With Chhattisgarh leading to the second phase of the Assembly polls on November 19, Business Standard looks at the assets of  Congress candidate Renu Jogi

Renu Jogi: Asset Assessment

Business Standard

It's not Raghuram Rajan alone who is seen as a rock star by his admirers. At a recent banking event, a host of leading private and foreign bankers (the public sector bankers have to wait, it seems) were surrounded by many admirers. Some wanted to have their photographs taken with them and others asked for their autographs. A foreign banker was stumped when one member of the audience asked for his autograph. "Thanks for asking for my autograph," he wrote in the colourful pad that his fan had given him.

Banking on popularity

The National Capital Region was rattled by four earthquakes in the wee hours of Tuesday. The epicentre of one of them was supposed to be in Manesar in Haryana. A suburb of Gurgaon, several auto giants such as Maruti and Hero as well as component makers have made the city a base for their production facilities. Coincidentally, on the same day, auto industry association Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) called for a briefing to announce its monthly sales figures. Considering that auto sales numbers have been skidding for several months now - a trend that continued in October - the refrain during the briefing was that the industry was already on shaky ground and the last thing it wanted was an earthquake erupting from the auto hub to rattle things further.

Auto makers on shaky ground?

The ministry of statistics and programme Implementation seems to be living in the past - at least going by the index of industrial production data released on Tuesday. The use-based segment of the index that shows the numbers for consumer durable and non-durable goods states the comparative data for these segments for FY'13 and FY'12 instead of FY'14 and FY'13. It's an obvious mistake, of course, but it is significant since it occurs after a gap of about a year or so when official data were found to be incorrect with embarrassing frequency.

Statistical time machine

The public relations (PR) team of one of India's top software companies that prides itself on its professional management was recently given an unusual mandate. The CEO's daughter is getting married and the team has to ensure that guests receive their wedding invitations on time. The wording of the invitation, which the recipient is urged to "treat as a personal invitation" and is signed by the CEO and his wife, closely follows that of a press invitation: "Due to security arrangements at the venue, video cameras will not be allowed inside. You will also be required to carry a physical copy of the invitation, which you will receive shortly." It added that guests can contact a representative of the company's PR team (an email address is given) if they did not receive the invitation on time.

The family way

This refers to Prodipto Ghosh's article "The importance of being Indian" (November 12). It is merciful that Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan's passport has been found to be Indian, but for which some of our politicians would have turned Rajan's appointment into a vortex of controversy.But it should not have been the end of the road even if Rajan's passport had been found to be American. We have engaged foreigners for crucial jobs in the past also. And today, in the age of globalisation it is still less objectionable. The current governor of the Bank of England - the UK's central bank that is known as the Lady of the Threadneedle Street - is not British. He is a 48-year-old Canadian national named Mark Carney. Our own national Parthasarathi Shome (who is currently holding a crucial public office in India) had held a sensitive position in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs office in the UK for three years (2008-11).R C Mody  New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed t

Letters: Passport for progress

This refers to the A K Bhattacharya's column "Politics of indifference" (New Delhi Diary, November 13). It is somewhat insensitive to dismiss the Aam Aadmi Party's promise of regularisation of unauthorised colonies as populist. It amounts to ignoring the root cause of why such colonies and slums come up in the first place. Poor people migrating to cities for work cannot afford to buy accommodation; nor are there affordable rental options available. The poor migrants are, therefore, left with no option but to live in unauthorised slums. In fact, Brazil did recognise this real root cause, and adopted an innovative approach of giving the squatters title to the land they were occupying. We, in India, need to take a similar approach.Kishor Kulkarni  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

Letters: Squatters have rights

This refers to the editorial "Single market truths" (November 12). The advice to the government to desist from trying to control market price is well-taken. Egged on by the abject days of the PL-480, the "grow more food" slogan brought on a regime of incentives that gathered political overtones, with the prescribed economic tools rusting in disuse. On one hand we have record procurement at increasing minimum support price and on the other, huge amounts of stored grain rotting away. Despite bumper crops, retail prices are soaring.Meanwhile, schemes such as the MGNREGS have led to higher wages in rural areas.  National Sample Survey Organisation data show that in 2007-08 nearly 72 per cent of male migrants from rural areas sent remittances to families in rural India, boosting rural consumption. The rural demand for vegetable and milk products rose sharply because of this. You cannot always blame untimely rains and middlemen to explain serious structural maladies in the secondary agro sys

Letters: Blame game

Dear Students, LAST WEEK WE ASKED:  Do you think successful summer placements across B-schools hint at better final placements? BEST RESPONSEProportionality of successful summer placements should not be linked with final placements as summer placements have taken a totally new dimension with students now more interested in working in live projects, adding versatile dimension in their CV by joining NGOs, political parties, IPL franchises etc. Indeed this is a positive signal in the B-school curriculum and an opening up of completely new path for B-school students where they are able to learn more and are anchored more responsibilities rather than joining traditional path of following footsteps of organisations. Eventually they are the one who will be future managers in the industry.- Siddhartha Bhatnagar, School of Petroleum Management , PDPU, Gandhinagar.OTHER RESPONSESSuccessful summer placement is a welcome augur for B-School students. Internship plays a vital role in final placem

Students' corner

Six of the country's leading bankers say while green shoots are visible, the pace of recovery will be slow because of a whole lot of unresolved issues

Banking round table: 6 leading bankers debate on economic recovery

India must emerge from Warsaw with a climate change deal

Protecting lives

Industry, inflation data point to economy's bottlenecks

No green shoots

Is she the chairperson or chairman? Her colleagues in State Bank of India (SBI) were confused, but Arundhati Bhattacharya wasn't. Just days after she took over as chairman of the country's largest bank, her office and the company's intranet got several emails referring to her as chairperson. The mid-management thought that was the right way to go but wasn't sure whether it would pass muster in official documents since many rules apparently needed to be changed if the occupant of SBI's corner office had to be called chairperson. Bhattacharya, however, thought it's much ado about nothing and settled the matter by sending out a communication recently saying she would prefer to be called the chairman.

