26.04.2010

Politics & the Nation

• Lalit Modi suspended
• He has been served suspension notice through email by the IPL governing council soon after Chennai Super Kings beat Mumbai Indians in the finals of the third edition of the IPL.
• The idea behind this move is to bar Mr Modi from attending the Governing Council meeting today at 10 am at the BCCI headquarters. In the event the IPL commissioner does show up for the meeting, the matter can immediately be referred to a three-member disciplinary committee for action. The committee consists of BJP leader and legal heavyweight Arun Jaitley, Shashank Manohar, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Chirayu Amin, the head of the Baroda Cricket Association and the owner of pharma company Alembic. This will set the stage for a formal in-house probe into the charges against Mr Modi.
• The BCCI president has the power to suspend a member under Article 32 of the Board’s constitution. The suspended member then faces an inquiry.
• People in BCCI believe there is a strong case against the IPL chief that takes into account various alleged financial irregularities linked to Mr Modi. He may also be rapped for breach of the franchise agreement's confidentiality clause.
• But others say the case against him is far from water-tight. Breach of confidentiality seems to be the only concrete charge the BCCI will be able to raise against Mr Modi. While a number of other allegations are being investigated by various government agencies, there is no reason to believe BCCI has proof to indict Mr Modi in any of those charges, they say.
• The charge of breach of confidentiality consists of two counts — disclosing the shareholding pattern of the Kochi team and leaking internal BCCI communication to the media. Even in this, the latter allegation will have to rely on circumstantial evidence.
• Why is the government in trouble over phone tapping issue?
• Because the government had, in keeping with the guidelines issued on phonetapping by the Supreme Court in 1996, introduced numerous safeguards in the Indian Telegraph Act to ensure that privacy of individuals was protected. Only the Union home secretary or his counterpart in states, according to these rules, could permit any one of the seven notified intelligence agencies—Intelligence Bureau, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau, Economic Intelligence Unit and the Directorate General of Investigations, Income-Tax, besides the special branch of state police—to tap the phone of an individual, that too for a limited period. The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) was, obviously, not among the seven listed agencies.
• You might remember that it was the NTRO that was used for phone tapping this time.
• A good graphic that gives us a low-down on telephone tapping.
• Here is an excellent article on the constitutionality or otherwise of telephone tapping. A must read for all of us. An excerpt worth our attention:
• The Supreme Court in PUCL vs UOI (decided in 1997) had dealt with the aspect of telephone tapping and laid down the procedure in case the State decides to tap someone’s phone. The conditions are:
• The order for telephone tapping can be issued only by the home secretary of the govt. of India and home secretary of the state governments. Only in urgent cases, the power can be delegated to an officer below the rank of joint secretary. Reasons have to be recorded for such order, which can continue only for two months unless extended which shall not exceed six months.
• This order is subject to examination by a review committee, consisting of Cabinet secretary, law secretary and telecommunication secretary. The review should be done within 2 months of the order of interception.
• The orders so passed should be specific with regard to the person, places, addresses and can be justified only on the ground that it was not possible to collect the information through other means. The invasion into privacy has to be minimum.
• The authority shall maintain all the necessary records which shall be destroyed as soon as its retention is found unnecessary.
• How to tap cell phone conversations legally?
• To tap a phone legally in case of GSM phones, the GSM service provider can give you a line out, or a parallel connection to the “tapped line”.
• This line out can be either routed to a speaker (for hearing) or to a recording system.
• In case you can’t get a line out (the legit way) and if you have a few hundred lakhs to spend you can get a signal interception device.
• It’s a small computer controlled, Windows 98 or NT machine that can tap or record GSM conversations even 2 km away. The equipment, manufactured primarily in Israel, is used by your GSM operator to monitor and test signal strength, call dropping, etc.
• A method called cloning can also be used to tap a phone, both GSM or CDMA. A duplicate or cloned SIM (in case of GSM) or phone (in case of CDMA) is made and the duplicate phone is used to listen in to voice conversations.

