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Category: Features

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Could reforms bolster India’s financial fault lines?

Posted on by Penguin India

Upendra Kumar Sinha has contributed significantly to shaping India’s capital markets in multiple roles, including as chairman of UTI Mutual Fund and head of the Capital Markets division in the Ministry of Finance. Credited with the revival of the mutual funds industry and bringing in reforms to protect the rights of investors, Sinha has spent decades leading the financial front of the country towards growth and stability. In Going Public, he shares the landmarks on the journey of a nation striving for economic progress and prosperity.

Read on to know about  four reforms that shaped India’s financial landscape:

 

The UTI[Unit Trust of India] Act and the changing role of the government –

Even though the government had no shareholding or operational control in UTI, it was still perceived to be a government institution on account of its association with IDBI, its tax exemption schemes and other contributing factors vis-a-vis the UTI Act, 1963. The already limited role of the government was curtailed further when, in 1997, the practice of having government nominees in the trustee board of UTI was discontinued on the rationale that UTI should be run by a board of experts.

‘Thus, when the crisis developed in 2001, it came to light that the government had no mechanism for timely and first-hand knowledge. In fact, it was the stand of the government that UTI had kept it in the dark. On this, the JPC[Joint Parliamentary Committee] lamented that the government did nothing to emerge from the darkness. After the crisis, Yashwant Sinha reversed the decision over government nominees…’

 

Amendment to the SEBI[Securities and Exchange Board of India] Act in 2002

The SEBI Act, 1992 allowed the organization to demand records or information from only a limited set of entities but its powers were restricted when it came to prohibiting and investigating misconduct. A game-changing move that strengthened the position of both SEBI and investors was made in the form of the 2002 amendment in the SEBI Act which increased the power of SEBI to deal with misconduct or fraud and led to a crackdown on notorious entities.

‘SEBI could then designate one of its officers as an investigation authority who could not only demand the production of records from  “any person associated with the securities market in any manner” but also keep such documents in its custody upto six months. In case of reasonable suspicion that documents may be destroyed, SEBI was also authorized to conduct search and seizure after getting approval from a court.’

 

 Allowing reforms to allow debt to be raised from the market

In order to reduce dependence on banks it is essential to create alternative sources of funds. One way of facilitating growth is making reforms to allow debt to be raised from the market. SEBI, the RBI and the government have been continuously trying to make provisions for the same by simplifying procedures and bringing in uniformity and transparency.

‘Rules regarding credit rating agencies were made stronger and uniformity was implemented in the rating symbols. At the same time, rules about debenture trusts were tightened. Since credit rating agencies and debenture trustees are also supervised by SEBI, better coordination amongst different players in the chain could be established. The government also helped by allowing pension funds to invest in corporate bonds.’

 

Front Cover of Going Public
Going Public | U.K. Sinha

 

Entrepreneurship with Alternative investment funds (AIFs)

Across the world, a popular method of raising funds for start-ups and new generation companies is Alternative investment funds (AIFs). This unique class of investors raise money from different sources and invest in new and promising private companies based on a prediction of future growth potential. To promote this method of funding, SEBI formulated an AIF Regulation in 2012 and saw positive results.

 ‘In 2016, AIFs invested more than $16 billion in different companies. In 2018–19, the total funds invested were close to $32 billion. Now, even corporates and rich individuals are setting up funds to invest in start-ups. Many of them are also mentoring the assisted companies, besides making financial investments.’

 

 

 

‘It is not unique to India that changes in the laws governing stock exchanges and share market have been enacted only after major incidents of misconduct have taken place, and not preemptively or when these problems were still much smaller and more manageable,’ writes Sinha. However, scams and deficiencies that challenged India’s financial systems led to reforms that strengthened the economy.

 

 

The anonymous letter

Posted on by Penguin India

Celebrated writer and festival director Namita Gokhale is back with her latest novel, Jaipur Journals. This time, she offers us a diverse cast of characters whose worlds collide in the Jaipur Literature Festival: an author who receives a threatening anonymous letter, a burglar with a passion for poetry, a twelve-year-old prodigy, an American woman looking for the vanished India of her youth, a lonely writer who carries her unsubmitted manuscript everywhere with her, and a historian who reunites with a past lover.

