Shed the narcissism Time for aggressive steps
Mitali Saran’s piece, “Changing political weather: BJP gets the chills” (October 7), is spot on. Although the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to reflect the people’s mood and articulates the perception of the liberal Fourth Estate, which still has many apologists, it is nevertheless mindful of its limitations.
Even with a political mandate panning out in its term and a series of missteps, the BJP can still redeem itself, if it admits to the latter. If, on the contrary, it exhibits its narcissist self even now and manifests its cleverness, then it would have to pay for its hubris. It seems there are still some columnists, who take a charitable view of the party. Perhaps, they are spellbound by the histrionics of its leader.
I especially like these observations made by Saran:
“The truth is that this government is made of people with a talent deficit and an ego surplus, peddling a tiny-minded vision consisting of vainglorious dreams built on sand, hot air, empty gestures, and overlarge statues.”
“A skilled actor and clever lighting can only take a useless script so far — the play is still lousy.” “The last government was deeply flawed, smug, and infuriatingly corrupt, but on a steadily progressive path.”
I loved the piece for its objectivity and timeliness.
Ramakrishnan Sundaram Chennai What happens if the top court’s verdict goes against the government’s move?
Isn’t the continued widening of Aadhaar’s ambit tantamount to contempt of the top court? As ordinary citizens are not expected to be legal experts, let us hope the Supreme Court takes note of current developments — as the matter is sub judice — and announces its final decision at an early date.
S Kumar New Delhi With reference to the editorial, “Reform floating rates” (October 6), cost of resources, overheads, risks and quality of assets generated as well as profits have direct bearing on lending rates. The basic need is to cut costs and improve efficiency and productivity, particularly in the case of public sector banks that account for over 70 per cent of the banking space.
While shrinking the cost of resources, banks should mobilise the more costeffective ones, instead of cutting interest rates on term resources. This is necessary to ensure growth of household savings, which are significant for ushering in inclusive economic growth.
The most important point is to drastically reduce credit costs. Credit cost is a function of the quality of funds deployed by lenders. Any reduction in credit cost will improve the net interest margin and enable the lender to pare lending rates. Public sector banks are particularly unable to reduce lending rates due to their high level of non-performing assets.
The government and the banking regulator need to adopt aggressive measures to resolve the issues related to bad assets. Speedy resolution and control of non-performing assets are crucial for fixing lending rates. Banks are not fixing interest rates arbitrarily. Current stresses in their financial statements are not allowing them to cut lending rates.
The present system of floating lending rates is fraught with discrimination and is less transparent, too. The Monetary Policy Committee fixes policy rates to transmit them quickly into the economy, but banks being financial intermediaries are only complying partially and that, too, belatedly.
V S K Pillai Changanacherry