Finance & Economy

• Deciding what is ‘suitable’ in movie advertisements
• This is about a job that hardly anyone knows that it exists. It is about America's top advertising enforcer.
• Marilyn Gordon whose official title is senior vice president for advertising administration at the Motion Picture Association is the Motion Picture Association of America’s top advertising enforcer. Her job is evaluating and approving or disapproving all advertising for rated movies before it can be disseminated. In general terms, Gordon’s team evaluates promotional materials to determine whether they are suitable for the intended audience.
• Last year, Gordon and her six lieutenants evaluated more than 60,000 submissions – trailers, television spots, Internet ads, press kits, print ads, radio commercials, online games.
• A censorship of movie advertising, to put it one way. Do we have an equivalent in India?
• Flight delay will soon entitle you to ‘cash & care’
• Fliers would soon be entitled for cash and care in case their flights are cancelled, delayed or they are denied boarding even when they are holding a confirmed ticket. The aviation industry regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has come out with the draft guidelines on obligations of airlines towards passengers if they are inconvenienced.
• Once finalised, the obligations on airlines would be incorporated in the existing civil aviation requirements (CAR), the aviation industry rule book for operation.
• As per the draft rules, air carriers would have to pay up to Rs 4,000 to passengers if they are denied boarding despite confirmed booking. The airlines would have to offer either alternative flight or refund of air ticket in case flight is cancelled. The passengers would be entitled for meals, refreshment and accommodation in case a flight is delayed.
• While most of the European countries have empowered passengers by implementing compensation rules broadly stated under the Montreal Convention, India is yet to implement it.
• The proposed guidelines would be applicable for both scheduled and nonscheduled airlines. The new rules will require airlines to inform passengers as much in advance as possible about change of aircraft during journey, stops en route and transfer between the airports during the journey.
• Why is India seeking a benchmark for levying penal duties by the West?
• It is reported that India has suggested at the WTO that there should be an objective benchmark for countries levying penal duties on imports that originate from countries that provide various subsidies to their exporters.
• This benchmark could be linked to the annual average yield on government securities, India has proposed.
• Some countries levy stiff countervailing duties on imports from other countries if they feel the host country has subsidised the exports that could undermine its local industry.
• Such penal duties are not very common but India is apprehensive that the discount it gives on interest rates on loans to crisis hit exports sectors such as textile, leather and marine products could invite action by importing countries. An objective benchmark would ensure that such action is not arbitrary and excessive.

International

• What explains volatility in oil prices globally?
• At one time or the other all of us have wondered about this question. But there were no sure-fire answers coming forth from any quarter.
• At least till today's op-ed by Sandip Sen. Take a look. An interesting read.
• His thesis is that oil prices are made volatile by the actions of two oil cartels -- the OPEC and the ICE. The former is the producers' cartel and the latter is the traders' cartel.
• While a read of the article is a must for each one of you, some excerpts worth our attention include:
• The ICE cartel includes Europe's oil majors BP, Shell and Total and the big banks — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Society General and Deutsche Bank. Though the Opec cartel still controls 55% of the world's production, and the ICE cartel less than 15%, the price volatility has been dictated by the trading cartel. The Opec oil, having much larger physical volumes, but not active at the exchange, merely follows the Brent Oil price trends at the futures market, in a classic case of the ‘tail wagging the dog'.
• OECD stocks during the last 10 years have risen from 840 million barrels to 1,020 million barrels, due to this volatility, despite a 5% drop in consumption.
• Over 80 million barrels of oil are being hoarded in super tankers around the world today, as per Frontline which owns the largest tanker fleet worldwide.
• Termed famously as the London Loophole, by Senator Feinstein, each barrel of oil is reportedly swapped 20 to 30 times at the ICE Exchange through high-speed computers before hitting the retail trade at substantially higher prices.
• Developing nations to have more say in World Bank: Geithner
• World Bank members have agreed to pour more capital into the lender and give developing countries a greater voice in running the bank, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday.
• He also said that the US, which holds the largest voting share in the World Bank at 16.4%, would not seek any increase for itself under a revised voting formula that is to better reflect developing countries’ economic heft.
• The World Bank had asked for a capital increase of $3 billion to $5 billion, allocated proportionally among its members.

Language Lessons

• hubristic: Adjective
• With hubris; contemptuous, proud
• eg: Lalit Modi, the talented but hubristic creator of the IPL, will lose his job today.
• footsie: Noun
• Surreptitious interaction or cooperation; Touching someone else's feet with one's own (e.g. under a table) as a means of flirtation
  
• eg: If playing footsie with Ms Mayawati pays off, the UPA would be able to breathe easy as far as numbers go.