First Post

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) apparently believes in different strokes for different folks. The regulator has been adopting different yardsticks for penalising different insurance companies for the same purported offence. Earlier this year, the public sector United India Insurance Company was fined Rs 5 lakh under the provisions of section 64 of the Insurance Act, 1938, for opening 35 new branches across the country without its prior permission. The IRDA, however...

Can a potential Rs 17,500 crore penalty for gross violation of the Insurance Act be whittled down to Rs 20 lakh? Surely not, one may say. But this, in fact, is exactly what the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has done for Reliance General Insurance Co, an Anil Ambani group company. Simply put, this is the violation. Reliance sold 3.5 lakh health insurance policies without informing IRDA - which is illegal. So when IRDA found this out, in an order dated 23 July 2009, it...

Reports of Maoists mobilising people against dams in Arunachal Pradesh, shortly after Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had warned about ultra-Left presence in Assam, can only mean that policymakers both in New Delhi and the North-East can no longer ignore the presence of the Reds in the region. The situation in the state is increasingly worrying, especially now that captured Maoist members have reportedly confessed links to elements in the North-East. Gogoi’s claims were not backed by reports...

A disaster, unfortunately, is an opportune time to visit certain issues. Sunday’s earthquake gives us reasons to look at the issue of dam safety in India. True, the quake didn’t have an adverse affect on any of Sikkim’s dams. But then, that was probably sheer luck. A quake-hit dam can be a catastrophe of untold proportions – which I’m sure no one needs to be told. Reports from Sikkim have been slow in trickling out, but there has been one report of one National Hydroelectric Power Corporation...

Last month, chemists in many states went on a day’s strike to protest against some proposed norm about the sale of antibiotics. Not many cared about it. The issue at hand, however, deserved more serious attention. It concerns the lives of one and all. The grounds for chemists to shut down shop was the government’s reported move to check over-the-counter sale of antibiotics, and to make prescriptions compulsory for selling such drugs. The government ostensibly wants to control the menace of...

Did Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest insurance companies in the world resort to a back-door entry into India in order to circumvent caps on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the insurance industry? A closer look at the facts indicate enough grounds for suspicion. Berkshire India Private Limited is a majority owned non-direct subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc incorporated in India, with 100 per cent FDI in paid-up capital. It is a licensed corporate agent of Bajaj Allianz General...

There’s a fundamental problem with ethnic political accords — you only know in hindsight whether it worked or not. Such accords are often, though not always, a result of political expediency, especially if one of the major parties is a new incumbent. But it is always fascinating to look at one at face value when one is scripted — like the tripartite agreement signed this afternoon by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), the West Bengal government led by Mamata Banerjee, and the Centre. Mamata, on...

It should hardly come as a surprise that the government which presided over one of the biggest mining scams to have hit this country should be averse to a UNESCO heritage tag for the state’s natural resources. The BS Yeddyurappa government in Karnataka, which sat over widespread environmental degradation in Bellary not to speak of the preceding loot, has written to the Union government refusing permission to allow UNESCO to nominate 10 forests in the Talacauvery and Kudremukh regions of the...

A sudden slap on the face is often hard to take. That’s why the death of an environmental activist on a hunger-strike protesting illegal stone quarrying and rampant mining in the state of Uttarakhand comes as a shocker. It is a rude whack on our faces because when Baba Ramdev was being force-fed to break his fast over the corruption issue in full media glare, a few hundred metres away Swami Nigamanand lay unnoticed, counting his last days. A ‘Save the Ganga’ crusader, Nigamanand had been on fast...

The anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) has asked an oil and gas company engaged in exploration work in Upper Assam to quit the state within 45 days. There can be little mistake in assessing the situation – it’s a desperate measure by the marginalised faction led by Paresh Baruah to make its presence felt. And it’s doomed to fail. There is, for sure, no need to panic at the threat. Yet Baruah is someone you can dismiss only at your own peril. If nothing, his faction...