Financial sector stalwart and HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh speaks on bureaucracy, judiciary, lobbying and other issues. Excerpts from an interview:

What makes Deepak Parekh the man at whom the government look up to in the time of crisis?
There are many points of views always and there are differences of opinion. Ultimately decisions have to be taken in life. And the decisions taken in life have to be fair, have to be equitable, have to be tactical and enforceable. Enforceable means implementable. There is no point in saying I will sell this card for Rs 1,000 when it does not have that value. So you have to be practical in life and you must decide. Our problem in India is that we take far too long in decision making. Simple things get delayed for years and months. That's why we are known (to be) so bureaucratic. What is definition of bureaucracy? It is delay. As we know and this is old common statement British invented bureaucracy and we perfected it. Like you know simple matter takes a long time, our legal system is not effective because the timely decision never come by.

Industry as well as policy makers bank on you during a crisis and ask your help for troubleshooting. Your comments?
You people use that word trouble-shooter. Someone uses lobbyist. I am not lobbyist.

What is your view on the insurance sector in India and the road ahead?
First of all I always feel that insurance sold in India is predominantly ULIPs, which is not long-dated insurance. We have grown with LIC selling traditional insurance policies. Life cover, SEBI rightly says, is very minimal in the insurance. But it is a product in which there is public stake after all. Like my father took a 30-year policy on me and I was paying the premium which matures some years ago. I have taken policies for my kids with maturing period of 20 years. But the younger generation is not taking traditional insurance policies. They are all interested in capital market. Basically, both have good points.

What according to you are needed to remove discrepancy from the ULIPs?
May be the life cover in ULIP should increase because life cover is very small and may be the distribution cost of insurance is too high that has to come down. There must be stricter and more stringent distribution norms because you cannot take 40-50 per cent as commission. It is all right in 30 years policy to do that.

Coming back to the topic with which we started – the art of negotiation. How do you bring sense into warring group whether it is Jet-Sahara or other?
I have not done many of this. Only thing is that everyone realises, in a dispute, going to court in India is the last resort. Because it takes 10-20 years because courts are bogged down. Besides courts, others are first resort. We need, I would say, doubling of courts in India. We are not doubling high courts and doubling judges. Have you heard of new courts coming up, have you heard of doubling of judges? Today backlog of cases are so huge that you know that justice delayed is justice denied. Now, if you see a World Bank report on doing business in India, we will come very low. Because the point is, dispute resolution takes long-long time in particular the engineering contract and construction contract. You need quick decisions. So we have to take quicker decisions. Decision making is one of our weaknesses. It is said in a democracy decisions take longer because you have to build consensus. But if its clear conscience decision, it should not take long. If there are vested interests, if there are undercurrents, if there are motivated interest of people, taking decisions take longer.

In this case, one major controversy or one major issue that parliament has witnessed the role of lobbying and lobbyist in India. Lobbying business is not been legalised so when you say motivated corrupt practices. Somehow or other lobbying is associated with this. How do you tackle this particular issue?
Lobbying in India is there but lobbying all over is also there. In some countries, lobbying is done by very important senior government officials. America is an ideal case. Various ambassadors are lobbyists, so lobbying is not bad. It is a decision maker who has to look at all the issues and take a decision rather then sit on the file.

Is the decision making process hurting you in many ways?
In India there is feeling that the best way is not to take a decision because 75 percent of the problem disappears if you don't take a decision over a period of time.

--PTI Economic Service