National and International Appointments

The environmental clearance for the Rs.15000 crore Vedanta University project promoted by the Anil Agarwal Foundation has been put on hold by the Central government to re-examine allegations of illegal activities by the promoters. On April 16, the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests had issued an environmental and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearance to the University, proposed to be built on 6,000 acres along the Orissa coast between Puri and Konark.

Glimpses of Indian Stock Markets, a book authored by former Executive Director of BSE, M. R. Mayya was released in May 2010.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on February 9, 2010 constituted a committee under the chairmanship of former Reserve Bank of India Governor Bimal Jalan to review issues related to ownership and governance of market infrastructure institutions.

Stock exchanges, trading platforms, clearing and settlement systems, payment systems, depositories, registrars and other market intermediaries will come under the review. 

The committee will look into the ownership pattern of depositories and clearing corporations, said SEBI Chairman CB Bhave. 

The other members of the committee are KP Krishnan, joint secretary, Ministry of Finance, Kishor Chaukar, MD, Tata Industries, Uday Kotak, MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank. G Sethu, officer on special duty, National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), KM Abraham, whole time member, SEBI and JN Gupta, executive director, SEBI (member secretary).

Dr. S. Ayyappan took over as the new Director-General of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and as Secretary in the Department of Agricultural Research and Education on January 1, 2010. He replaces Mangala Rai, who retired on December 31, 2009 after two extensions.

The task force constituted to suggest steps for stimulating growth in the IT, ITeS and electronics hardware manufacturing industries has submitted its recommendations on January 21, 2010. Headed by Ajai Chowdhury, Chairman & CEO, HCL Infosystems and chairman of Task Force, and 12 other IT industry executives, the Task Force has recommended that broadband should be made readily available. The task force believes that this would lead to better access to information (search), access to transactions (pay per use applications, computing), as well as access to interactivity.

President Barack Obama has chosen retired lieutenant general James Clapper, as his new Director of National Intelligence. He would replace Dennis Blair, who stepped down in May 2010. The post was introduced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to oversee the 16 agencies that make up the US intelligence community.

The Planning Commission on January 9, 2010 appointed Kirit Parikh, as head of the expert group to prepare a strategy for low carbon economy for India. Nitin Desai, Ajay Mathur, Jamshed Irani, and Pawan Goenka are among the other members of the 25-member group.

State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Om Prakash Bhatt is set to take over as the new chairman of the Indian Banks' Association (IBA). The present chairman, M V Nair, who is the chairman and managing director of Union Bank of India, and the senior most banker chief, has relinquished the post. Bhatt will be in charge of IBA till he retires in March, 2011. The IBA acts as an important link between banks, regulator and the government. During Nair's term the industry group completed and implemented industry-wide wage negotiations including a second pension option for public sector bank employees.

The Union Finance Ministry on May 31, 2010 set up a seven-member committee called Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects, headed by UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani to advise the government on a host of IT initiatives in various areas such as income tax, the new pension system and the proposed GST (Goods and Services Tax). The group has been given a timeframe of six months to submit its report and make recommendations on the roadmap to roll out five projects - tax information network (TIN), the new pension system (NPS), the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the expenditure information network (EIN) and GST.

Apart from Nilekani, the other members of the committee are SEBI Chairman C.B. Bhave, IT Secretary R. Chandrasekhar, former chairman PFRDA Dhirendra Swarup, former Member (CBDT) S.S. Khan, former Member (CBEC) P.R.V Ramanan, and President of ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, Nachiket Mor.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on June 2, 2010 set up a committee, headed by former Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman Meleveetil Damodaran, to look into the issue of services offered by banks to retail and small borrowers and suggest a mechanism to expedite grievance redressal.

The committee will review the role of the board of directors of banks and the role of regulators in customer service issues.

Other members of the committee are P Rajyalakshmi Rao, former member of National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, New Delhi, Ashok Rawat of All India Bank Depositors' Association, M V Nair, chairman, Indian Banks' Association and chairman and managing director, Union Bank of India, B. M. Mittal, chief executive officer, Banking Codes and Standards Board of India, M S Sundara Rajan, former chairman and managing director of Indian Bank and S Gopalakrishnan, former chairman and managing director, Vijaya Bank, Chennai. Kaza Sudhakar, chief general manager of customer service department of the RBI, will be the member secretary.

India's National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon will shortly resume the boundary talks with his Chinese counterpart. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh introduced Menon as India's new Special Representative on the boundary negotiations to the Chinese delegation during his meeting with President Hu Jintao at Brasilia on April 15, 2010 during the Brazil-Russia-lndia-China (BRIC) Summit. Menon will be India's fourth among the line of Special Representatives negotiating with China since the mechanism was created in 2003 when the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited China. Menon succeeds Brajesh Mishra, J N Dixit and M K Narayanan, all of whom served as national security advisers.

Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, is among 19 members chosen by UN chief Ban Ki-moon on March 4, 2010 for a high-level advisory group on Climate Change Financing tasked with mobilising funds pledged during the Copenhagen meet to tackle global warming. The Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December 2010 had failed to produce a legally-binding treaty. Instead, it settled for the Copenhagen Accord, whose key elements included a limit of 2 degree rise in global temperature; USD 100 billion in long-term financing to developing countries and USD 30 billion in short-term financing to the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

Prabeer Kumar Basu on March 2, 2010 assumed office as the new Agriculture Secretary.

Dr. Y V. Reddy is the author of the recently released book India and the Global Financial Crisis: Managing Finance and Money.

'Who Do You Trust, India?', a survey published in the March 2010 issue of magazine Reader's Digest has ranked former President and scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the most trustworthy person in its list of 100 people in India. Following Kalam are chairman of the Tata group Ratan Tata; former police chief Kiran Bedi; Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy; composer A.R. Rahman; chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand; Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh; cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, cartoonist R.K. Laxman and at tenth place, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Wipro head honcho Azim Premji and space scientist Madhavan Nair. The survey was conducted by online market research group Digital Edge.