Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

DELHI METRO: ACCIDENTS

DMRC needs to ‘chin’ up its act

One reason forwarded for such deaths is the speed with which such projects are being completed, in line with the Commonwealth Games, which is scheduled to commence in October 2010. Another reason relates to outsourcing. The construction work is outsourced to third parties by DMRC on a contractual basis. Although they have an obligation to adhere to strict quality controls, third party firms might not have the same ethical inclination towards the welfare of workers.

There is obviously the Construction Workers Act of 1996, and E. Sreedharan is a great example of ethical behaviour and professional deportment. Notwithstanding that, the blame for accidents has to be shared by DMRC, which has lapsed on monitoring the project implementation. Construction deaths happen worldwide (UCATT, UK’s largest construction union, says construction is the most dangerous industry in UK – 70 odd deaths occurred last year); but with around 8 to 10 lakh workers working on the DMRC project, the company needs to take an active viewpoint of how to reduce deaths dramatically. It’s a case of 48 lives, 1 line... 


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Saturday, December 8, 2012

Constructive destruction!!!

Don’t play against nature, it will surely bite you back later...

The waiting game on embryonic stem cell research is almost over with Obama signing the bill to allow state funding of it. But the debate isn’t yet over. It was during the Clinton regime that the concept of Stem cell research took shape for the first time. Abortion was legalised and UK’s successful experiment with in vitro fertilisation inspired scientists in the US. Hence the Human Embryo Research Panel of the National Institute of Health approached President Bill Clinton to allow state funding but considering the moral and ethical concerns, he refused it. Later Bush faced similar predicaments but reacted more strongly than Clinton. In spite of unanimous support in the Congress in favour of it, he used his veto power thrice to stop it. He strategically defended his decision by stating, ‘the bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses the moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So, vetoed it.’


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Monday, September 3, 2012

What is the price of motherhood?

Head-hunters believe that breaks in women’s careers due to motherhood could be costing them dearly. Could that be true?

Priyanka is an expecting mother and a mid-level employee at one of Gurgaon’s MNCs. As an organisation concerned for its employees’ wellbeing, the company is allowing Priyanka, who stays at Faridabad (a good 2-hour drive away), to work from home on three days of the week. All she needs to ensure is to login at the right time and be available over the phone. “Good companies now extend numerous benefits and support to their female employees during their maternity period,” says Shalini Tewari, Head – Strategic Resource Management, ValueFirst. “Even for purposes like performance evaluation, the complete work term is taken into consideration. Employees also extend the benefit of remote operations from home and flexi-timing to women employees,” informs Shalini. Yet, most ladies do not reach the top hierarchies of companies. Recently, a survey was conducted among the top 100 head-hunters of UK, and more than half of them believed that ladies ought to skip motherhood if they wish to see themselves among the top brass of a company one day. They felt that women lose out on opportunities during their career breaks.

Where three months is the time the government allows the ladies leave with pay and to get back in working shape, six months is the more accepted break in India. Ladies with lesser support system at home even return to work only once the baby is old enough for the crèche – a good two to three years later. Companies are usually happy to take them back into their fold, especially those they know are hardworking employees. Archana Kashyap is one who believes that performance is what really counts. “My son was born shortly before 9/11 happened, and when I joined back work I was one of the few people who were not given the pink slip, in spite of me joining back after maternity leave.”


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Monday, August 27, 2012

No Tali-‘ban’?

G8 moves from comedy to ludicrous

In their meeting last month, the G8 leaders issued a straightforward ‘warning’ to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, asking him to produce a detailed plan on how he’ll be handling the country’s security and reducing the prevailing corruption. The group asked Karzai to “combat corruption, address illicit drug production and trafficking, improve human rights, improve provision of basic services and governance and make concrete progress towards reinforcing the formal justice system.” That’s fine enough. Then came the comedy. They also imposed a ‘five years’ timeline for the results.

And what if Karzai fails to achieve the targets within the timeline? Well, the G8 kind of skipped that point.

