New-age tech
Gadkari’s hydrogen car wows, but also shocks
It was truly a shock and awe moment when transport minister Nitin Gadkari drove a hydrogen-powered car to Parliament last week. Much of India was awed by the clean fuel Toyota Mirai the minister travelled in, as it held out a promise to free India from expensive and dirty fuel and usher in a new era of cheaper, cleaner technology. But there were some who were shocked by his hydrogen-fuelled outing. They wondered if the technology was tested for its suitability to Indian conditions and whether the car had clearance to run on the streets. The pressure in hydrogen cylinders used in cars is many times more than that in ordinary cylinders. Therefore, these hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) need rigorous testing and multiple approvals before public use. There is no information available as to which authority approved Gadkari’s FCEV to be driven into Parliament house. Mirai, which means future in Japanese language, can be secured by carefully calibrated and consistent march on the growth path; not by pulling off a stunt, experts said.
Unfair access
Probe into NSE scam gets wider
The one-man SEBI probe conducted by whole-time board member Ananta Barua found only one company — OPG Securities – guilty of taking undue advantage by colocating its server in proximity to the NSE server. The CBI is now looking at about 30 brokers who could have had unfair access to the NSE server. The investigative agency is probing them on the basis of a report by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, which said these 30 brokers made profits to the tune of `2,582 crore during 2010-14. Insiders, however, say that the number of brokers who benefited due to the advantage of colocation could be in excess of five dozen. They say the Central agency is sure to discover more names as the probe progresses, and the unfair profits made by these brokers would turn out to be in multiples of the figures revealed so far.
Carrot & Stick
Storm in Congress blows over, for now
Interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi appears to have mollified chief dissenters Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari. According to sources, Gandhi has offered to renominate Ghulam Nabi and Anand Sharma to the Rajya Sabha, and make Hooda the president of Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee. Manish would be given a party post he has been coveting for long. She met these leaders separately and conveyed her decision to them. The biggest issue, however, remains to be resolved. And that is conducting free and fair organisational elections, including elections for the post of Congress president and Congress Working Committee membership. This issue has been made the central point by leaders such as Kapil Sibal, Shashi Tharoor, Vivek Tankha, Prithviraj Chavan, etc. They have been demanding transparency in decision-making and inner-party democracy. Insiders say the Congress president may take decisions to address some of these concerns. But holding free and fair elections would continue to remain the sticking point between the leadership and dissenters. A temporary truce, however, prevails for now.