Expense Account, Mint
As a rookie reporter I was petrified that I would not be able to provide enough detail in a story under the editing keyboard of my editor. After looking stupid several times, I would set out to interview with a list of questions that included the name of the CEO’s dog, the brand of nail polish his wife favoured, the colour of the wall behind his head and other such trivia that I thought may suddenly be needed at 11.45pm on a Saturday. But along the way, I learnt to filter out the noise from the meat and gather information without asking inane questions. I wish I could say the same for the list of 29 questions that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) sent to banks last week in an attempt to gather information on mis-selling by wealth managers. Here’s a prediction: The answer set that RBI gets on these 29 questions will take it no closer to understanding the bank mis-selling equation.