Previously, such demands by G-8 were viewed as a brash display of arrogance. With the current ‘five years’ timeline, they’re viewed as being over-the-top ludicrous. It is amusing that countries like US and UK made such a demand in spite of being actively present in the war-torn nation.


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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Scrutiny-CAR THEFTS: PREVENTION

As of 2010, India was home to more than 40 million passenger vehicles, but has also experienced hundreds of thousands of cars getting stolen every year. Estimates show that on the whole, the stolen cars are worth more than Rs.10 billion. According to official estimates, only 10% of all stolen car are recoverable (recovery of high valued cars is next to impossible, as parts of the car are sold in the black market). Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat report the maximum car thefts.

Making GPS installation compulsory during manufacturing would solve the problem of recovery of cars to a large extent. GPS devices would enable the owner and search bodies to locate the movement of the car on a virtual network. Few owners voluntarily get a GPS device installed in their cars. In many countries, installation of immobilizing devices are compulsory during the manufacturing process itself. Since 1998, all cars in Germany are fitted with this device. Similarly, UK and Finland made it compulsory in 1998 while Australia and Canada made it compulsory in 2001 and 2007 respectively. Back home, companies like Maruti, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and Ford are installing anti-theft devices in select models only.

A legislation making such anti-theft device installation compulsory – much like how insurance is compulsory – would enable security agencies to free up precious time they currently waste on recovering stolen cars. The cost of such devices – ranging around Rs.10,000 odd for GPS trackers – is too little when compared to the time, effort and investment saved.


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Friday, July 20, 2012

God Save The Queen!

British Policymakers find themselves stuck in a Predicament as they try to Tame Mounting inflation Amidst a Weakening Economy. Well, all they need to do is to Focus on Supply side Policies rather than looking at Demand Side Tactics to solve The Problem.

It was just three months ago when British policymakers were on cloud nine. After all, silencing several critics United Kingdom’s (UK) economy had performed above expectations (UK’s GDP grew 2.7% in Q3, 2010 following a 1.6% expansion in Q2, 2010) and was finally out of the devastating recessionary storm that had been thrashing it since Q4, 2008 (when its GDP first contracted by 2.1%).

Even as per the Office of National Statistics (UK), this was the best six-month growth rate (Q2 & Q3 combined) that UK’s economy had recorded since H1 2000. The outstanding performance was even more noteworthy given the uncertainty associated with the public finance and the emergency budget, which dominated the first half of 2010 and had the potential to damage economic activity.

Come Q1 2011, and UK’s economy has once again surprised the economists! However, this time the smile has vanished from the faces of British policymakers who are stuck in a predicament as they try to tame mounting inflation [which is at 3.7% at present and is likely to rise above 5% in the coming months, way above Bank of England’s (BoE) inflation target of 2%] amid a weakening economy [which unexpectedly contracted by 0.5% on a quarter-on-quarter basis in Q4, 2010].

In fact, rising inflation continues to worry British policymakers, who are still struggling to find a way out of this catch-22 situation. According to the minutes of the monetary policy meeting last held on January 12-13, 2010, six members voted in favour of holding interest rates, while three voted against. Of those three, two members voted to raise interest rates by 25 basis points, one more vote than in previous months.

No doubt, the most logical move for British policymakers to curb surging inflation under normal circumstances would have been to boost interest rates and go for monetary tightening. But then, considering the dismal numbers posted by the economy during Q4, 2010, doing so might send the economy back into recession. Agrees Melanie Bowler, the London based Economist at Moody’s Analytics, as she tells B&E, “With the risks weighted firmly to the downside, the chances of the UK economy slipping back into recession in 2011 are really high.”

In fact, a closer look at the numbers and one would surely agree to Bowler’s logic. While manufacturing capacity utilisation in UK has slipped to 79% in Q1 2011 (this is below the euro zone average of 80% and well below the 84.9% reported for Germany) from 79.3% Q4 2010, weakening recoveries in key trading partners in the euro zone will continue to drag on demand for British exports. Services, which account for around 67% of the GDP, also continue to put pressure on UK’s economy and shrank by 0.5% (q-o-q) in Q4, 2010.


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