As rich as the Festival itself, Jaipur Journals is a metafictional ode to literature. A nod to the millions of aspiring authors carrying unsubmitted manuscripts in their bags, the book is an intimate look into the pretensions and pathos of the loneliest tribe of all: the writers.

In the excerpt below, we give you a glimpse of one of these stories.

*

A volunteer with a round smooth face and dark shining eyes stepped forward to address the group. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘please excuse me, but which of you is Ms Zoya Mankotia?’

Zoya swished her mane of grey flecked hair and lifted one grey black eyebrow in interrogation. ‘You mean me?’ she asked, almost girlishly, almost coquettishly.

‘One of your fans was waiting for you—he left this card which he wanted delivered to you,’ the smooth-faced volunteer said. ‘And I must tell you, Ms Mankotia, that I too am a great fan of yours … I would love you to sign a copy of The Quilt for me.’

Front Cover of Jaipur Journals
Jaipur Journals || Namita Gokhale

She handed over a pale purple envelope, which had Zoya Mankotia’s name written with a purple marker, in a neat italic hand. Inside was a card with a photograph of a kitten wearing a purple ribbon around its neck.

The message was written in capital letters, in purple ink. It was brief and brutal. ‘Miaow Ms Mankotia!’ it said. ‘I can see through you. You faithless bich, I know what you have been up to, how many women you have betrayed. And your pathetic intellectual pretenshuns leave me speechless! And your novel, The Quilt, is a copycat version of Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf. You plagiarizer, you pornographer . . . Your time is up.’

Zoya’s expression did not change when she read this, although the set of her jaw tightened visibly. She put the card back into the purple envelope and passed it wordlessly to Geetha Gopalan.

‘So who is this mysterious fan?’ Geetha asked in her jolly booming voice. ‘May I read it?’

Zoya nodded. Geetha Gopalan opened the envelope. ‘What on earth is this?’ she asked in surprise.

‘It is an anonymous letter,’ Zoya replied, lifting first one eyebrow, and then the other. ‘Or an anonymous card, to be accurate, a deeply critical pretty kitty card.’

‘An antediluvian troll,’ Geetha Gopalan responded. ‘What a nasty man he must be!’

‘He could be a woman,’ Shonali Sen ventured. The card had been circulated to her and Leila Nafeesi as well.

‘I can never make out if men hate women more, or women themselves,’ Zoya Mankotia said.

‘Purple is a woman’s colour, somehow,’ Geetha Gopalan observed thoughtfully.

‘Oh, don’t please get into these tired gender stereotypes,’ Zoya snapped, her voice combining weariness and anger.

Leila Nafeesi had been quiet all this while. She spread out her fingers to display her long nails, which were painted purple. She had beautiful, pale ivory hands with rings set in silver on all her fingers lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, topaz. ‘The colour purple,’ she said. ‘By the way, I don’t believe someone with such an elegant italic handwriting doesn’t know how to spell—it’s a pose.’

*

To find out more about the letter, and to meet all the other attendees, step into Namita Gokhale’s literary world today!

Escaping the Life I Never Chose- An Excerpt from ‘A Good Wife’

Posted on by Penguin India

At fifteen, Samra Zafar had big dreams for herself. Then with almost no warning, those dreams were pulled away from her when she was suddenly married to a stranger at seventeen and had to leave behind her family in Pakistan to move to Canada.

In the years that followed she suffered her husband’s emotional and physical abuse that left her feeling isolated, humiliated and assaulted. Desperate to get out, she hatched an escape plan for herself and her two daughters.

A Good Wife tells her inspiring story.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

—

I wake to the crackling of bird calls outside my bedroom window, the anemic light of a Canadian spring morning seeping through the curtains. I lie very still, listening. The house is quiet. My in-laws are in the bedroom down the hall. My husband sleeps ten feet below me, in the den. My infant daughter slumbers peacefully beside me. At first, I’m surprised to see her. Why didn’t I put her in her crib in the room next door last night? Why is she still here with me? And then I remember. I rub a painful spot on my upper chest. My heart aches almost every morning, but today my ribs are sore as well.

