Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by Sucheta Dalal - Page 2

We are neither prepared to deal with dubious companies nor have the mechanism for swift investigation. What's more we don't even have a culture, which imposes stringent, debilitating and deterrent punishment on wrong doers.

Few Indians realise that the shift towards a market economy requires us to be alert and to fight for our rights and very few of us are willing to spare the time or money for such battles.

For Indias 40 million taxpayers, the bulk of whom are salaried employees, forking out hefty service tax is a double whammy the government taxes them on income earned as well as all their expenditure.

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.

Journalism itself is by no means pristine clean; it has as many corrupt elements as other sections of society.

Every one of us encounters, tolerates and often participates in the most blatant corruption in every aspect of our everyday existence - licenses, permissions, gas connections, until recently the black market in buying telephones and scooters, traffic violations... even violence and murder be it wife-beating, bride burning or bonded labour.

Some argue that even physical databases were open to abuse and fake passports or driving licenses were fairly common. But technology, coupled with poor security systems, can ruin innocent victims lives by wiping out their bank balances or investments, or by misusing their identity for dubious deals.

Sure, investors do tend to overreact, but they are investing real money based on doubtful information. Complacency or a wrong move sees their money literally vanish into thin air.

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.

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.

Indian companies have begun to pay lip service to the concept of intellectual capital but a miniscule of them, that too non-family run businesses, understand what that means.

There is no doubt at all that the government monopoly over the insurance business had to end. There is a crying need for better service, more innovation, and a comprehensive insurance cover.

When dozens of company results are flooding newspaper offices everyday, an occasional fraudster slips in what looks like an authentic press release, with fake company results/information aimed at manipulating share prices.

Mumbai is on a seismically sensitive zone; it is also dangerously exposed to the sea.

Consumers have to become an appropriately strong and vocal lobby capable of embarrassing the political establishment.

Entrepreneurial freedom and funding of potentially good businesses will certainly increase the number of wealthy Indians, create employment and have some cascading effect in the economy.

Senior politicians and police officers as well as their children get away with murder and run extortion rackets. It is all accepted with some anger and a shrug.

There is little incentive even for the media to encourage whistle-blowing or ruffling powerful feathers. They lose advertising, are harassed by government and cut off from the all-important 'A' lists of the rich and the powerful.

For some reason most Indians seem to think that it is the job of the media to fight corruption and their own role is restricted to sighing over their newspaper, or debates on the local train as they commute to work.

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.

Globally, the toll-free numbers advertised by companies promise more than they deliver. And even websites are at pains to ensure that customers cannot get through to individuals, so there are no names, phone numbers or direct e-mail IDs to people in charge.

If e-wallet providers are unregulated, dubious operators will easily manage to avoid audit trails and electronic finger-prints.

Nobody expects the tax collector to be a friend, but one does expect the government to apply its mind to making payments and refunds fair and user friendly especially for those who are actually paying tax.

There is nothing as nervous as a highly overbought and slightly crazy stock market dominated by greedy small investors and day traders all out to squeeze a huge profit out of the present bull run.

We do not have to sit back and suffer the consequences of corrupt government deals and inefficiency, but unless a large number of people are convinced of this, nothing will change.

In an ideal world, judges are not supposed to read or be influenced by media reports. But it is difficult to ignore television news which does not distinguish between reportage and comment.

To investors, the media is largely undependable as a source of policy information they have been wrong far too often. And business leaders and industrialists are obliged to make welcoming statements, whatever their real sentiment.

Security concerns are especially high with regard to the e-filing of Income Tax returns that is rapidly being extended from commercial entities to individuals. Leading IT security experts and tax consultants are unhappy at the lack of security in e-filing of Income Tax returns.

Economic liberalisation has seen a big and often well-deserved spurt in executive compensation, especially for professional managers.

The e-wallet allowed anyone with a valid e-mail ID to send and receive money from just about anybody, or to settle bills through money stored online in safe systems. All it needed was registration on the e-purse providers website by filling out a simple form.

If you are a small investor, do take the basic precaution of going to a registered broker/sub-broker and getting receipts for your transactions. Or simply shrug you losses away as you would if you lost your shirt at a casino.

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.