Image of the Day: Oct. 26

Rajanish Kakade/Associated PressChief executive of Virgin Atlantic Airways, Richard Branson waving the Indian flag sitting atop a taxi in Mumbai. Mr. Branson is in India to relaunch the airline's service on the Mumbai-London route, which had been terminated three years ago.

India\'s Foreign Minister Resigns

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna at a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, in this July 15, 2010 file photo.

S.M. Krishna, India's Minister of External Affairs, submitted a letter of resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday afternoon, ahead of a cabinet reshuffling this weekend, an official in his ministry said.

Mr. Krishna, 80, had been India's top-ranked foreign affairs official since May of 2009, and traveled extensively in those years, including trips to the United States, Pakistan and Myanmar. Questions were sometimes raised about the minister's health after recent meetings. He read a speech prepared for a Portuguese official at a United Nations meeting in 2011.

Mr. Krishna, who was born in Karnataka, studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and got a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. A former chief minister of Karnataka, he is expected to go back to his home state, but not to rejoin politics there, said this official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the resignation was not yet official. “I don't think the pace of a hectic campaign in Karnataka is for him” at this point, he said.

Who Mr. Krishna's replacement would be was the subject of extended speculation in New Delhi on Friday. Prime minister Singh and Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi are expected to pick a successor when they meet on Sunday to discuss the Cabinet reshuffle.

Unexplained Death of Dozens of Whales on Indian Island

Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesMore than 40 whales stranded on a beach in North Andamans, in this photo released by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands department of environment and forests on Oct. 25.

Dozens of whales beached themselves and died on North Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal this week, the first time that such a large number of whales have died in the area.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why.

Individual whales have occasionally beached themselves in the Andamans, but never before in these numbers, said Samir Acharya, presi dent of Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, a nongovernmental organization based in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. “This happens once in a while, every year or every second year,” he said, but “the numbers this time are really large.”

A group of 41 short-finned pilot whales were found near Elizabeth Bay, on the west coast of North Andaman Island, by local fisherman on Oct 21, said Ajai Saxena, additional chief conservator of wildlife in Port Blair, in a telephone interview on Friday. The whales are four to six meters (about 12 to 18 feet) long each and as heavy as four tons, he said.

Officials who conducted a post-mortem investigation on one of the whales did not find any unnatural cause of death, Mr. Saxena said. The 41 whales are being buried in pits on the beach.

Whales migrate in a group, called a pod, to the cold waters of Antarctica because of an abundance of food, Mr. Acharya said , and migrate back to warmer waters during winter to mate and give birth. They use sonar for direction, emitting sounds and using their echos to judge the depth of the water and the direction they are traveling.

Sometimes, Mr. Acharya said, different layers of ocean water, due to differences of temperature and salinity, result in a false echo and confuse the whales, making them think shallow waters are deep.

Military sonar has also been proved to distract whales and drive them off course. In 2000, for example, whales of several species stranded themselves on the beaches of the Bahamas during United States naval exercises. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council about the incident found that “although the Navy initially denied responsibility, the government investigation established that mid frequency sonar caused the standings.”

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that military training trumped protecting whales, and the Navy continu es to use the mid-frequency sonar that is believed to interrupt whales' navigation.

The Indian Navy has a significant presence in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which are seen as a key part of India's defense against a growing Chinese naval presence in the area. The Indian Navy did not return phone calls and e-mails related to the beached whales, and there is no information connecting naval activities with the giant mammals' unusual activity at this time.

A Developed Country Is One in Which Rich People Use Public Transport

Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesThe Bus Rapid Transit corridor in New Delhi, in this April 27, 2008 file photo.

In a landmark ruling that overturns conventional traffic engineering approaches, the Delhi High Court last week advanced the idea that transportation facilities are for moving people, not cars, and should favor all users, not just the minority fortunate enough to use private cars. In addition, it advocated introducing measures that move people out of cars and into public transportation.

The ruling dismissed a petition demanding that the bus corridor from the Moolchand intersection to Ambedkar Nagar in New Delhi be scr apped to create more traffic lanes for private vehicles. The petition, filed earlier this year by Nyaya Bhoomi, claimed that the bus corridor was aimed at harassing commuters and was a waste of public money. It said it resulted in increased travel time for car users and longer idling time due to traffic jams, resulting in wastage of fuel.

The case received extensive media coverage and was widely debated, with several arguments for and against the bus corridor presented. Interestingly, the issue also sparked commentary on the inherent class divisions in Indian society, where the rich minority seems to possess a sense of entitlement over a majority of the public resources.

