Putin's magic moment

Dilli is still reeling from the fact that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has pulled off the single largest armaments deal in the UPA regime in a simple 22-hour sortie. It of course helped matters substantially that the brief, but precisely targeted Putin visit was timed to take place in the aftermath of the Women's Reservation Bill. Arriving on the eve of its passage through the Rajya Sabha, Putin evaded and avoided any attention. His aim was clear. To clear almost $10 billion dollar (Rs 441 crore) worth of purchases. A K Antony signed off without a murmur and Putin left without a whimper.

u00a0The most controversial of course is the heavily overloaded price for the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, but equally liable to controversy, buried beneath the weight of ladies in the Rajya Sabha were the arrangements for the construction of up to 16 nuclear plants in India. The question that Dilli is asking is whether Putin and the top UPA leadership had plotted both sets of baits appropriately. Either way the magic of the moment worked in Putin's favour. Who else, also benefited is yet a matter of quiet conjecture.

Lost advantage
Public sector undertakings, never known to match the salaries in the corporate world, had nevertheless seen an upsurge in interest from graduates of the Indian Institutes of Management last year. During the recession, most private companies and multinationals stayed away from recruiting IIM graduates.

But now with the economic forecast looking rosy, and private sector hiring aggressively once again, Dilli is worried that PSUs find few takers. The buzz is that even those graduates who were forced to take up offers with PSUs last year are now looking for greener pastures. The PSUs are back in cold storage as far as recruitments go and worry beads form.