If the government has its way, in three years, you have will have another card to boast of – a unique national identity card.

Already, the government allows the use of passport, PAN card, voter’s ID card, ration card and driving licence as valid identification proofs. Thanks to the new pension scheme there is another card – the Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN) – though it is not a valid ID proof at the moment.

So, what do you produce when someone wants to check your identity? If past experience is anything to go by, the list of possible cards for identity proof will only get longer.

Making the unique identification number the only ID proof does not look possible in three years given the chances of creating a political uproar. Besides, the government has been rather inefficient in issuing cards such as the voter’s ID. Even now the entire voting population is not covered. Many among the lucky ones have cards where the details are wrongly entered and getting it rectified is a nightmare.

But what it will mean is that I can get away with having five different addresses since there is no common database with the government to cross-check the information that I provide. For instance, the address on my passport can be different the one on the PAN card. Similarly, the voter’s ID can have a third address and the address on the driving licence can be the same as the one I gave 15 years ago.

Given the difficulties in obtaining each of the IDs — barring PAN, where issuance has now been simplified, and PRAN – many of us dread the thought of getting the details changed whenever we shift homes.

So, how does it help? In the long run, the idea is to shift to one identification number. But how long is the long run is anybody’s guess.

What it does mean is that there is plenty of business for companies that are in the business of making cards. Apart from the national ID, the government is also working on a biometric PAN card where seven companies have been shortlisted and each one would tell you that the other one does not have the experience in issuing cards and certainly not on the scale that is required.
Maybe, it’s time that a central database is created and all the cards are combined into one. It will not only be easier for us to carry but also for the authorities once the scheme is implemented fully.

Thanks to the election results, Manmohan Singh will no longer be remembered merely as the Finance Minister who ushered in economic reforms. He’s finally found a place in history to be only the third Prime Minister to return to office for successive terms.
So, what should the technocrat-turned-politician do in his second term to ensure that he is remembered as a reformer Prime Minister. Here’s a 100-day action plan.

• Start with corporate governance at home. When it comes to choosing ministers and officials, merit should be the only criteria. Unlike his first term, when all key officials came either from Kerala or Andhra Pradesh, Singh’s second stint should see ‘meritocracy’ being practiced in South Block. That will also help ensure that alerts like the one on the 26/11 attacks are acted upon and not lost in transmission.

• Satyam should make Singh wiser. So, ministers should be firmly told that neither their election manifestos, nor the Common Minimum Programme talk of appointing party workers on public sector boards. He can himself play a small part by ensuring that 75-year old former colleagues are not part of any panels to suggest new ideas for rejuvenation of PSUs, manufacturing sector, unorganised sector, services sector, horticulture, sericulture and aquaculture, among others.

• The new finance minister needs to be told that public sector banks are not an extension of the finance ministry or their books are not linked to the Consolidated Fund of India. So, the minister’s constituency need not be the most-banked district in the country.

• It’s time that Singh’s team of reform-oriented economists understood the difference between State Bank of India and the Reserve Bank of India. If they can’t figure it out, the former Delhi School of Economics professor needs to remind them that he talked about market-based interest rates during his glorious years in North Block.

• The 100-day agenda for governance should unveil a policy on using Sonia Gandhi’s photograph in all infrastructure projects. May be, with the Congress president’s photograph adorning National Highways (a la Atal Behari Vajpayee) the new transport minister will get down to improving highways.

• Singh should be more assertive and make sure decisions are taken during cabinet meetings instead of setting up 100 ministerial panels that do not meet for the next five years. In any case, it helps to seek a report from a minister instead of waiting till he or she is close to being arrested in Dumka or somewhere else. He can draw lessons from his days at the university where he had to manage a class of 65-70 people, who were only slightly better-behaved.

• It is time that Singh conveyed to his media team that he is trying for an image makeover. So, they should stop circulating unsigned statements at global events, such as the G-20 meeting, talking about US President Barak Obama praising Singh the economist. After all, isn’t Singh the politician who, along with Rahul Gandhi, ensured a second straight term for the Congress party?

It has often been argued that phasing out old cars will help push the demand for new vehicles. But the experience with replacement of 25-year-old cabs in Mumbai has so far not proved the hypothesis correct.

With the government deciding to phase out old Premier Padmini cabs that have been on the road for a quarter of a century, many thought that the demand for Maruti Omni, which turned 25 last year, would rise.

But so far, a majority of cabbies have opted for second-hand Maruti 800s, though the Zen and the Alto are the favourites. Most of the replacement cabs have a vintage of five-six years since vehicles older than seven years cannot be registered.
The economics works something like this. On road, a second-hand Maruti 800, with the cost of transferring the permit to paying a brokerage to the middle man, costs around Rs 1.3 lakh. If it’s an Alto or a Zen, the cost is around Rs 1.5 lakh (there is a premium on Alto). If second-hand car prices crash after the entry of Nano, then this market will get a further fillip.

While getting a loan for a secondhand car, especially a taxi, is tougher, the drivers go to informal sources in Dadar and Sion to get the vehicle financed at around 18 per cent a year. A default triggers a penalty of Rs 500, which is added to the equated monthly instalment (EMI). Plus, some have decided to make the entire down payment so there is no EMI burden.
In contrast, the cost on an Omni is upwards of Rs 2.5 lakh. So, even if interest rates are lower for new vehicles, the EMI burden goes up as the loan size is higher.

