Bank strike deferred

BS Reporter  January 18, 2014 Last Updated at 00:47 IST

UFBU had earlier announced plans to go on a two day strike, followed by further strikes in February and March

The United Forum of Banks Unions (UFBU) have deferred the two day nation-wide strike from January 20, as the Indian Banks Association (IBA) has enhanced its offer from the initial 5% to 9.5% on payslip cost.

"Since there is an improvement in the offer from the IBA, the forum has decided to differ from the strike which was planned for January 20 and 21 and further talks will be carried out," said C H Venkatachalam, general secretary, All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA).

The next round of talks between the forum and the IBA would be held on January 27, he said.

It may be noted that the UFBU had earlier announced plans to go on a two day strike on January 20 and 21, followed by further strikes in February and March 2014 for their demand and urged the Indian Banks Association and Government to resume the talks with a better and reasonable offer of wage increase and expedite the settlement at the earliest.

On December 18, 2013, around 10 lakh Bank employees went on a strike demanding early wage revision and opposing banking reforms, as the talks with the IBA failed to come up with a solution. The IBA argued that the economy is in bad condition and the Banks cannot revise wages now. However, the forum did not agree with this view and reiterated their demand.


UBFU includes AIBEA, All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC), National Confederation of Bank Employees (NCBE), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA), Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), Indian National Bank Employees Federation (INBEF), Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC), National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) and National Organisation of Bank Officers (NOBO).

T N Ninan: Revisionist history

 

T N Ninan  |  New Delhi  

January 17, 2014 Last Updated at 22:50 IST

For the entire 10 years when Dr Singh has been at the helm, growth will average 7.8 per cent. Like it or not, these numbers will be hard to beat

History may or may not be kinder to Manmohan Singh than his current interlocutors in the media and critics among politicians. But one thing seems for sure: statisticians have been unkind to him and his record. If it is indeed true, as stray newspaper reports suggest, that GDP growth for 2011-12 is about to be revised upwards from 6.2 per cent to seven per cent, and for 2012-13 from five per cent to 5.5 per cent, that puts a gloss on the second Singh government's record that has been absent so far. For, if one takes the five-year period since the onset of the financial crisis that hit world markets in 2008-09, India's annual average GDP growth will stand revised to 7.44 per cent - well above the benchmark of seven per cent that is customarily used to categorise rapidly-growing economies. Even if you include the current year, which may end up with no more than five per cent economic growth, the average growth during this troubled six-year period will top the seven per cent mark. For the entire 10 years when Dr Singh has been at the helm, growth will average about 7.8 per cent. Like it or not, these numbers will be hard to beat in the coming decades; so some historians may well choose to be kind.

Are the statistics being cooked up belatedly to make the second United Progressive Alliance's record look better? Probably not. GDP numbers have been getting revised upwards virtually every year; the initial growth numbers are based in part on the monthly industrial production index, which includes data that often look distinctly flaky. The numbers get revised when more comprehensive data from the Annual Survey of Industries become available. The poor quality of the initial statistics must take some of the blame for the flak that the government has been getting; growth rates have been recorded as plunging more than they may in fact have.

How has India done in comparison with other countries? Taking the average from 2008, India has retained its position as the second-fastest growing among all economies that are at least one-eighth of India's in size. And the gap between India's and China's growth rates has dropped from 3.54 percentage points in the 2000-04 calendar quinquennium to 3.26 percentage points in the 2005-09 quinquennium and now to 2.48 percentage points in the four-year period 2010-13. However, it is also true that emerging markets as a whole have slowed down only half as much as India, and some small economies (like Ethiopia and Qatar) have grown much faster.

Do the better numbers absolve the Singh government of responsibility for macroeconomic mismanagement? No; as many commentators have pointed out, the main reasons for India's slowdown have been domestic, and unrelated to global trends. If the frenetic activity that the government is now indulging in - clearing projects, getting rid of an obstructionist minister, and so on - had been started a year or two earlier, and if the rupee had been prevented from its illogical climb against the dollar in 2010-2012, when the trade gap was getting steadily bigger, both the economy and the trade gap would have been in better shape today, as also the public mood.

Even in the last few months, the government failed to do the obvious in order to tackle inflation - it should have released some of its outsize hoard of grain stocks, increased supply in the market and broken the back of inflation in foodgrain prices. Timely steps on such fronts might have made it possible for the government to go to voters in the summer with a resilient growth record, lower inflation and the image of a purposive administration; it could even have claimed that India was shining!

Go Ahead : Dont look back.just Go Ahead

Go Ahead  : Dont look back.just Go Ahead

The Spirit of J R D Tata : “Making steel may be compared to making a chappati. To make a good chappati, even a golden pin will not work unless the dough is good”

Quotes :

“Making steel may be compared to 

making a chappati. To make a good 

chappati, even a golden pin will not work 

unless the dough is good”

The Life and Times of  J  R  D  Tata  :

The year 2004 is significant for the Tata Group, as it marks the 100th birth anniversary of JRDTata and Naval Tata and the death centenary of Jamsetji Tata.

For two generations and more JRD epitomised a way of life and a culture of business that cared for the country and its people.

"The wealth gathered by Jamsetji Tata and his sons in half a century of industrial pioneering formed but a minute fraction of the amount by which they enriched the nation. The whole of that wealth is held in trust for the people and used exclusively for their benefit. The cycle is thus complete; what came from the people has gone back to the people many times over." --J R D Tata

Established in 1859, the Tata Group was already India's biggest business conglomerate when Tata became its fourth chairman in 1938. He was then just 34 years old.

Under his leadership, the Tata assets climbed from Rs 62 crore (Rs 620 million) in 1939 to over Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) in 1990.

In 1939 the group included fourteen companies with sales of Rs 280 crore (Rs 2.80 billion); in 1993, the year of his death, sales were Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) contributed by over fifty large manufacturing companies, besides innumerable holding, investment, subsidiaries and associate concerns, making it India's biggest business group.

 J R D Tata in his own words :

• While I usually came back from meeting Gandhiji elated and inspired but always a bit sceptical, and from talks with Jawaharlal, fired with emotional zeal but often confused and unconvinced, meetings with Vallabhbhai were a joy from which I returned with renewed confidence in the future of our country. I have often thought that if fate had decreed that he, instead of Jawaharlal, would be the younger of the two, India would have followed a very different path and would be in better economic shape that it is today.