A variety of list builders, universities and non-governmental orgainsations are focussing attention on the accuracy and reliability of information on Web sites.
Anyone born after 1985 has grown up during the post-liberalisation honeymoon, when a rash of new banks, phone companies, airlines, care and durable goods manufacturers were wooing them or their parents for business.
The good news is that the credibility of the Net is already a subject of much research and discussion and there is a serious effort to go beyond surfing tools and lists of ‘best’ and ‘useful’ sites.
We like to joke that India has sick companies but rich promoters. Yet, even after the bad loans and non-payment of dues have turned at least three banks sick, there is no public demand for investigation, accountability and punishment.
In the e-filing system, the accountant has the user identity and password of each company. This would potentially allow a rogue accountant to play serious mischief with the accounts of an entity.
Being an office bearer of a housing society is a thankless job that everyone wants to shirk.
Companies know that children have disproportionate influence over their parents’ purse strings.
Consumers have to become an appropriately strong and vocal lobby capable of embarrassing the political establishment.
A broker who discovers an undervalued stock does not advertise it until he has bought a large enough quantity without letting the price go up. When the brokers’ connection with a stock becomes public knowledge, it is usually a sure sign of manipulation and that the broker is seeking to drive up the price.
The postal department does indeed undertake a lot of thankless work and is forced to provide services below cost for bookpost and the like. The answer may lie in some form of a universal service obligation fund, not price-fixing.
The truth is that development of public transport facilities needs government funding or cheap loans.
The truth is that very few newspapers in the country are willing to do a fair and impartial investigation into the shenanigans of industrialists, politicians or government.
The message for the smart investor is to watch out. Do not get carried away with news reports and turn smart by pooling information with like-minded investors.
Methinks, that a broker, however good and savvy, will only speak about the stock that interest him after he has bought enough of shares already and is now in the process of booking profits.
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days when some bureaucrat in Delhi decided what managing directors would earn, but how about more transparency in reporting pay and perks from multiple sources and giving teeth to institutional investors.
Mobile users happily suffer bad connections, dropped calls, inaccessible networks and pay higher charges for services that would have caused endless annoyance on a fixed line.
The existence of glass ceilings in the corporate sector has been extensively researched and documented and there is no need to reiterate the fact. Women are also, usually paid less then men for the same jobs and are grossly under-represented at the top of the corporate pyramid.
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