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Business Standard

Why Messrs Hollande and Cameron are wooing India

Calling on New Delhi

This refers to the editorial â€œCalling on New Delhiâ€ (February 21). French President Hollandeâ€™s unhyped visit to India is significant in more ways than one. A stagnant French economy ought to look up to India â€” which is far better placed, despite languishing at a growth rate of five per cent. His ministersâ€™ visits to Bangalore,Â Chennai and Mumbai for better trade relationships in education, manufacturing and entertainment, respectively, speak about their seriousness of interest in our economy. He has far tougher tasks at hand at his home turf, but then, at the same time, he cannot ignore an economy like India that can bring a lot of investment to his country.Bal Govind  NoidaLetters 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: India's French role

In his State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama said America no longer needed to deploy tens of thousands of troops to occupy nations or meet threats from new extremist groups. The US defence budget contains hundreds of billions of dollars for new generations of aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and tanks that even the army says it doesnâ€™t need (Click on graphic)

Arms and the US

In the past two decades, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed formation of 12 new banks. The guidelines on entry of new banks that were issued in January 1993 and were revised in 2001. On Friday, RBI released a new set of norms to allow creation of more banks. Here is a brief comparison of the guidelines issued in 1993, 2001 and 2013 (Click on graphic)

Thirteen changes in new bank licensing norms

Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards, to be telecast at 6 am IST on Monday (Clicl on graphic)

When stars descend on red carpet

Why is Azim Premji still something of an exception?

India's tight-fisted rich

The decision of former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa to quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and float his own political party has not been taken lightly by his rivals in the partyâ€™s state unit. Senior Karnataka BJP leaders are now gunning for his son, B V Raghavendra, who is also a member of Parliament from Shimoga constituency in Karnataka. The charge made by the state leaders to the Central members of the party is that Raghavendra has been attending functions organised by his father and so, he is indulging in anti-party activities and should be expelled from the party.

Point target

The twin blasts at Hyderabad saw an emotional Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior leader Venkaiah Naidu (who hails from Andhra Pradesh) sparring with a beleaguered Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde in the Rajya Sabha. When Shinde made it to the Upper House after lunch, Naidu outrightly accused Shinde of treating the House in a â€œcasual mannerâ€ and not being present in the morning at 11 a.m. to hear the membersâ€™ concern on the blasts. Trying his best to justify, the home minister informed, â€œThe whole night... I have not slept... I respect the House... You should appreciate that I left at 4 oâ€™clock in the morning; I was there on the spot at 7 oâ€™clock,â€ said Shinde. However, Naidu was left sorely unimpressed with his explanation and replied in a sardonic manner, â€œYou have not done any favour to us. You have to do your basic duty.â€ Looks like Shindeâ€™s pleas of having performed to the best of his ability will cut no ice with the Opposition, and certainly not with Naidu.

Duty-bound?

Headline growth in profit after tax (PAT) for Sensex companies continued to disappoint in the last results season, falling to 0.1%, the lowest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Excluding financials, aggregate PAT contracted 5.7%. Sales growth fell to a 3-year low. The slowdown seems to be broadening, as 13 of the Sensex companies and 45% of the broader Bank of America Merrill Lynch coverage companies showed a decline in profits (Click on graphic)

No respite, just yet

According to a study, dealing with information technology is a stressful issue at work for Generation Y employees.The VMware New Way of Life 2013 Study, was conducted in countries including Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia,Â Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea (Click on graphic)

IT issues stress Gen Y out at work

After a stiff fall in subscriber base in November and December, GSM operators posted a marginal rise in the net subscriber base in January. GSM telcos have added 400,000 subscribers in January led by Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, taking the countryâ€™s total GSM subscriber base to 657.5 million at the end of January  (in million)

GSM subscribers talk up, at last

General Electric is pinning its India strategy on the countryâ€™s economic growth. The American conglomerate will expand even when Indiaâ€™s growth is five per cent, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R Immelt, who flew into New Delhi on Friday, told journalists. Immelt, also an advisor on economic issues to the US administration, said the Indian government was complicated, with overlapping agencies. Edited excerpts:On growth:Our business will continue to expand, even when India grows only at around five per cent. But we will grow faster when the economy picks up.On what if India does not return to a eight to nine per cent GDP curve:We have a more long-term perspective. Our business standpoint is that we will allow for innovation even when economy is at five per cent. Innovation in Indian health care is particularly strikingâ€¦. Also, five per cent growth is as unsustainable as nine per cent.On revenue growth projection:

