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The biggest merger in Indian banking is about to happen. HDFC Bank will take over Centurion Bank of Punjab in an all-stock deal. The respective bank boards are likely to meet on Saturday to consider the merger proposal. In the pecking order, the merged entity will be way below India’s biggest private sector bank, ICICI, in terms of assets but will be significantly bigger than Axis Bank. 

On Wednesday, officials of both the banks held marathon meetings with a leading investment banker to discuss the finer points. ET had first reported on February 13 that Centurion Bank was exploring a merger, and HDFC Bank was one of the institutions it was in talks with. The share-swap deal, worth over Rs 10,000 crore, may be worked around the current market price of Rs 57 a share of CBoP. This is the second time after almost six years that the two banks are discussing a merger. While the last time it fell through on valuation reasons, what has worked this time is the personal equation between the brass of the two banks.

HDFC Bank MD Aditya Puri, CBoP chief executive Shailendra Bhandari and CBoP chairman Rana Talwar are all ex-Citigroup bankers. Mr Bhandari was also a pan of the core team that set up HDFC Bank in ‘94. Interestingly, Citigroup is also the single-biggest shareholder in HDFC-the mortgage giant and parent of HDFC Bank. Mr Bhandari will join the board of the new bank while speculations are that Mr Talwar will be its non-executive chairman. Sources said the HDFC group had a far more ambitious deal in mind: a three-way merger between Centurion, HDFC Bank and promoter HDFC. However, they decided to go ahead merging the two banks first with RBI unwilling to relax the reserve requirements (like CRR and SLR).

The shameful attacks on north Indians in Mumbai by lumpen elements allegedly owing allegiance to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have sent shockwaves across the country. What is more shocking is the indifference of the state government. It has failed to take action against Raj Thackeray, the MNS chief, who continues to instigate gullible Maharashtrians. This is only adding to the insecurity of lakhs of non-Maharashtrians who live in Mumbai, Which was once regarded as India’s only cosmopolitan city.

The excuse offered by some leaders of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, which runs a coalition government in the state, is that Raj Thackeray’s arrest will make him a hero and serve his objective of projecting himself as the saviour and custodian of Maharashtrian culture, the very plank on which his uncle Bal Thackeray established the Shiv Sena 42 years ago.

Even more shocking was the photograph that appeared in a national daily. The photograph showed Raj Thackeray - against whom an FIR had been registered - being greeted by the Mumbai Police Commissioner at his’ daughter’s wedding. Later, TV clips showed a senior police officer going to Raj Thackeray’s residence to check his security.

All these incidents have led to speculation that the state government was perhaps supporting the MNS leader to curb the Shiv Sena, which is making inroads into state politics. By stating on the TV that charges against Raj Thackeray were being verified, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has further eroded the credibility of his own government. North Indians, who provide the support services in virtually every sector of the city, are yet to get any safety assurance from him. It is obvious that the Samajwadi Party and some others will try to cash in on this in UP and Bihar. The supreme irony is that the loudest protest against these attacks came from former Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam who is now in the Congress.

Even Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan’s statement that Bal Thackeray is a father figure went uncontested in the game of politics. The Congress and NCP leaders failed to ask the minorities’ - who form the backbone of the SP what they thought of the remark given that Bal Thackeray was being spoken in such revered terms by a SP leader. In fact, no one else in the party made any effort to distance

themselves from the parochial politics of the Shiv Sena. Mumbaikars’ need to ask themselves a very simple question: can incidents like these be allowed to continue? Mumbai has always been a city where people from other parts of the country have made the best use of opportunities that have come their way. Even Maharashtrians who are Mumbaikars like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar are revered nationally not because they are from Maharashtra but because they are exceptionally talented Indians first and foremost. Any attempt to look at any other person living in the city in a parochial way would be wrong. As Indians, all of us have the right to pursue our interests in any part of the country.

The Ambanis, the Birlas and the Bollywood superstars or many others are not Maharashtrians but are as much Mumbaikars as anybody else. Each citizen contributes in a big or small way. And, leaders like the Thackerays cannot discriminate against them.

More than Mumbai, it is Delhi, the fastest-growing metropolis, which is facing the challenges of migration. But then has anybody started an agitation against the migrants here? Delhi is perhaps a large-hearted city, where even Bangladeshis are accepted. The influx of people from UP or Bihar can also be seen as a reflection of the quality of governance and opportunities available to the people in their own states.

Whatever may be the case, there is no denying that people from UP and Bihar have proved their mettle wherever they have gone. The myth of the Punjabi farmer would be shattered if labourers from these two states did not provide the manpower. The domestic help in Delhi would collapse minus ‘arty activist, Mumbai these people. Even in specialized and technical services, bureaucracy, police and academics, people from UP and Bihar have excelled. Kolkata, like Mumbai, may have its own views about people from these two states, but we have to learn to coexist peacefully and not discriminate against anyone. In political circles, many think that Sharad Pawar, one of the shrewdest politicians, could not become a truly national leader because he was projected as Maharashtra’s shareholder in national politics.

