Letters

Hard-knock Lessons
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The economic headwinds set off by the downturn did take businesses for a rough-knuckled ride. But as Lessons Learnt in the Downturn(BT, Jan. 10) proves, it made even hard-headed CEOs reinvent the strategic DNA of their companies to avoid getting whacked in future.
— Shashi Shekhar, Bangalore

Fighting Business Downturns
Your latest cover story offers business lessons that can make diehard strategists of future corporate chieftains. Not only were your pick of stories informative and interesting, they showed how companies that took innovative and experimental leaps during the downturn were able to avert their business models from hitting the wall. The intrepid breed of entrepreneurs and CEOs featured in your cover package demonstrate how businesses can be retooled to feed off adverse conditions and even thrive in situations of crisis.
— Vineet Achyut, Delhi

Learning and Wisdom
In light of the corporate neuroses that spread in the wake of the downturn, the advice and lessons from top business guns are both instructive and illuminating. Though there's no dearth of info about the whys and wherefores of the crisis, we remain starved for the knowledge and wisdom of those who have passed through this wringer. Your cover package is all the more useful for presenting what the downturn meant to the corporate bosses and how they negotiated the challenges along the way.
— S. Umashankar, Nagpur

A Non-starter Pension Scheme
Thanks for drawing attention to the lacunae in the New Pension Scheme (Holes in the Safety Net BT, Dec. 13). Though the potential market for pensions in India is enormous—some 284 million working age people lack formal pensions — the NPS has not been able to attract subscribers in strength. I feel the scheme is not positioned and marketed the way it should be and has failed to reach out to potential participants.
— Bal Govind, Noida

Corrections
The introduction to the story "Now we think of housing as manufacturing" (BT, Jan. 10) should have read: After a bruising year, an aggressive disposal of assets and going beyond premium housing helped Unitech bounce back. The intro published had said non-premium housing. In the same issue, in the story "Stay with your long-term goals", Ronnie Screwvala's correct designation is Co-founder and CEO, UTV Software Communications. The errors are regretted.

A Homage Well Deserved
The most fitting tribute to women power that I have come across is by Aroon Purie, Editor-in-chief, India Today Group, when he says in Power Rangers (BT, Dec.13), "...if Lehman Brothers were Lehman Sisters, then the markets would have grown rather than crashed."
— J.S. Broca, Delhi