Chidambaram back as FM is a positive: Jeffrey R Immelt

Whenever the Indian prime minister travels abroad, he invariably takes a chartered Air India Boeing 747, which is re-configured for his needs; that means a private cabin, while accompanying officials travel first class, and the media posse travels business class (upgraded from economy after there were protests). A second plane stands by, in case the first develops a snag. The comparisons with British Prime Minister David Cameron are telling. Cameron, too, chartered a plane, a Virgin Atlantic, because unlike British Airways aircraft, it was configured with only two classes â€” business and economy. British prime ministers, it turns out, are only allowed to fly business class. Even if they are offered free upgrades to first class, they are obliged to decline. Those in attendance on him have to fly economy. Meanwhile, the 100 British businessmen who accompanied Cameron came along with him in the chartered plane (and presumably defrayed the cost of the charter). In Indiaâ€™s case, any busi

Imperial class

Key developments New capacity addition of an average of 10,000 Mw per annum achieved in the 11th Five-Year Plan Renewable energy sector has grown 1.5 times with robust new investors, an enabling policy framework, and decline in capital costs Transmission has seen further progress with cross-border links, point of connection regulations, standardisation of bidding documents, and growing private sector participation through IPTC projects Distribution sector faces deep financial stress but the outlook is improving with many states revising tariffs, implementing distribution franchisees, and with financial restructuring of utilities

Budget 2013-14 Wishlist

A Reuters/Ipsos poll has found that just under half of 853 respondents between the age of 18 and 29 thought Microsoft is cooler now than it was a year or two ago. It lagged behind Google's Android and Apple, but beat Twitter and Facebook to the third spot

Meet the coolest brands

Policy inconsistency and suspicions of favouritism in telecom

The same mistake, again

The Tata groupâ€™s deal with AirAsia to launch a low-cost airline is credited as new scion Cyrus Mistryâ€™s first big deal but it is possible that the talks started at least three years before, when Tony Fernandesâ€™ Malaysian low-cost carrier launched AirAsia X, its long-distance service, in India. At the time, the shrewdly maverick Fernandes told Business Standard as an aside that he was due to meet Ratan Tata the next day, though he insisted it was a courtesy call. â€œNice guy?â€ he asked lazily. Evidently, he thought so going by the deal heâ€™s just signed with the group.

AirAsia's early flight plan

Meanwhile, foreign direct investment (FDI) by airlines was very much the subject of discussion at a press conference held by Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh earlier in the week. Talking in the context of an impending deal between Jet Airways and Etihad Airlines, he pointed out that of the full-service airlines that remained to get FDI, Air India was one. But, he added with a smile, â€œAs far as Air India is concerned, it cannot get a better FDI deal than what it is getting from the Government of India.â€ That set everyone laughing but there was more than a grain of truth to the ministerâ€™s statement. After all, which foreign airline would give the flag carrier Rs 30,000 crore as a bailout package as the government did in 2012?

Air India's 'FDI'

The editorial â€œA step backward: Price pooling of coal is a bad ideaâ€ (February 7) contains certain factual inaccuracies on the coal pooling mechanism approved in principle by the Cabinet. The presumption that the proposed price pooling of coal may give undue benefit to private developers is ill-founded. The mechanism only seeks to alleviate the domestic coal deficit to a certain (but not full) extent. The real benefits will be passed on to the consumers who are expected to receive about 35 to 45 billion units of additional power generation over the next two years. The cost of alternate power (through diesel gensets) would be Rs 12-13 per kwh against the cost of power of Rs 3.5-4 per kwh using blended fuel (through the pooling mechanism).Further, you have said â€œthose who had set up power plants that depended on a particular price of imported coal are in essence handed a bailout by the governmentâ€. This assumption is incorrect since the pooling mechanism is limited to

Letters: Facts on coal price pooling

This refers to the editorial â€œSwine flu strikes again: The disease becomes endemic, revealing health systemâ€™s flawsâ€ (February 20). The word influenza is derived from the word â€œinfluenceâ€. The swine flu virus is rapidly making its way around the world but has been relatively mild as of now. The risk is that flu viruses can mutate quickly into something more lethal. Vaccination for swine flu was used in the early seventies in the US but was withdrawn owing to neurological complications. Many infectious diseases have an animal origin. What starts as a disease in animals transfers to human beings with the potential to spread as a pandemic. The worst global pandemic in modern times was the one in 1918-19. It affected about a third of the human race, and is estimated to have killed 50 million people. Animal-origin flu has been described â€œan unchanging disease owing to changing virusâ€.In a study conducted by the Institute of Zoology in Britain and the Hanoi School o

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