In 2009, an assessment of the corridor by Embarq, which was used by the defense counsel in the court hearings, revealed that commuters using the corridor as part of their journey benefited from it, and that the delays in general traffic were offset by the reduced travel time for bus commute rs.

However, transportation experts agreed that the corridor left a lot to be desired. The assessment also indicated that the 5.6-kilometer corridor was not a full Bus Rapid Transit (B.R.T.) system, as it lacked most of the critical features of such systems. It also recommended improvements in many areas, particularly the introduction of performance indicators and monitoring systems. The report suggested measures to enhance operations, communications and branding, and also recommended that the corridor be extended to Delhi Gate, as originally planned. However, these recommendations were not implemented.

Another assessment, as a result of a court order, compared the bus corridor with other corridors, and found that the corridors without central bus priority lanes fared better in terms of traffic movement. The court, however, dismissed that report, stating that the comparison was faulty, as the traffic volumes and passengers on the corr idors chosen for the study were unequal. It was a traditional traffic engineering study about vehicle movement, rather than people transported.

Without disregarding the flaws of the bus corridor and the changes that could be made to improve the flow of traffic at critical intersections, the judges, Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh, dismissed the petition to let  all traffic use the exclusive bus lanes.

They reasoned that since a bus could transport up to 200 persons in the course of one journey, as opposed to a car, which would transport 3 or 4 persons, it was not irrational to assign dedicated road space for buses. In fact, what does appear irrational is that when more than 50 percent of road users travel by bus, 98 percent of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission grants from the Ministry of Urban Development have been spent on the expansion of roads, construction of flyovers and parking projects, in which the primary targeted beneficiaries are c ars. A mere 2 percent has been spent on other transportation projects.

The Delhi High Court also recognized that the larger problem of traffic congestion was because of the growing number of vehicles in the city â€" currently over seven million. It would be unfeasible to further augment the city's already extensive road network, which accounts for 21 percent of its geographical area and includes 46 flyovers, to accommodate this alarming increase in the number of private vehicles, the judgment said. The only sustainable solution would be to improve Delhi's integrated public transportation system to include high-capacity mass transit options, like B.R.T. These improvements would urge a shift in the “mode shares” or the percentage of people traveling by public and private transportation.

This ruling comes at a critical point in the evolution of B.R.T.'s in India, when several cities are exploring the viability of B.R.T.'s to enhance their public transportation s ystems. As a result of this ruling, and with support from the newly formed Asia B.R.T.'s Association, which is an Embarq, the urban transportation  program of the World Resources Institute. Embarq is headquartered in Washington and works in India, China, Brazil, the Andes, Mexico and Turkey. 

Citi Chairman Is Said to Have Planned Chief's Exit Over Months

Vikram Pandit's last day at Citigroup swung from celebratory to devastating in a matter of minutes. Having fielded congratulatory e-mails about the earnings report in the morning that suggested the bank was finally on more solid ground, Mr. Pandit strode into the office of the chairman at day's end on Oct. 15 for what he considered just another of their frequent meetings on his calendar.

Vikram Pandit is said to have been stunned when he was given an ultimatum and told: “The board has lost confidence in you.”

Michael O'Neill is said to have begun building a case to force out Mr. Pandit after Mr. O'Neill became chairman in April.

Instead, Mr. Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, was told three news releases were ready. One stated that Mr. Pandit had resigned, effective immediately. Another that he would resign, effective at the end of the year. The third release stated Mr. Pandit had been fired without cause. The choice was his.

The abrupt encounter, described by three people briefed on the conversation, included a terse comment by the chairman, Michael E. O'Neill: “The board has lost confidence in you.”

A stunned Mr. Pandit chose to resign immediately. Even though Mr. Pandit and the board have publicly characterized his exit as his decision, interviews with people close to the board describe how the chairman maneuvered behind the scenes for months ahead of that day to force Mr. Pandit out and replace him with Michael L. Corbat, the board's chosen successor.

Once he became chairman this year, Mr. O'Neill, 66, meticulously built a case for the chief executive's ouster, they say, first meeting privately with less-satisfied board members and then drawing in others until Mr. Pandit had virtually no allies left.

As Mr. Pandit was reeling from his encounter, three board members confronted John Havens, the bank's chief operating officer and a longtime lieutenant.

“Vikram has offered his resignation, and we would like to give you the opportunity to offer yours,” a board member said, following a script prepared by the board's lawyers, according to several people with knowledge of the meeting.

Startled, Mr. Havens briefly challenged the directors, pointing to the solid performance of the institutional clients group, and then relented, saying his resignation would be on Mr. Pandit's desk within five minutes.

