KERALA ASSEMBLY PASSES A WRONG RESOLUTION?

It is unfortunate that the Kerala Assembly chose to pass a "unanimous" resolution condemning a commercial decision taken by State Bank of Travancore.(SBT). 

The controversial issue is the decision taken by SBT to sell its overdue Education Loan portfolio to an Asset Reconstruction Company (ARC), which is purely out of commercial considerations. The ARC in question happens to be one promoted by Reliance group which has stirred the hornet's nest, it seems!

It is wrongly reported that SBT has engaged the Reliance Asset Reconstruction Company to recover the overdue loans and the company in turn is using high handed techniques for recovering. The fact of the matter may be SBT might have sold its overdue loan portfolio to ARC as permitted by RBI to cleanse its books of the overdue loans. This is also clearly mentioned in the loan agreements that "the bank may sell.assign.... the loan outstandings to another company as deemed fit, in future...." which has been agreed to by the borrowers while availing the loan.

Without realising the whole episode the 'honorable' members have jumped into a conclusion for passing the resolution. This may be due to two factors involved in the issue. The loan portfolio is that of Educational Loan and the ARC is manager by Reliance. 

Had the borrowers chosen to repay the loan taken on time as agreed upon, the Bank would not have decided to sell the portfolio to the ARC. So the party to be blamed, if at all to be blamed, is the borrowers and not the Bank. If the government or the Assembly is so keen to avoid this, government could have taken a decision to take over the entire outstandings from the Bank, thus saving the situation.

I request the MLAs and the cabinet to take pains to study the entire issue and arrange to reverse a wrong decision taken by the House to put the matters straight

PENSION PLAN OF GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

A universal pension plan for every individual in the country in the age group of 18 to 60 years have been launched by the Government of India. As per the scheme, a person in the prescribed age group has to pay a monthly amount till be attains the age of 60 years and after that can receive a pension every month. For example if a person aged 18 years makes a monthly payment of Rs 316/- till he attains 60 years, he would be eligible to receive a monthly pension of Rs 5000/- after 60 years. On the face of it the  scheme appears to be a very good one, but a deeper analysis may not show the flowery picture.

First and foremost is the value of Rs 5000/- after 40 odd years! What will he be able to do with this Rs 5000/- at that time? Will it be of any help to that person in terms of monetary value?

Second question is how the government plans to deploy the funds collected under the scheme. Will there be a separate corpus created from this funds for payment of pension and will it be invested in the market to yield sufficient return? How a person can be sure of getting the monthly pension after attaining the age of 60 years? Isn't it too long a period? In this context, it is worthwhile to recollect similar schemes launched by some public sector organisations in the past and subsequently withdrawn. My reference is to the "Rajalakshmi scheme" floated by UTI for girl students which was withdrawn in 2001, "Deep Discount Bond" issued by IDBI in 1992, Perennial Pension Plan introduced by State Bank of India in 1990s and subsequently withdrawn. Who can predict the financial conditions about 40 years down the line and make a commitment now? And what stand will the government of the day after 40 years take in the matter.

I request the great economists of the country including the Governor of RBI to consider the above issues and advise the Government and public suitably in the matter

Campus Politics- Boon or Bane?

The government move to bring in a law to protect campus politics has its own merits and demerits.  While the minister mentioned that the proposed legislation will have clauses to dissociate major political parties from campus politics, which is welcome, the statement of the young gen mla mr Shari parampil that if politics is banned we would be creating an insensitive generation is a bit absurd. I do not understand why the party based organisations are needed for reacting to any issue. In the 'highly literate' state, the proliferation of political parties and their urge to make their presence in all fields ranging from headload workers to uniformed forces is creating a very dangerous situation in the state. I am at a loss to understand why such organisations should be formed on a party basis. Even though the service rules of the government employees stipulate that no official shall be engaged in political activities, it is a well known and accepted fact that there are pro ldf and pro udf organisations of employees. Unless this is curbed any amount of legislation will not have any effect. 

It is high time that the younger generation leaders thought of the imminent danger in such politicisation of all fields and took a firm stand. Let the students concentrate on their studies and choose the political line once they come out of the  campus.