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| Poached!: (L to R) Amit Sinha, Sanjiv
Bahadur, Aditya Khanna, and Manish Prakash |
Insurance's
poaching war has just inflicted its first big damage. On July 31,
as many as nine senior executives at Iffco-Tokio General Insurance
called it quits and crossed over to rival Bajaj Allianz General
Insurance. The nine were relieved the same day. Those who quit include
Amit Sinha (Head of Reinsurance), Sanjiv Bahadur (Northern Zone
Head for Corporate Business), Aditya Khanna (Claims Head), Manish
Prakash (Andhra Pradesh Ops Head), A.V. Singh (Head of Strategic
Marketing), besides four others. This marks the single-biggest exodus
from an insurance company since the industry was opened up. All
the nine have their own reasons to quit, but Amit Sinha, 40, claimed
that he wanted to start his own venture in about 10 years. "Before
I branch out on my own, I would like to work at an insurance firm
that is good at retail to add to my experience at Iffco-Tokio, whose
USP is corporate." Assigned risk is a term the industry uses
to describe risk it would rather avoid, but law forces it to assume.
Getting hot-shots execs to work for you is always a good idea. But
living with the fear of your A-team leaving is a risk that employers
like Iffco-Tokio must assume.
-Moinak Mitra
FOLLOW
UP
Vajpayee's Seven
The planning commission
identified 47 projects and schemes as part of India's "Priority
Agenda for Action for 2003-04". Of these, Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee has decided to monitor seven himself. Here's the
status on the chosen seven.
The Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South,
East-west corridor: 1,408 km of the former (total: 5,846 km)
and 557 km of the latter (7,300 km) are complete. The projects are
stuck over land acquisition disputes. Will probably overrun deadlines
(GG by December 2004 and the n-s-e-w corridor by December 2007).
Increasing India's share of world trade
to 1 per cent: The figure stands at 0.7 per cent now, and would
have probably been achieved, PM's intervention or not.
Implementation of National Population Policy
in backward states: Health and family welfare is a state subject;
besides the opposition is in power in some of these states (Bihar,
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh). Difficult to see what the pm can do.
Implementation of the Sampoorna Grameen
Rozgaar Yojana: This deals with the provision of 50 lakh tonnes
of food grains to states and union territories. Should be a breeze;
giving always is.
The implementation of the Pradhan Mantri's
Gram Sadak Yojana: It's good of the PM to want all Indian villages
to be linked by roads. Whether he can actually achieve this is debatable.
The computerisation of the income tax department:
The software, developed by TCS is there, and the goal (linking
36 regional offices of chief commissioners of income tax with Delhi)
is pragmatic. May well get done.
Speedy implementation of an assistance package
for weavers and artisans in the textile sector: Though Rs 2,000
crore has been allotted for this purpose, it is yet to be utilised.
The pm may fare better at giving.
-Ashish Gupta
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