As my drowsiness falls away, another feeling works its way through my body. A frayed, rippling tension, a growing brittleness: anticipation and fear. At any moment, the cold brick house will come alive, and I will be thrown together with the rest of the inhabitants. If all goes well, Ahmed will take his lunch and walk wordlessly out the front door, and I will start on a long, dull day, locked here in the house with his mother and my daughter. The hours will creep by, broken only by chores, television, empty chat.

But perhaps it won’t be dull. Yesterday was not dull. Or at least it didn’t end that way. And I have come to understand that in this new world of mine, anything other than grey monotony is scary. Anything else is dangerous.

My daughter shifts. I can hear my mother-in-law’s slippers as she begins to pad about her room. It is time for me to go in to say salaam. It is time for me to head downstairs with the baby. It is time for me to make my husband’s lunch. It is time for me to start my dreary routine.

As I rise, I realize that I am saying a little prayer. I am praying for luck. I am praying for another dull day.

Intrigued about what happens next? You will have to read  A Good Wife  to find out!

The Generous Nawab- An Excerpt from ‘Bahawalpur’

Posted on by Penguin India

In the seventy or so years since Independence, much less has been written about the Princely States which acceded to Pakistan than those that remained in India. The name of the once great State of Bahawalpur is no longer remembered among its well-mapped peers over the border in Rajasthan.

Bahwalpur by Anabel Loyd is a record of the conversations between the author and Salahuddin Abbasi who reminisces about his family and sheds light to stories of Bahawalpur’s princes from old records, letters, and the accounts of British travellers and civil servants. The following is an intriguing excerpt from the book:

—

Nawab Bahawal Khan had ruled for long enough to see his enemies fail, fall or die off. He had avoided confrontation with Ranjit Singh through judicious advice to the Sikh leader during his siege of Multan, being rewarded with gifts of an elephant and a shawl, added to several instalments of ‘friendly messages’.

 

Bahawal Khan’s most inveterate enemy, the makhdoom of Uch, died and was succeeded by his son, Makhdoom Shams ud-din and his brother who was recognized by the nawab when he rode to Uch in person to perform the ceremony of placing the ‘Turban of Recognition’ on his head. In 1808, Mountstuart Elphinstone came to Bahawalpur en route to Kabul on the exploratory journey he described  in An Account of The Kingdom of Caubul and Its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary and India.

The Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I had raised, for the first time, the fear of overland invasion of India by Russia in alliance with the French bogeyman, and the governor general, Lord Minto, sent Elphinstone to Afghanistan, with other envoys to Persia and to Ranjit Singh, to gain promises of cooperation in the event of French incursions.

It is unsurprising that Elphinstone was impressed by Bahawal Khan. He must have been impressive to have successfully maneuvered a path through the hurdles, both of the tribal enmities of his times and greater invading powers. Before ‘we enter on the narrative of the passage of an embassy from the British Government’, it is too irresistible not to digress to Shahamet Ali’s rose-tinted description of England, where the roads of London are ‘paved with stones of various colours’, the town always kept in ‘clean order’ while the suburbs ‘are said to be covered with delightful gardens and noble buildings’ and ‘it is a fixed rule with every citizen, rich or poor, to whitewash his dwelling once a year’. That cloudless image might have surprised those breathing in the Great Stink and living through the cholera pandemic of the time.

Elphinstone described Bahawal Khan when he first met him on 1 December 1808 as a ‘plain, open, pleasant man, about forty-five or fifty years of age, he had on white tunic, with small gold buttons, over which was a white mantle of a very rich and beautiful gold brocade and over it a loongee. About six of his attendants sat; the rest stood round and were all well dressed and respectable’. The following day, ‘the Khan received us in a handsome room with attic windows and ‘conversed freely on all subjects’. He ‘praised the King of Caubul’ but had never seen him and ‘please God he never would’. He was a ‘desert dweller and feared the snows of Caubul’. Instead, ‘he could live in his desert, hunt his deer, and he had no desire to follow courts’. The nawab then demonstrated the skills of his people with a ‘curious clock’ made in Bahawalpur and gave Elphinstone parting gifts of greyhounds, two horses, ‘one with gold and one with enameled trappings’ and a very beautiful matchlock ‘with a powder flask in the English fashion’.