Also, many drivers say that after driving a Premier Padmini for years, they find it tough to deal with a vehicle which does not have an engine in front.

What also prompted drivers to shift to the informal sources of finance was the paperwork involved in getting a bank loan sanctioned. Now, banks have woken up to the opportunity. And, even non-banking entities such as Small Industries Development Bank of India have also decided to enter the market. The financial institution is tying up with Maruti dealers and using the two taxi drivers’ unions like self-help groups to finance loans. As for funding this business, it is depending on a line of credit from a Japanese agency, which came at very nominal rates, for promoting green ventures (CNG-fitted cabs are also promoting green energy, says a Sidbi executive).

If the experiment works, finance may be made available for second-hand vehicles as well since operating costs are low.

How many of us would have thought that we would have to spend more than Rs 50 to buy a dollar. But that’s the new reality and no one quite knows when things would start looking different.

But by the time things change, the Indian currency itself could see some changes.

The government has already launched a competition to put the symbol ‘Rs’ in the cold storage and find a new identity for the Indian currency on the same lines as the dollar ($), the sterling point (£) or the Euro (€).

The idea is to put get people – especially foreigners — to identify the rupee with the new India instead of sharing the ‘Rs’ symbol with the likes of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Seychelles. It’s a different matter that the British would still use ‘Paki’ to describe an Indian and a Pakistani. Or for that matter the foreigners are now more bothered about their home markets than emerging markets.

But the thinking is that almost all superpowers have their unique identity for their local currencies and by that logic, the Indian rupee should be no different.

A new symbol for the Indian currency is not the only item on the agenda. The currency may also have a new feel.

The government and RBI have been on the job to make the currency less prone to counterfeiting through the use of polymer-based notes. While the issue has been on the agenda for over a year now, a final decision is yet to be taken because of the various lobbies involved in the whole exercise.

Most of the paper and ink used globally for printing of currency notes, passports and stamp paper come from Germany, France, the United States, the United Kingdom. These companies have often cited the poor record of polymer-based notes, which have been tried out in over 20 countries including Australia, New Zealand and Romania, with variants in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Mexico, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

The government had planned to experiment with a million notes of Rs 10 each based on plastic bank note technology. Based on the pilot project a decision will be taken.

Besides checking claims that the polymer notes are more durable, they are said to be less prone to counterfeiting thanks to a transparent hologram. But there are many countries which have opted for these notes and then gone back to the good old paper notes.

While few of us would bother about the substance being used, security agencies which have found a link between the paper used in our currency notes and the paper and ink used by Pakistan for printing passport are keen on devising ways to check counterfeiting.

Public sector bankers are probably delighted that Montek Singh Ahluwalia is not a Lok Sabha member. For, it has saved them the trouble of repeatedly visiting a constituency and footing the bill to launch new products or open branches at mega events there.

Instead, many of them have been concentrating on Yojana Bhawan, which seems to have replaced Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu as the hotspot for public sector bank chiefs.

While this may be dismissed as hearsay, there is nothing better than an advertisement on the front page of many dailies last week which reflects the changing power equations. A bank, which was launching a new product, had Ahluwalia’s picture on top.

One really needs to go back and see if there was any other deputy chairman of the Planning Commission who received such prominent display.

Of course, Home Minister P Chidambaram, the Lok Sabha member from Sivaganga, continues to hog the limelight at events such as a branch launch or even the launch of operations of an insurance company promoted by some public sector banks. It may be attributed to a commitment made before Chidambaram moved from one end of North Block to another. Besides, a home minister is one of the key members of the Union Cabinet. But they are no longer in Sivaganga.

After Chidambaram’s exit from the finance ministry, it is the Planning Commission which provides major inputs in key government appointments and recommending extensions.
Ahluwalia is seen as the key player in the present economic set up and more importantly, the former finance secretary is said to be the man Prime Minister Manmohan Singh trusts the most.

Till recently, finance ministry officials would dismiss Planning Commission’s suggestion as something that sounded good in theory but was not practical.

So, a large number of spending proposals were trimmed. But that is no longer the case. Planning Commission’s suggestion to give the fiscal and revenue deficit targets a miss to focus on social sector spending may have been ignored for at least three years, but at a time when stimulus packages are fashionable — and necessary — Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act is very much on the backburner.

There was a time no so long ago when finance ministry officials took pains to explain that the Planning Commission’s suggestion to use India’s growing foreign exchange reserves to fund infrastructure was not legally tenable.

But all that has changed there is now growing acceptance of everything that comes out of Yojana Bhawan. It can also be gauged from the fact that finance ministry plays second fiddle to Planning Commission when pump priming is done to stay away from the effects of the sub-prime problems, affecting almost all economies.

Similarly, term finance institutions are no longer termed as things that are well past their expiry date. While ICICI, IDBI, IFCI and IIBI may be things of the past, there are new players such as India Infrastructure Finance Corporation, which issue government-guaranteed tax-free bonds — again said to be Planning Commission’s idea.

And, bankers usually do not miss out on emerging trends which explains why there is more focus on Yojana Bhawan than on Sivaganga.