LEADERS, NOT ICONS

Sections of the international press have hailed the emergence of the Congress Party-led government after the May elections in India. But they have presented the new rulers, not as leaders, but as icons.

This is the case particularly with the British press. Even the specialized business paper, Financial Times, has made this its preference. This is, nevertheless, simply indulgence, even erroneous. Especially when seen in the backdrop of how credulity still infects minds of people of that country, on one hand, and its strife in recent years to claim its place in world comity, on the other.

The worst of it can be that the new rulers can imagine it as a loud acclaim of them by international opinion.

The affliction appears to be inflicting the new rulers en masse in barely three months of their ascending to power (gaddi).

Minister for Railways in the Railway Budget presented in July announced the setting up of a new multi-million-rupee axle plant for the network in Bihar to which state of the Union he belongs.

A few days back he went further to open recruitment of some hundred thousand people in the railways.

Great, one may say. But not when the Railway Board comprising experts and constituting the policy body for the network had expressly told the minister that a new axle plant was not wanted for the railways. Furthermore, the Indian railways are regarded as the single largest employer in the world while 60 per cent of the railway budget comprises staff’s expenses.

But as deliverer the minister must turn towards his people!

Minister for Human Resources, perhaps taking a cue from his predecessor in the outgoing government and possibly in order to do one better, is set out to rewriting curriculum and course of studies and textbooks in schools and colleges as well as rules for admission into advanced management institutions. The rewriting is not by way of annulling what his predecessor did, but to what he thinks is right and proper.

In other words, the educational order that existed is to lie buried.

This is regardless of what the Prime Minister thinks of it, or whether it is the agreed common program of the parties in the government and others, like the communists, who are supporting the government from outside.

Minister of State for Home (second ranking to the Cabinet minister) caused ripples to rise over deployment of Special Forces to address acts of terrorism by groups of separatists in sensitive Manipur State in the northeast. He did this by making three different and mutually contradictory statements in ten days over the issue whereas the government at the center dispatched him to deal with the disturbances occurred in the state.

The state’s chief minister, who belongs to Congress Party, meanwhile compounded the absurdity of the central minister by announcing withdrawal of the Special Forces from the capital city Imphal and declared they would be pulled out of the state all together. This notwithstanding that whether to deploy the forces or not who fall under its authority is for the Central Government to decide.

Meanwhile, the disturbances, which followed alleged rape and killing of a 32-year-old woman by some men of the Special Forces, took the extreme turn in an explosion occurring in a movie house and resulting in death of some people and incidents of violence elsewhere.

The latest on Manipur after the country celebrated its 57^th Independence Day on August 15 was that the Central Government was to decide imposing the President’s rule on the state. Pending proclamation of this, the Central Government is asking the state’s chief minister to bring the Special Forces back in place.

The above incidents of governance by the post-election rulers occurred barely in three months of their assuming power show how their iconic imaging has come to rest heavily on their minds.

GOOGLE TRUMPS

Google has trumped Wall Street wizards from beginning to end in its initial public offering. Investment banks were agitated from start when, instead of soliciting their services to promote and sell the public issue, the company opted for “Dutch auction” for its IPO.

Google did not want the bankers to manipulate its issue and limit the offering to their clients for subscribing in bulk quantity. It wanted to afford for common people opportunity to invest and to itself the chance to sell the shares at fair value.

It even discarded such big names as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch to enlist as lead managers and limited it to only the two, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. It also placed the issue price in $108-$135 range it thought merited its offering.

Clearly Google was at odds with investment banks who took to arms, so to say, to play down Google.

They spread the word the issue would not draw enough subscription. Further that August was a bad month for the market and hence for IPOs. And still furthermore that common investors would burn their fingers subscribing at indicated price range, as the shares were to attract selling on listing and sure to bust.

Meanwhile, on June 21, 2004, barely two months after the company filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29, Merrill Lynch had pulled out of the IPO as underwriter declaring the low fees Google was offering would not cover heavy technology investment on its part.