Elphinstone added, the nawab ‘has been liberal and kind to us without over-civility or ceremony’, with ‘an appearance of sincerity in everything he said’ and had shown ‘a spirit of kindness and hospitality which could not be surpassed’. Elphinstone was astonished that, unlike other princes he had encountered, they did not have to ‘struggle against the rapacity of the Nawab’, who, on the contrary, ‘would take nothing without negotiation’ and was himself almost embarrassingly generous in his gifts, sending a profusion of sweetmeats, flour, nuts and raisins, ‘a vast number of baskets of oranges’ and, most difficult to accept, five bags of rupees to be divided amongst the servants. 

It appears the ambassador and the nawab were pleased with each other—certainly this meeting and the first treaty of friendship between Bahawalpur and the British was the start of a remarkably close friendship.

Anyone with a penchant for history and politics would definitely consider the book, Bahawalpur an insightful read, shedding light on the troubled history of Pakistan which has clouded a clear picture of it and shrouded its component parts. Give it a read tell us what you think!

 

So Many Gods! Richard Dawkins’ Quest into Faith and Spirituality

Posted on by Penguin India

Author Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind.

In Outgrowing God, Dawkins, as a bestselling science communicator, gives young and old readers the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.

Find an excerpt from the book below, where he introduces the historic and current frameworks of god and religion within which we need to rethink questions of faith, religion, and spirituality.

 

Do you believe in God?

Which god?

Thousands of gods have been worshipped throughout the world, throughout history. Polytheists believe in lots of gods all at the same time (theos is Greek for ‘god’ and poly is Greek for ‘many’). Wotan (or Odin) was the chief god of the Vikings. Other Viking gods were Baldr (god of beauty), Thor (the thunder god with his mighty hammer) and his daughter Throd. There were goddesses like Snotra (goddess of wisdom), Frigg (goddess of motherhood) and Ran (goddess of the sea).

The ancient Greeks and Romans were also polytheistic. Their gods, like the Viking ones, were very human-like, with powerful human lusts and emotions. The twelve Greek gods and goddesses are often paired with Roman equivalents who were thought to do the same jobs, such as Zeus (Roman Jupiter), king of the gods, with his thuderbolts; Hera, his wife (Juno); Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea; Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love; Hermes (Mercury), messenger of the gods, who flew on winged sandals; Dionysos (Bacchus), god of wine. Of the major religions that survive today, Hinduism is also polytheistic, with thousands of gods.

Countless Greeks and Romans thought their gods were real – prayed to them, sacrificed animals to them, thanked them for good fortune and blamed them when things went wrong. How do we know those ancient people weren’t right? Why does nobody believe in Zeus any more? We can’t know for sure, but most of us are confident enough to say we are ‘atheists’ with respect to those old gods (a ‘theist’ is somebody who believes in god(s) and an ‘atheist’ – a-theist, the ‘a’ meaning ‘not’ – is someone who doesn’t). Romans at one time said the early Christians were atheists because they didn’t believe in Jupiter or Neptune or any of that crowd. Nowadays we use the word for people who don’t believe in any gods at all.

 

Outgrowing God asks pertinent and highly relevant questions on life and human connection. Concise and provocative, it is a crucial guide to thinking for yourself.

Standing By One’s Principles- An Excerpt from ‘Excellence Has No Borders’

Posted on by Penguin India

Have you ever hit a point so low where hope was your only option? Dr B.S. Ajaikumar did too. He lost twenty million dollars and he almost lost his son. He hit a point where he stopped feeling that life was worth living but what brought him back was his zeal to never give up. His innate tendency to test the limits of his mental endurance. His tenacity for his principles. His family. Himself.

Meet Dr. Ajai Kumar in Excellence Has No Borders: 

—-

As a young adult, I was not immune to these social upheavals. With my tendency to stand up for the underdog, my internal volcano seemed to bubble up at the slightest hint of injustice. At St John’s, I was known to be an unapologetic leftist who stood for values. I was just over sixteen years old, the youngest in my class. I do understand that sixteen years was very young to get into medical college. Fortunately, I was able to get several double promotions in my primary and middle school due to new educational rules. I used to sit in the second bench and was very nervous, since it was my first year at university. All the other students in my class were adults, street-smart and hostel boarders.

 

One incident that transpired among the hallowed portals of St John’s changed things considerably. The physics teacher had a bit of an accent and used to pronounce ‘cc’ (cubic centimetres) as ‘sheeshee’. One day, unable to control myself, I ended up covering my mouth and laughing. Face contorted with anger, the lecturer strode up to me.

