The editorial "Power dreams" (September 10) has stressed the importance of power supply for the growth of industry and manufacturing that are essential for employment, solving the problem of increasing exports etc

Letters: Coal in our backyard

Business Standard

Syria's offer to disarm is a welcome opportunity

Defusing a crisis

Failure to develop skills hurts workers, India Inc

The pink slip flood

Monthly trade data are usually given out by the commerce secretary and Director General of Foreign Trade. But on Tuesday it was Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma who did the honours. That was no surprise because the trade data for August registered double-digit growth for the second month in a row. And Sharma, ever the consummate politician, was happy to nudge out the bureaucrats as harbinger of good news, never mind that the export performance was really courtesy a weaker rupee rather than anything the government had done. But journalists, trained to be cynical about good news, were also anxious to understand how the measures against gold imports were working out and if this month's downtick was part of a trend. Sharma was clearly at a loss. He merely reiterated that gold imports were indeed falling and then refused to take any questions on the matter, leaving journalists quite stumped.

Trading on good news

The Japanese are inclined to speak in their own language even in global business settings.A case in point was the India-Japan Ministerial and Government-Business Dialogue meeting on Wednesday. During the closed-door business-level meetings, translators had to be provided since the entire business delegation to Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry, Toshimitsu Motegi spoke only in Japanese. This facility, however, was not extended to journalists at the press conference in which a joint statement on Japan-India investment promotion was announced. As a result, only a press release was issued and no questions and answers were taken. There was, however, an interpreter who translated Motegi's concluding remarks into English. In the course of that, she addressed Anand Sharma as Prime Minister Anand Sharma. Nobody, least of all Sharma, corrected her. The media, however, remained curious as to whether it was the interpreter's mistake or the Japanese minister's.

What's Japanese for PM?

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh's heavily-publicised Vikas Yatra concluded last week. But the valedictory ceremony saw no jubilation, at least for the people of Ambikapur - the divisional headquarters of Sarguja where the show was organised. That's because the entire town had a power cut for the whole day before the event. The irony was hard to miss. Singh's Vikas Yatra was launched to showcase his government's achievements over 10 years and, among other things, Singh had patted himself on the back because Chhattisgarh claims to be a power-surplus state with no power cuts. Meanwhile, the people of Ambikapur were convinced that the power cut was part of the show. That's because the transformers were upgraded ahead of the event, even as people were told a high-capacity television transmission system was also being installed to ensure that the people of Sarguja would be on screens across the country. Or so they were made to believe.

Powerful development

The vicious personal assaults on me (Getting the facts right; Letters, September 4) by Mr Ram of the Hindu and three more of Mr Amartya Sen's friends - was their case so flawed and flimsy that it took four to take me on? - as being "offensive and abusive" against Mr Sen and as indulging in "personal attacks" against him need a brief response.The Bhagwati-Panagariya book, titled India's Tryst with Destiny, was published in India by HarperCollins to great interviews in print media and on TV in December last year. Then, the US edition which generalises the lessons from India, was published to acclaim in early April by PublicAffairs under the title Why Growth Matters.We, therefore, trumped Mr Sen's book with Mr Dreze since the latter appeared only later. This probably was galling, as the arguments and empirical evidence in our book on the success of our 1991 reforms in accelerating growth and therewith reducing poverty for all underprivileged groups on the average, were compelling. Indeed,

Letters: Let's talk economics

This refers to Sunita Narain's column "The mining mess" (Down To Earth, September 9). The mining sector can improve if the government seriously considers a clear policy and decides to do underground mining on a large scale, tap the 700 million tonnes of good quality coal in Assam and Meghalaya, import technology and mining equipment that are not manufactured in India. It is high time the sector got rid of the old and redundant equipment and technology that is being used in India. As for the iron ore mines in Goa and Chhattisgarh, they should be auctioned and given to the highest bidder.Amar Bhasin  AustraliaLetters 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: Mining solution

LAST WEEK WE ASKED:  Do you think that management institutes should have a regulatory body?

Student's corner

The Indian currency on Tuesday rose 141 paise, or 2.16%, against the dollar to close at 63.84. This was its second-largest single-day gain against the greenback this financial year. A snapshot of the five biggest single-day gains so far this year

Rupee back to winning ways?