Madam Chairman

During a recent ICRIER lecture session on India-Pakistan trade, Rahul Khullar, current telecom regulator and former commerce secretary, treated the audience to the blunt, plain speaking for which he has been famous in government and media circles. Explaining the need to normalise trade between India and Pakistan, Khullar said this is not the time to talk about "peace, prosperity and apple-pie" but to do some real work on the ground to restart the process.

Down to work

To be sure, Khullar's acerbic judgements were not reserved exclusively for others. He is clearly disillusioned with his own organisation. This became clear in his opening remarks to his lecture on trade normalisation at which former Pakistan commerce secretary Zafar Mahmood was also present. Mahmood and Khullar were widely credited for being instrumental in resuming trade talks in 2011. Prefacing his lecture, Khullar said while his "good friend" Mahmood is now chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission, "I am chairman of a pathetic place."

Out of place

Apropos Shyamal Majumdar's column "Post-retirement blues" (Human Factor, November 8), I have learned that there are three ways to lead a retired life gracefully. While age takes its toll in physical terms, there is ample evidence that cognitive ability and creativity do not dim with age. Recall Bertrand Russell, Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi. So, post retirement, one should find ways of keeping mental agility active by reading books, writing letters to the editor, interacting with knowledgeable people, solving crosswords and so on.Secondly, one should remain socially useful. Sitting idle creates a feeling of helplessness and an inferiority complex that accelerates aging. Helping family members in domestic matters or joining organisations that render social service could be helpful as well.Lastly, one should remain contemporary in thinking, if not in living.If possible, one could join a profession that provides all these three advantages - teaching and journalism, for example. Irresp

Letters: Retiring gracefully

This refers to the BS Special report "Tech schools: How did they lose their mojo" (November 10). They lost their mojo by the sheer force of Darwinian laws. Till the recent past, these schools followed the non-Darwinian application of the survival of the unfittest. With the change in market dynamics, these institutions need to be the best to survive. The process of churning will permit only the best to progress. Technical institutions will have to spend their resources on upgrading infrastructure and attract the best in faculty and skills training. These days jobs require the candidates to have technical knowledge, experience and demonstrate a high capability for logical analysis, reasoning, communication, and presentation skills. Our colleges should focus upon these needs and train students to face the challenge of the skill deficit that our nation is facing.H N Ramakrishna  BangaloreLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Za

Letters: Revving up our tech schools

Keya Sarkar's column "The art of opting out" (People Like Them, November 9) was an extremely observant piece on urban metro-centric societal mores. However, such mores are not limited to geographical options of opting out. It is considered quirky to opt out of artificial societal hierarchies created by the professional world. There are those who are without a desktop provided by someone else; sans a visiting card with a famous logo and their name followed by alphabet soup - the key determinants of success.A phone call to such a breed from long lost relatives starts inevitably with the question: "Where are you?" A reply such as "walking along a field", "watching the sunset" never satisfies the curiosity, however honest the answer may be to an assumed prima facie question. The hackneyed, desperate follow-up query:"What are you doing?", elicits replies such as "playing music" or "reading a book" that are either considered impudent at best or dumb at worst.Maybe a question such as "How are

Letters: Opting out

CRISIL has analysed the profitability trends of 9,200 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the manufacturing, service, and trading sectors from 2009-10 to 2011-12 (refers to financial year, April 1 to March 31).The analysis reveals that MSMEs in the manufacturing sector were better able to prevent erosion of their return on equity (RoE) as compared to their counterparts in the service and trading sectors.The RoE (profit after tax divided by tangible net worth) in the manufacturing sector improved from 16.96 per cent in 2009-10 to 17.86per cent in 2010-11 and was able to hold on at 17.63 per cent in 2011-12. In comparison, RoE in the services sector deteriorated continuously from 18.77 per cent in 2009-10 to 15.30 per cent in 2011-12. RoE in the trading sector showed some improvement by increasing to 22.88 per cent in 2010-11 from 21.18 per cent in 2009-10, but declined eventually to 19.72 per cent in 2011-12.Returns in services and trading appear to have declined as competit

Business Standard

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Page 660 - Business Standard

Renu Jogi: Asset Assessment

Banking on popularity

Auto makers on shaky ground?

Statistical time machine

The family way

Letters: Passport for progress

Letters: Squatters have rights

Letters: Blame game

Students' corner

Banking round table: 6 leading bankers debate on economic recovery

Protecting lives

No green shoots

Madam Chairman

Down to work

Out of place

Letters: Retiring gracefully

Letters: Revving up our tech schools

Letters: Opting out

CRISIL SME tracker: Manufacturing MSMEs improve their returns

Single market truths