When he became the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh was supposed to be a smart economist, and a non-practising politician; now it seems that things are totally reversed. For a long time, the Prime Minister kept off raising the price of fuel even though the international price of oil had gone up tremendously, this was a political decision. At the same time, since the Government has committed vast sums of money to its social welfare schemes, it cannot afford to significantly reduce the duties on oil; hence it refused to accept the Left dictated measure to reduce duty to absorb the price hike.
Now that the Government was finally forced to increase the price of petrol, diesel and LPG, there has been a whole gamut of measures to try and reduce the political cost. So the Prime Minister comes on TV to declare his helplessness at this hike, this being a global increase in fuel. In addition, the Prime Minister and the Congress tried to push some of the cost onto local State Governments by asking the state Governments to reduce duties from their side (and promptly, some state Governments ruled by the Congress did so).
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It seems to be a story that keeps on repeating itself over and over; you hear of people being harassed by loan recovery agents for repayment of loans, or of somebody’s vehicle being taken away from them anywhere where the vehicle can be found, and so on. In extreme cases, the pressure or violence of the recovery agents can lead to injury or death of the person having taken the loan. The financing company or bank having advanced the loan would take recourse to goons or musclemen and they would use or threaten force in this regard.
For the last 2-3 years, this practise has been challenged in court, and there have been a number of decisions in this regard. Here’s another substantiating the same point that a loan recovery company cannot use force for loan recovery. Since a loan agreement is a civil contract, recovery of loan amount or the assets bought against the loan also can happen only when there is a court order:
Unless a bank or a financial institution is equipped with a court order to repossess a vehicle which it has given on loan, it has no authority to go to the residence of the borrower to take away the vehicle by force. This was observed by the state consumer commission in a recent order.
A few states in India have had an emergency helpline number for some time now - the number being 108 (followed by the states of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand; and being pursued by the states of Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and MP). This is a toll-free number styled on the US style 911 toll-free emergency helpline. The idea of such a number is that this will be the medical emergency number which can be used for contacting in the case of a medical emergency - whether this be an accident, heart attack, stroke, criminal attack that results in injuries, etc. In all such cases, the chances of saving life are much higher if medical help reaches early, in fact, there is the concept of the golden hour when emergency medical help acts as a life saver.
After negotiations for almost a year, telecom minister A Raja has indicated in a letter to health minister Anbumani
Ramadoss last week that 108 is being finalized as the national toll-free trauma care number. “Once a caller dials 108, a 24-hour call centre will receive the information, locate an ambulance closest to the emergency spot through GPRS technology and dispatch it within the golden hour,” a health ministry official said.
Ramadoss said the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 732 crore for the National Emergency and Trauma Care Programme, which was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on December 13.
In a new low in the relations between state Governments and the media, the top cop of the Gujrat Government, Ahmedabad police commissioner O P Mathur filed a case of sedition (FIR’s) against the Times of India. This has happened over the past week, ever since the newspaper publishes articles insinuating links between the cop and the underworld. Now, in India, most people are ready to believe that the underworld has links with politicians and policemen at all levels (helped by a large number of movies, as well as many such cases in real life), and if a newspaper publishes such reports, then many people will be very eager to believe such stories.
There is a side to this story where the media is expected to do responsible publishing, and where a story needs to backed up by facts. Now, in the west, this is backed up to some extent by the standards set by the editorial boards of respected newspapers as well as libel laws (not something that is rigidly enforced or practised in India). In India, newspapers and other media are currently in the forefront of highlighting many areas such as corruption, criminality, and various issues in the legal / judicial system. They need to be given some slack in this area.