Tata Motors on Tuesday stormed into the league of companies that have market capitalisation of more than Rs 1 lakh crore. India's largest automobile company is the 15th company in the league, which is topped by another group company TCS. Mcap (in Rs  lakh crore)

A league apart

Like last year's scanty rain, it went officially unpredicted

A good monsoon retreats

Government must avoid further complications in telecom

Pragmatic way forward

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi may be on the verge of being declared the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, moving one step towards fulfilling a long-held ambition. But he appears to have less luck with technology on which he relies heavily to spread his message. During the Vibrant Gujarat Global Agriculture Summit in Gandhinagar the audio-visual systems failed as soon as he began his address. This was the second time in succession that the Gujarat CM had to face such an embarrassment during a mega-event at his favourite venue of Mahatma Mandir. In June this year at the inaugural session of the All India Conference on Livestock and Dairy Development Modi was left red-faced as the audio-visual system collapsed just as he began his address.

Twice unlucky

Politics involves a lot of give and take but it was worth wondering if there was a political message to be read in Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal requesting his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi to send him a young cow of the Gir breed. Badal was speaking at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Agriculture Summit and said Modi had once gifted him a Gir cow and he was particularly fond of the quality of milk it produced so he made it a point to drink it whenever he visited his village in Punjab. But the cow has aged, he said, which is why he requested a replacement from Modi.

'Send me a young cow'

Shipping terms can be opaque and confusing to the layman but officials in the shipping ministry will no longer be able to claim a lack of understanding. That's because the ministry has thoughtfully added a new feature, "Dictionary", on the website providing Hindi translations of common terms used in the maritime trade. While several of these are technical terms such as cran tress, dew point, truing, mast, quay, cat's paw, there is a touch of Pirates of the Caribbean to the choice of terms as well. They include Davy Jones' Locker, a euphemism for the bottom of the ocean, Ahoy (which has been translated in Hindi to suggest it is the way seafarers greet each other), Blue Peter, which means signal for the ship to sail, and Caboose, which refers to a ship's kitchen.

All at sea

In the forthcoming mid-quarter review of policy the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should announce shifting its focus to consumer price index (CPI) from wholesale price index (WPI). It has already given up the inappropriate use of the concept of "core inflation" derived from WPI. The RBI is no doubt reckoning with a number of indicators that include CPI also, but the focus has been on WPI due to the historical reason of its more frequent availability. The rationale for not using the comprehensive  CPI as the anchor for policymaking is that the new index does not have a long-enough time series. Does it really matter if one can get the latest year-on-year inflation rate for consumer prices from the available series? The consumer is concerned with the current inflation rate and it is no consolation to him to be told that it is lower than what it had been a year ago. It is the research worker who should be worried about the number of observations and the degrees of freedom for his statistical

Letters: CPI and inflation

Apropos Devangshu Datta's column "Now, over to the politicians" (Front Running, September 9), I'd like to correct the impression that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is accepting a large share of exchange risk by fixing a swap rate of 3.5 per cent for foreign currency non-resident deposit funds of banks for three-year maturity. There is no exchange risk in the swap mechanism. The RBI would be simply returning the dollars at the end of three years, against rupees received from the banks at fixed exchange rate, with interest at 3.5 per cent per annum. Banks in turn would be returning the dollars to the depositors, or deploying the funds in foreign currency term loans or rupee loans at their own risk.In the proposed swap, the RBI is only subsidising the swap cost which actually is forward premium determined by market forces. The RBI would be earning only nominal return on its dollar funds - thus the effective cost to RBI is higher.The swapped dollars do not technically add to forex reserv

Letters: Exchange risk

Who will carry the coal for the new plants?

Power dreams

Policy must take advantage of the cheaper rupee

The depreciation dividend

Indians aren't the only ones who have noticed Manmohan Singh's anaemic track record as prime minister; global opinion seems to be veering that way as well. In a recent column on Indonesia's faltering economy, the Financial Times' Asia editor David Pilling drew parallels with India's lost opportunities and made the striking point that, "Mr Singh was once hailed as the superman of Indian reform. In his second term, he has turned back into Clark Kent."

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