I tried the newly created google scholar law cases and articles search and would highly recommend it to anyone, particularly outside the legal community who wants to do search for cases and legal articles, to use the service. Lawyers have usually flocked towards paid services like LexisNexis and Westlaw, which continue to provide useful though expensive services. Lawyers not willing to pay typically go to findlaw.com.  I would however, strongly recommend Google Scholar for its simplicity and quality of their search results – more for cases than for articles though.

The Economist ran a story this week “Stakes and Mistakes” (link requires subscription) on disinvestment by the government of India of public sector companies. It says the government is privatising the companies for the wrong reason i.e. to reduce fiscal deficit. Instead it should do so to improve governance standards in the companies:

Listing even a small stake helps keep managers on their toes, by subjecting them to the scrutiny of the stockmarket. But the bigger the float, the better.

In fact TT Ram Mohan, my colleague has been saying so for a long time and blogged about it just last week (and his piece in the EcoTimes) – which may have been the basis of the Economist piece. I would like to add that in fact the governance and corporate regulations which govern public sector units should be identical to that of the private sector for the benefits to be really visible. Today swathes of regulations are generally waived or specifically relaxed for the public sector, or often even when rules do exist public sector companies simply violate the law without any serious consequence. Witness the disregard to the listing agreement requirement to have half (or a third) independent directors of so many public sector listed companies.

To add a footnote, in line with the ministry of finance proposal to have a minimum public float of 25% (rather than 0.3%) for all listed companies, it would be good to not relax the requirement for government companies.

If you thought the media in India was fearless and brave, think again. If you thought the new media was even more brave, think twice over.

The government of India appointed the present incumbent Chairman of SEBI, C.B. Bhave in February 2008. There was a cloud over his appointment as there was an on going proceeding against the entity he led NSDL by the regulator, and in the past the regulator had passed several orders against NSDL for negligence arising out of the infamous IPO scam.

Several orders were pending against NSDL at the regulator itself. The government selected the Chairman and for the ongoing action, decided that the cases would be decided by an independent panel of members and the Chairman would recuse himself from such proceedings.

After many months of indecision, an independent panel of non-whole time members was formed comprising of Mr. Mohan Gopal (head of the National Judicial Academy) and Mr. V Leeladhar (deputy governor of the RBI) to decide the cases pending against NSDL (and others). Read more…

In continuation of my last post on educational reforms – there is a clear need for introducing accoutibility into the primary and even secondary education in the public sector. The sad truth of our governmental educational system (in primary and secondary) public schools is that teachers don’t attend school, out of the few who attend occassionally, few really teach. Unless, the accountibility of teachers is fixed by a) attendance records being made public b) a fair part of the salary being conditional upon performance improvements – there is little hope for reforming the lower public educational system.

The interesting success story of parts of India where citizens have sought attendance records of public teachers and the dramatic impact of such right to information applications on the attendance of such schools is an indicator to this key problem in the existing system. Another indicator of the impact of accountibility of public sector education is the ‘Kendriya Vidyalaya’ institutions – which are run extremely well because children of civil servants and important people attend these schools – putting the pressure of accountibility by the bureaucrats on improving their performance constantly.

Looks like there isn’t much on the horizon for reforms in the education sector. The minister of Human Resource Development lashed out at the India Economic Summit 09 against for profit educational institutions, saying ‘nowhere in the world’ is education for profit and such a set up would be ‘unacceptable’.

93% of all educaiton in India is governmental and only 7% with the private sector. Much of the so called private educational institutions are either of poor quality or owned by politicians. In effect because of this outrage against for profit, honest private sector people don’t get into education or face phenomenal rent seeking. Either dishonest people or politicians (because they are immune from the rent seekers) thus find it easy to set up educational institutions. Not only are the standards low because of this arrangement where the money is taken in cash, this also forms the basis of the argument that the private sector isn’t delivering!

The argument that ‘nowhere in the world’ is education private and for profit is plainly wrong. Unless of course the world is comprised of western europe and the US. Europe can afford to subsidise education at all levels and therefore standards of public education are quite high. US educational system is both well funded in the primary and secondary education by the government and by private endowments in the higher education. In India, with the fiscal constraints and because of lack of financial support by the private sector, neither is a real option.

We clearly need to move away from short term political posturing against for profit private institutions – the national demands for education and employability are too great for us to ignore this critical reform.