To support this faulty thesis, it is argued that, other than P.C. Alexander and one or two others, Pawar has never allowed a non-Maharashtrian to get elected to the Rajya Sabha. But if he has done so, he may be right since the Rajya Sabha was a council of states, which it has ceased to be after the conditions of domicile were relaxed.

In the end, Mumbaikars have to take the lead and tell the world that the parochial designs of a few will never be allowed to succeed. As far as the state government goes, it must restore respect for the rule of law.

The Kidney racket that was unearthed in Gurgaon and Faridabad, while shocking, will not push up many eyebrows. The police team from Moradabad that busted the case arrested several doctors who were involved in the criminal trade for years. This shows how deep its roots run, as urologist-turned-organ traders solicit ‘orders’ for kidneys - and other organs - from patients who fly into India and are supplied with ‘matches’ obtained by swindling poor labourers.

For too long has this great Indian kidney bazaar gone on, with the poor induced to sell their body parts to meet the transplant needs of high-paying customers. Ironically, the chief problem in checking this illegal commerce seems to be loopholes in the very legal system that regulates organ transplantation in India: the Transplant of Human Organs Act (THO). While the Act proscribes monetary exchange between donors and recipients, its vague text allows would-be recipients to exploit the absence of any monitoring or enforcement mechanism.

 Most of the kidney scandals that haunt the country are evidently a result of patients and clinicians misusing this section of the law, which can, by default, be read as legal permission to do live unrelated transplants. No wonder this lets criminals abuse medical ethics and peddle organs at will for financial gain.

It is high time this aspect of the law was tightened, so that genuine cases could be helped. Transplants in the West were originally performed using organs from bodies where all functions had stopped.

These often failed, as the organs are viable only for a short while after the heart stops beating. Although the concept of ‘brain death’ (where the brain is irreversibly damaged, but the heart beats) has now been more or less widely accepted, the idea is still frowned upon in India.

The government should educate the public on the concepts of brain death and establish an Organ Retrieval Bank Organization that could network hospitals for organ donations and coordinate transplantations. This is also a good time perhaps to speed up stem cell research that could solve the problems of non-availability of organs and delete forever the unacceptable trade in them.

India could be emerging as a conduit for counterfeit medicines sold in major export markets of the world like the US, EU and Japan. These exports may have reached alarming proportions, forcing multinational companies to rope in former Interpol officials to counter the growing menace of fake drugs.

Companies like Sanofi Aventis, the Euro 28 billion (Rs 1,61,000 crore) French drug major, have identified places such as Mumbai airport as a particularly sensitive port of departure and are trying to “train” customs and excise officials to deal with the situation. “We believe companies in India are making copies of our drugs that are sub-standard and are hurting sales of many of our top-selling drugs in countries abroad,” said Wilfred Roge, former official in the French police, in India on behalf of Sanofi Aventis.

According to police officials, India has emerged as one of the top three producers and exporters of counterfeit best-selling drugs such as Viagra and Plavix in the Asia-Pacific region. Pramod Agarwal, additional customs commissioner, Mumbai airport, said companies that feel their intellectual property rights were not being protected needed to register with the appropriate authorities. Agarwal refused to comment either on the training sessions or whether Mumbai airport is being used as a port of departure for these drugs.

The customs commissioner’s office at Mumbai airport recently gave a go-ahead for a ‘familiarisation session’ with the airport’s excise and customs staff where former Interpol officers shared their findings.

Officials in the drug controller general’s office say though numbers may be inflated as foreign companies consider even sub-standard drugs as fakes, the problem exists. Assocham recently raised the alarm about a 20-25 per cent rise in the number of counterfeit medicines in the country.

The Indian BPOs are controlling pharmaceuticals business worth millions of dollars across the globe, challenging their counterparts in Brazil, Nigeria and other countries - typically enjoying low labour costs and operations.

Now, they have even started to threaten multinational between companies. In faking. Deftly using  loop-holes in the Drug and Cosmetic Act in India to produce counterfeits of pharmaceutical products. All components of end product-packages, labels and the generic drug are exported out of the country in bulk. All the elements are assembled in countries like Brazil or Nigeria from where they are exported to US markets.

According to the Deputy Director General of Drug Control (western region), Kapil Bhargava, there is no provision in the law for authorities to check the exports, neither is there a provision to detect counterfeit products. “We can act in case of a spurious or substandard product against specific information. We also do random checks but that needs testing of samples. But we cannot do anything against generic drugs meant for exports. If the supplies are not substandard, it does not concern us,” he said.

Also, the department does not have any legal provision to confiscate packaging and printed matter. “I cannot do anything in such cases as they will show me valid export papers from margin some press,” he added.

In case of spurious drugs, specific complaints are generally necessary if they are not detected through random checks. Though he would not agree that the problem was acute - he valued the counterfeit market only at 3 per cent while industry figures paint a much more grim picture of the situation.

He also claimed that the onus was on the companies to carry out checks and have an intelligence network to detect counterfeit.