Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died in the Dutch town of Vlodrop at the age of 91 years. Maharishi, famous for his Transcendental Meditation centres that sprung up across the world,
was born as Mahesh Srivastava in Jabalpur in 1917 and studied physics at Allahabad University. He became the foremost disciple of the Shankaracharya
of Jyotir Math Swami Brahmanand Saraswati but could not succeed his Guru because he wasn’t a Brahmin; being born in a Kayastha family. Social worker and reformer Murlidhar Devidas Amte, popularly known as Baba Amte, who spent his life serving eprosy patients and working for their rehabilitation at his commune for leprosy patients ‘Anandvan Ashram’ at Warora village in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra passed away at the age of 93. He received many national and international awards, including Padma Vibhushan, Gandhi Peace Prize, Ramon Magsaysay and Templeton Prize.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a slew of development package worth Rs.10000 crore for Arunachal Pradesh that includes a Rs. 5,500-crore 1,840-km trans-Arunachal Pradesh highway; the 3,000-MW Dibang power project, the country’s biggest hydel project; the 110-MW Pare power project and a new airport for the State capital Itanagar.
The Supreme Court has reversed an earlier order banning Jallikattu, a festival involving bull
fighting in two villages near the town of Madurai, Tamil Nadu. The Union govt has issued a notification for implementing the ‘Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition Of Forest Rights) Act, 2007’ which gives the forest
dwellers exclusive rights over its resources, essentially aims at
providing a framework to recognise these rights. The Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu has threatened to take over the plants of the 13 private cement manufacturers in the state if they fail to reduce prices, which are currently ruling between Rs 245
and Rs 260 per 50kg bag. The Karunanidhi government is backing up its threat with plans to import cheap cement which will be sold directly to consumers. The Manmohan Singh Cabinet has approved a central scheme to provide 25 lakh pre-matric
scholarships to students from minority communities in state-run and private institutions for which Rs 1,868.50 crore during the 11th five-year plan has been approved. The Union government will put in 75% while the states are expected to invest 25%.
Chandrasekhar Bhaskar Bhave is the new
Chairman of the capital market regulator
Securities and Exchange Board of India. He
takes over from M Damodaran, who
completed his three year term as the
Chairman of SEBI in February, 2008. This will
be Bhave’s second stint with SEBI. The 1975-
batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre
was the executive director in charge of the secondary and later the primary
markets between 1992 and 1996.
That was the time when the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) was taking its initial steps
to reform the stock exchanges and putting in place systems that help in investor protection. The
Bombay Stock Exchange was then known as a brokers’ club and Bhave was on the board of the
exchange in his capacity as a representative of Sebi. It was during his stint in Sebi that his boss, G V
Ramakrishna, banned badla. Bhave also played a pivotal role in ensuring that market players get
sophisticated hedging tools and are properly regulated.
Bhave maintained that the capital market regulator’s primary job is to protect individual investors and
simultaneously develop systems that take care of the interests of issuers — companies and
intermediaries. He also ensured that the new National Stock Exchange’s surveillance systems were top
class.
Bhave is known to be a tough administrator. As the head of the National Securities Depository Ltd
(NSDL), he revolutionised the capital market by getting market players to accept the new system of
dematerialised shares and debentures.
He won buyers' support by arguing that demat would eliminate bad deliveries of shares and impressed
upon the sellers that this would facilitate early settlement and early payments. Setting up of a
depository that converts physical share certificates into electronic form was a challenging task but the
NSDL achieved paperless trading within just three years, the fastest in the world.
All this experience will come in handy when Bhave takes over as the sixth chairman of SEBI. For, the
challenges are many as the investment climate is much more dynamic now than when he was the
executive director.
He is also coming in at a time when the market sentiment is not favourable for small investors and
many of them have had huge losses in some of the recent high profile IPOs. Short selling and physical
settlement in derivatives are the other issues that Bhave will have to grapple with soon. The allotment
and listing process also needs to be speeded up to safeguard the interests of small investors. Analysts
say his predecessor M Damodaran has ensured that the homework for all these is ready and it is up to
Bhave to “implement” them.
