I Don’t Know, Son!-21
The 2G Conundrum – The Loss Estimation Puzzle!
Son: A Congress MP has demanded the summoning of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) before the PAC to explain how he had pegged the loss at Rs1.76 lakh crore in the 2G scam, dad.
Father: True. Go on son.
Son: The MP wants to know how the CAG jacked up the loss from Rs2,645 crore originally arrived at by the director general of audit R P Singh. who conducted the actual audit, dad.
Father: Go on, son.
Son: The CBI had originally pegged the loss at Rs22,000 crore in its FIR against A Raja. However, it revised the amount to Rs30,984.55 crore while filing its charge sheet, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: The Central Vigilance Commission has put the loss at Rs26,000 crore in its investigation, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stated that it is not possible to quantify the loss with certainty, dad.
Son: The redoubtable Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Communications and Technology, had arrived the loss at ZERO using his advocate brain, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: It may be noted that the loss is only notional and is being arrived at by different persons with different assumptions, the amount varying from Zero to Rs1.76 lakh crore, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: Ultimately it appears that the focus should be on how much money A Raja & Co made through random allocations of 2G spectrum instead of wasting time and energy in arriving at this notional figure, dad!
Father: I don’t know, son!
The IITs Go Full Circle!
Son: Narayana Murthy, the legendary founder of Infosys, has stated that the quality of students entering the IITs has deteriorated over the years. He has attributed the poor standard to the coaching classes, which prepare them for the entrance test, dad.
Father: True. Go on, son.
Son: Earlier Jairam Ramesh, the then Environment Minister, had claimed that the faculty at the IITs was not world-class, dad!
Father: True. Go on, son.
Son: It appears both Jai Ram Ramesh and Narayana Murthy have complemented each other by making a total assessment of the IITs by covering faculty and students separately, dad!
Father: I don’t know, son!
IIT Student – Not Interested in Engineering (Guess Who?)!
Son: Narayana Murthy’s remark on deterioration in the quality of students entering IITs has found support from IIT heads, dad.
Father: True. Go on, son.
Son: IIT Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthy has stated that there is a need to select well-rounded students by taking school scores also into consideration, dad.
Father: Go on, son.
Son: IIT-Guwahati Director Gautam Baru has said that most of the students preparing for the examination are not even interested in pursuing engineering, dad. He says they want to sell soaps, not become engineers, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: Meanwhile one old IIT student, who did his mechanical engineering from Delhi IIT, appears to have taken the remark of Narayana Murthy too seriously, dad.
Father: Go on, son.
Son: He went to the extent of saying that Narayana Murthy was running a body shopping company and calls it high-tech, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: Incidentally this man fits into the category of the present day students referred to by the director of IIT-Guwahati, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: He was least interested in pursuing engineering and branched off to investment banking initially - only to end up as a storywriter and a columnist, dad!
Father: I don’t know, son!
Another Real Estate Casualty!
Son: Yeddy, the ex-Chief Minister of Karnataka, had to tender his resignation in the face of several allegations about land/site allotment scams, dad.
Father: True. Go on, son.
Son: It is no wonder that even the persons appointed by him to the top posts are also equally involved in such land scams, dad.
Father: Go on, son.
Son: Shivraj Patil, the Lokayukta appointed by Yeddy, had to tender his resignation following a controversy over allotment of housing society sites for him and his wife against rules, dad.
Father: True. Go on, Son.
Son: Now it is the turn of the Upa Lokayukta Justice R Gururajan to resign, dad.
Father: Go on, son.
Son: Even though he has attributed ‘personal reasons’ for quitting the post, it is said that he had bought a plot in Judicial Employees Housing Society despite owning two houses in Bangalore, dad!
Father: Go on, son.
Son: It appears most of the appointees of the Yeddy Government are involved in one or the other land/site scams, dad!
Father: I don’t know, son!
A V Krishnamurthy
13th October 2011
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