Wall Street’s well-founded interests were virtually challenging Google in going public on its own terms.

But Google confounded these interests on the SEC approving its IPO on August 18. It lowered the issue’s price range to $85-$95. It also cut the issue size at the same time.

These moves had their implications to Google and its founders as well as its financiers, the venture capitalists, in addition to existing shareholders. The last mentioned cut down the number of shares they were to sell from 11.6 million shares to 5.5 million shares. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry also reduced their offering. Both the venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Sequoia Capital, withheld their proposed offerings altogether.

With lowered price-range Google’s potential value has fallen by more than $10 billion to $25.8 billion. The money raised in the IPO is to amount to barely half the figure of $3.5 billion that would have been raised at the top of the proposed price-range.

Yet, when Google backtracked on offer price, it appeared to have done so, not because of apprehensions of success of its IPO, but to checkmate Wall Street’s bankers in any move to dump the shares.

Listed on NASDAQ, on Thursday, day one of trading, Google shares recorded the low of $95 and the high of $104.06, and on Friday, day two, closed at $106.87, gaining 27 per cent since debut.

Interestingly, now analysts have taken the place of bankers, rating the shares from “hold” and “moderate” to “buy”.

Coincidentally, on Monday (August 23), Google shares closed at $109.40.

NO NOISE, PLEASE, WE'RE NEW YORKERS!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to affect New York’s quality of life has reached now the length to contain noise in the megametropolis. The plan is Bloombergian Big, like the ban the Mayor brought in earlier on smoking in bars and restaurants, too, in New York.

Among the proposals is the one to order people they should silence jackhammers in use by covering them with ‘noise jackets’. Another is of a tighter regulation of rattling of air conditioners. Further still, the NY police is to dispense with use of ‘noise meters’ in order to control noise caused to public (like in music played by a group of persons or by an individual in car stereo, by barking dogs and in carmufflers). Instead, the cops are to judge whether any of such noise is within legally acceptable limit by employing a ‘common sense’ standard.

As from table the proposals are translated to terms of living they may be causing noise, in turn. But, meanwhile, here is imagined the response of the people in New York to their irrepressible Mayor.

"Yes, sir, noise does not relate to New York life, and does not go with our work culture. Even a hail can be too loud to bear. Jackhammers banging away is out. So, yes sir, we shall deafen them, rather than have them deafen us. And, ah, the rattling air conditioners. Eerie reminder of New York's fretful summer, we shall plug the rickety rattle just like we banished the puff. And yes, sir, what’s music, if it is not soft and soothing, whatever pop preaches.

“Yes, sir. No noise, please, we’re New Yorkers!

“But look at this, sir.

“We, the New Yorkers, weren’t shattered when three year ago on that fateful September day the famed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were blown up and the flaming steel girders fell many a occupant. Several hundred men and women, many a bread earner of families, were blown to bits. When people out at work slept the night out on icy sidewalks and simmering marble steps of buildings in September cold in New York. We did not moan, nor meander. We walked back to work. So did the Wall Street traders, although their offices were in ruins.

“Like the World Trade Center the New York Stock Exchange has stood for the whole wide world as the symbol of the American dream. For over 200 years running. Nobody in New York ever grudged anyone realizing that dream. Men and women in New York, young and old, know not to sit back but to strive to make that dream come true for themselves.

“Yes, sir. No noise, please, we’re New Yorkers!

“New York is ethnicity and affirmation. People have come and keep coming here from all parts of the world. No one in New York has minded another from wherever he or she is come. No one feels swamped or suffocated. All are welcome as New Yorkers. We dream the world the same as we walk the streets the same, whether to work, or simply to stand and stare.

“Truly, sir, we, the New Yorkers, are the heritage; the American heritage.

“And, finally, sir. The City has given us the most. In mobility of life especially, so that we can make as much out of our life as possibly we can.

“So, yes sir, as you say, we will banish noise. For no noise, please, we are New Yorkers!”