 

‘Take your books and get out!’

 

I sat there in silence, without moving.

 

‘I said take your books and get out,’ he repeated.

 

Finally I found my voice. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. When I’m not guilty, I won’t go out.’

 

Anger turning to mortification, the lecturer blurted, ‘I will report you to the Father, who is the head of the department of physics!’

 

‘Please do.’ I felt strangely calm.

 

I was reported to the head of the department and summoned by the Father. This was a matter of principle for me. I was ready to stand up for it. 

 

I told the principal, ‘Father, I will not leave the classroom when I’ve done nothing wrong.’

 

I was able to hold my ground, and no action was taken against me. My older classmates began to treat me with respect after this incident. It crystallized for me the importance of standing like a rock by one’s principles. Coupled with my internal volcano of tenacity and my hunger for challenges, this gave my emerging personality multiple dimensions. I would no longer stand with my head bowed when injustice slapped me in the face. I would not take indignities lying down. I would not shy away from taking someone on when they threw down the gauntlet to me. In the coming years, it would be one or more of this triad of personality traits that would come to the fore when it came to life decisions or whenever I found myself at a crossroads.

Dr. Ajaikumar has always stood for what he believes in and has had a tactful, problem solving approach to every hurdle that has stood between him and his goals. His book reflects the strength he’s had to gather to face every hurdle that has been thrown at him.

Read more about him and his experiences in his book, Excellence Has No Borders.

Story of the Much-Loved Flautist: Hariprasad Chaurasia

Posted on by Penguin India

As it listens to the sounds you create

The entire world stands in awe

Forgetting themselves each one asks

Is this the scent of flowers, or a flute that plays? 

In the age of record stores, it was rare to go into a record shop and not see a recording of Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, the master of the bansuri or bamboo flute. One of India’s most popular artistes, he is in Mumbai today, Paris tomorrow and San Francisco the day after.His mesmerizing flute can be heard in many of Hindi cinema’s most popular songs, in a composition by the former Beatle George Harrison, as well as in recordings with renowned musicians from across the world. Sathya Saran’s Breath of Gold will inspire and introduce everyone to the story of this amazing artist.

Not convinced? Read on to know more about Hariprasad Chaurasia:

 

 

By combining tradition with innovation, Pandit Chaurasia expanded the scope of expressiveness of the bansuri and was, thus, awarded a plethora of awards, including the Padma Vibhushan. (Source: India Today)

*

If it were up to his father, he would have been a wrestler.Yet, he broke away from the life that was chosen for him and wrote his own destiny.

*

In his early teens, Pandit Chaurasia took lessons in Hindustani classical music from noted Benares vocalist Raja Ram. After hearing one of his performances, Bholanath, a well-known flutist, made Chaurasia his disciple and made him go through eight years of rigorous training. (Source: Britannica)

*

Pandit Chaurasia also studied with Shrimati Annapurna Devi, daughter of Ustaad Allauddin Khan. In Bombay, he also got the additional exposure of performing in one of India’s cultural centers. Through years of experimentation and dedicated practice, Pandit Chaurasia brought global recognition to the bansuri. (Source: IAAC)

*

Hariprasad Chaurasia has also been a guru to innumerable students in his Mumbai and Bhubaneswar gurukuls, and at the World Music Department, Rotterdam Music Conservatory, the Netherlands, where he is artistic director.

*

Hari- ji, as he is fondly called, never gives up, and nothing can keep him from his music. Not the trembling of his hand, not a sudden shortness of breath. He overcomes it all with the strength of his will and his ability to laugh off every hurdle age places in his path.

 

 If you want to know more about this musical genius check out Breath of Gold.

Why You Need to Read About the New Rules of Business

Posted on by Penguin India

As the business-world becomes increasingly dynamic, innovative, and experimental – the benchmarks for brand-building are changing. Playing by a set rulebook is no longer enough. There are new (and higher) expectations now, and with them come new rules of doing business.

From learning to prioritize employees’ well-being to investing in products that can do their own marketing – the market today has gradually dismantled the old rules and installed new ones in their place.

