Make home loan rates transparent

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: There would be an issue if a modification suggested by the proposed multi-country supervisory board were found unacceptable by a regulator in another country. For example, nothing stops the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission, the stock markets regulator in the US) from rejecting a modification in IFRS, and asking companies to file disclosures in another format. Such differences would prove costly for issuers of capital and negate the purpose of unified global standards. Cultural differences have been the core cause for differences in accounting and disclosure practices. How much countries will be willing to adapt, in the interest of business exigency, is something that has not been well tested. IFRS is perhaps the biggest live test of challenges in cultural convergence and globalisation.

Big-ticket investments in peril
Long-term investment decisions have never been in greater peril. Firm interest rates, lower business confidence, and threats to production facilities from militant locals do not make a great combination for the much-needed increase in industrial investments. The problem is not just about displaced farmers, their rights, their livelihood, and a fair price for their land. It is also about the lack of clarity in policy on how we would enable the setting up of large business enterprises. It is about mid-course changes in action that stall what the world admires as a technological revolution that the Nano represents. Only because the affected party is a large business enterprise, pitted against smaller landowners, it does not make it all right for the former to take on the loss of production and complete derailing of plans. It is also not all right for a business house to be running between governments and land owners, with no clarity on who is the counterparty with the responsibility to honour a contract.

Singur is only one face of this conflict and of the fear that the mighty would trample the weak. If the list of politicians owning land across the country, close to proposed development projects were exposed, we would know how vested interests work. Land acquisition, whether by government or by businesses directly from locals, is complicated not just by displacement that makes it to the front pages, but also by manipulation by vested interests.