The dramatic boardroom coup at the bank's Park Avenue headquarters has rankled some people at Citi, especially senior executives who feel that the action was needlessly ruthless and who spoke only on the condition that they not be identified. They point out that Mr. Pandit successfully steered the once moribund bank through one of its most turbulent chapters, repaid roughly $45 billion in federal lifelines, rebuilt capital and began to focus the sprawling institution.

This week, senior executives at the investment bank convened a group of employees to try to stem any exodus, according to several people briefed on the meeting. Among the employees' questions: why remain at a bank that treated its top executive so harshly?

Now, the new top officials of the bank are circling to retain the support of some crucial executives, including Brian Leach, Citi's chief risk officer and a longtime ally of Mr. Pandit, and James A. Forese, who heads the securities and banking division, according to several people close to the discussions.

Mr. Pandit, Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Havens and Mr. Corbat did not return calls for comment or declined to comment.

The seeds of the turmoil were planted in April when Mr. O'Neill, who had been on the board since 2009, took over as chairman from Richard D. Parsons.

Some executives close to Mr. Pandit immediately identified Mr. O'Neill's ascent as bad news for Mr. Pandit, regardless of how the bank was faring. After all, Mr. O'Neill had vied for the chief executive position before it ultimately went to Mr. Pandit in 2007.

Still, the board transition appeared to go smoothly at first. The handover was marked by a dinner at Citi's headquarters. Together, Mr. Pandit and Mr. O'Neill roasted the departing chairman, considered more of a diplomat than a strategic banker. At one point, Mr. O'Neill gave a lei to Mr. Parsons, in recognition of their shared fondness of Hawaii: Mr. Parsons attended a university there and Mr. O'Neill was chairman and chief executive of the Bank of Hawaii.

Beneath the gaiety, though, tensions between Mr. Pandit and Mr. O'Neill were already building, some executives said. The dinner came roughly a month after the Federal Reserve dealt an embarrassing setback to Citi by rejecting its proposal to buy back shares and increase its dividend to shareholders. Mr. O'Neill used that March misstep to persuade some board members that a better relationship with regulators could have avoided the public failure. Some board members felt, according to people close to the bank, that the Federal Reserve had needed to reject the capital plans of one bank to lend credibility to its stress tests. A handful blamed Mr. Pandit for allowing Citi to become that bank.

Compared with Mr. Parsons, Mr. O'Neill took an unusually active managerial role at Citigroup, visiting trading floors and asking detailed questions about some of the business lines. This involvement at times agitated Mr. Pandit, according to the people briefed on the matter.

Adding to the acrimony with the board, a person who had worked for years to keep the directors informed, Citi's longtime general counsel, Michael Helfer, left in May.

As summer came, Mr. O'Neill continued to make his case, raising concerns about Mr. Pandit's grasp of certain business issues to a handful of board members he considered sympathetic, including William Thompson, the former chief executive of Pacific Investment Management according to several people close to the bank. Mr. Thompson did not return calls for comment, nor did other members of the board.

By August, the chairman had the support of at least a handful of board members, including Diana Taylor. Some directors felt that Mr. Pandit had left them out of the loop at times.

Mr. O'Neill continued to build his case for a leadership change in individual meetings, according to several people familiar with the discussions. He chose to meet with the board members most loyal to Mr. Pandit last. In some of these discussions, he told the board members that the decision to replace Mr. Pandit was already backed by a majority of the 12-person board, according to people familiar with the discussions.

As to a successor, Mr. O'Neill had grown comfortable with Mr. Corbat well before he became chairman. Mr. Corbat headed Citi Holdings, the unit that holds the bank's soured assets, and Mr. O'Neill was the board member overseeing relationships with federal regulators for the unit. As such, the two made Washington trips together, according to senior bank executives.

In fact, the boardroom coup that landed Mr. Corbat at the top really stung Mr. Havens because he had long been a champion of Mr. Corbat, according to several people close to the bank.

Exactly when the board settled on a successor is unclear. But a few weeks before confronting Mr. Pandit, Mr. O'Neill called Mr. Corbat in London to tell him there was a possibility he might be called upon in the near term to become the chief executive.

Discussions among the board members accelerated while Mr. Pandit was in Japan at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. When Mr. Pandit returned to New York to prepare for the quarterly earnings call, he had no inkling of what was awaiting him, people close to him said.

Meanwhile, Mr. O'Neill was putting the final touches on his plan, according to people familiar with those discussions. Saying Mr. Pandit would very likely be resigning soon, he summoned Mr. Corbat from London back to New York to take the mantle.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 26, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Citi Chairman Is Said to Have Planned Chief's Exit Over Months.