Author Rajesh Srivastava has brought together over three decades of his corporate and academic experience and the result is his debut book, The New Rules of Business, to present compelling anecdotes and insights about new age companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber to explore how and why they have made it big in the market.

In an age of entrepreneurship, this book is a must-read for people across careers and professions. We list down some of the reasons that make this such a relevant read today.

To Keep Up with New Age Companies

New age companies, Uber and Ola, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hot Star, Amazon and Flipkart are dismantling the old rules of business and installing new rules in their place.
It is the age of innovative entrepreneurship, and to be able to take any step forward in the business-world, it is imperative to keep up with the names disrupting and revolutionizing the industries today.

This book presents compellingly-written anecdotes and case-based insights, which makes it highly accessible and readable even for layreaders.

*

To Identify Irrelevant ‘Old’ Rules

What triggered the collapse of Nokia? Not a competitor from the handset industry. It was iPhone introduced by Apple, which was from a different industry.

The market is no longer following the ‘old’ rules, as seen in the case of Nokia. New age competitors are indirect, invisible & from cross industry.

If you continue to operate your business using ‘old’ rules, then it would be equivalent to using rotatory phones in an era of smart phones, you run the risk of a Nokia-like fate.

*

To Arm Yourself with Newly Minted Rules to Take on the World!

In our careers – entrepreneurial or otherwise – we are constantly faced with business challenges. Most of us search for the answers in the areas ‘lit’ by our current level of knowledge.

But more often than not, the solution may very well lie outside of it.

This book will introduce you to the newly minted rules of business. Armed with them, you can feel inspired and confident to take on business challenges and come up with trumps and out-of-the-box solutions.

*

The Rules are Relevant for All – Veterans and Beginners

All the points above make it evident that new and upcoming entrepreneurs can benefit a lot by making themselves aware of new rules and challenges of the market today. But, what about veterans and experienced businesspeople? What new tools, techniques and frameworks can this book teach me?

This book is a must-read for veterans and beginners alike – simply because the rules of business have well and truly changed. And even though the challenges might be by and large the same, the solutions for satisfactorily resolving them have changed.

This book will introduce you to new thoughts, ideas, tools, techniques, and frameworks which will help you come up with impactful answers to business challenges.

Creativity, knowledge, and out-of-the-box thinking have become crucial factors for potential and prospective customers today. Just being a brand is not enough, you have to be a ‘cool’ brand to make customers truly happy. The New Rules of Business presents relevant insights into all these facets.

Deemed Public Issue or Doomed Investment? An Extract From ‘Going Public’

Posted on by Penguin India

Upendra Kumar Sinha has contributed significantly to shaping India’s capital markets. He has been the guiding force behind reforms to protect the rights of investors and make stock exchanges more secure. Under his leadership, SEBI successfully fought a long legal battle with Sahara, and led the crackdown on other institutions which conducted unauthorized deposit collections.

Reiterating the importance of joint efforts of the government and regulatory bodies, Sinha in Going Public writes, ‘When there is a crisis or the financial stability is at stake, the government and the regulators have to mutually reinforce each other.’

Read on for a glimpse of how companies lure investors-

In spite of clear legal provisions, many companies have deliberately resorted to raising funds from hundreds of thousands of members of the public by taking recourse to the private placement route even though it was restricted for issue made to less than fifty subscribers. The maximum number of subscribers in a private placement has now been enhanced to 200 under the Companies Act, 2013. The main intention of companies that violate this rule has been to mislead investors and avoid stricter public scrutiny. Subscribers are denied full information about the true financial condition of the company and its actual business. They are not aware how much money is being raised, how many subscribers there are, the duration of the issue, or the corporate purpose for it. In addition, there is often a strong push from agents and salesmen. Investors are often duped into making these investments without any idea about the risk factors, or the remedy or guarantee available to them in case of refund or redemption.

In most cases, the preferred instrument is debt instead of equity. Generally, debentures or bonds (both terms are used interchangeably) are issued as these contain provisions of an assured rate of interest. People find these assurances very attractive. The rates of interest offered are very high so that these debentures can be easily sold. Several complications can be built into these instruments. A debenture can be convertible into equity, either partially or fully. The conversion into equity shares can take place at the option of the investor, compulsorily after a period or be linked to an event in future, such as the share prices of the company crossing a certain band. But, instead of highlighting these complications, agents push the instrument on the strength of the high rate of interest being offered.

