routine kind of activity but we need to recognise that this concept has evolved only after very hard work done at work places before the Covid had struck. Hence to say that work from home will replace work at offices would be completely wrong and in the long term prove fatal in many areas of decision making for a company. Plus, it does not guarantee job security.
Political vendetta galore
The month passed by has seen Anil Deshmukh being quizzed for his roles in private clubs of Bombay, as a political vendetta to check his involvement in all the messy business of the NCP. In Delhi at Jahangirpuri, the Hindus and Muslims were at their warring best even after Hon’ble Supreme Court passed an order to stop the demolition of illegal construction. It stems from a Shobha yatra being conducted by the Hindus, was allegedly pelted by the Muslims and then the government getting into action to selectively raze the encroachment in that area, which was owned by the non-Hindus. In the process, a lot of damage was done to the local ecosystem, before the Supreme Court passed an order. To what avail was this exercise? Then again independent politician couple, MP Navneet and MLA Ravi Rana, was hellbent to chant Hanuman Chalisa in front of Shiv Sena residence. The exercise led to their arrest, which again led to talks about communal divide.
Politicians and religious leaders do want to keep his rhetoric up since it gets them in the limelight to make a statement and to keep the electorate divided. It enables them to garner more votes and to polarise the electorate of a certain area. It has been going on for hundreds of years now and will continue henceforth.
Ending note…
As an ending note, will Reliance Industries bow down to the mighty Amazon.com? As the corporate world and the small retail investor looks on, it appears that the fight has not yet ended and Reliance will come back with some other arsenal up in its bag.
CA Divesh Nath Editor Woman’s Era LinkedIn: Divesh Nath