Although many companies have taken recourse to it, the Sahara case is the biggest example in the country of a deemed public issuance. The surprising fact, however, is that neither SEBI nor any other government agency such as the RBI or MCA raised any red flag about such a large amount of money being raised from the public in utter violation of the law. Had Sahara Prime City Ltd (a group company) not decided to list on the stock exchange and thereby be forced to make disclosures to SEBI regarding its group entities such as Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL), the matter would never have come to light. It is also significant that the process of issuing these optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs) started around the same time as the RBI placed severe restrictions on the working of Sahara India Financial Corporation Ltd (SIFCL), a non-banking finance company of the group. SIFCL had been asked by the RBI not to raise any fresh deposits from the public and to close all existing deposits and reduce its public liability to nil in a given time frame. It is no coincidence that around the same time, these new instruments were issued by two companies of the Sahara group.

According to their own admission, the net amount raised by the two companies was more than Rs 24,000 crore from more than three crore investors.

 

Upendra Kumar Sinha is known to have been the longest-serving chief of SEBI. He also served as the chairman and managing director of UTI Mutual Fund and was head of the Capital Markets division in the Ministry of Finance. In his candid and historically important memoir Going Public, Sinha reminisces on his journey through India’s changing financial landscape.

To know more, read Going Public!

A Diwan with Foresight- An Excerpt from ‘The Magnificent Diwan’

Posted on by Penguin India

The Magnificent Diwan by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy waxes eloquent about Hyderabad’s truly magnificent Diwan, Sir Salar Jung I. A Diwan with a foresight who was one of the firsts to establish an organized system of government in Hyderabad, Jung restored its prosperity and developed its resources to such an extent that the nizam’s dominions were as orderly as any other part of India. 

Reintroduced to a generation that doesn’t have an inkling about him, Dadabhoy in the introduction of the book writes –

To understand Salar Jung, we must understand that his most dominant sentiment was devotion to the nizam. He did not hesitate to oppose the nobles of the court, and to reform every department of the disorganized administration, because he realized that the strength of the ruler lay in the firmness of the administration. His loyal attitude during the Mutiny was but a part of this well-considered policy. Throughout his career, the mainspring of his policy was the interest of his master, the nizam. His loyalty to the British, notwithstanding his childhood influences, sprang from a deliberate conviction that the maintenance of British authority was the best pledge of safety to the dynasty he served so faithfully. At the risk of his own popularity, and often at the risk of his own life, he refused to align with fanatics. For the nizam’s sake, he bore the humiliation he received from the British which resulted from his persistence on the restoration of Berar. He bore with meekness the frequent indignities to which he was exposed in the palace, and waged a constant and unequal battle against fanatics and other malcontents. Till Afzal-ud-Daula’s death, Salar Jung had never left Hyderabad, a fact which makes his administrative reforms still more remarkable, since they were accomplished in spite of the opposition of a capricious nizam, and hostile nobility. His strong individuality, firmness and caution gave him an ascendancy in Hyderabad which no previous diwan had attained.

The difficulties he faced, unusually trying and complicated in themselves, were compounded by the fact that he was never able to rely on the support of the court because he was identified with a policy of reform which threatened vested interests. Imbued with a liberal education and outlook thanks to the English influence in his formative years, Salar Jung honestly believed in the superiority of British administration. He adopted the fundamentals of British principles of administration in his reforms which covered almost every sphere of activity: land revenue, police, judiciary, administration and education. Sir Richard Temple, who was resident in 1867, believed that Salar Jung, as a man of business and in matters of finance, had no rival among Indian ministers. European influences had greatly moulded his thinking, and Temple recognized that he was a great imitator. Whatever improvement the British government introduced, he would sooner or later adopt, to good effect.

It is no surprise that British influence preponderated, since apart from his own predilections, he was encouraged and advised by successive residents who wanted to foster good government, not only in Britain’s own interest, but for a principle as well. Carrying ‘civilization’ to India was both an imperial necessity and a mission of pride in the nineteenth century.

To read more about Sir Salar Jung I’s reign, check out his biography, The Magnificent Diwan. We’d love to know what you think!

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