Business Standard brings to you a snapshot of average current rates and unit sizes in localities that offer property in the price range of Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore. If you are looking at buying real estate and your budget falls within this range, an idea about prevailing rates would come in handy

Budget: Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore

Business Standard

I had defaulted on a personal loan two years back. However, I settled that with a gap of few months. Will the bank give me a clean chit or deny me a loan if I need one in future?Once you have settled a loan, you will get a clean chit by way of a â€˜No Dues Certificateâ€™ from the bank. However, approval of a fresh loan will depend on your overall credit history with the credit bureaus that includes all your credit cards and other loans and the credit criteria of individual banks.I am 32 and own a credit card of a private bank. I want a higher credit card limit. Will the bank agree to increase the limit or would I need to switch to a different bank?Sometimes, credit card issuing banks enhance credit limits on their own, depending on the usage of the card and repayment behavior of the customer. They also do it on customer request, for which they normally ask for an application and the latest income details. You should speak to your banker about the p

Debt Counselling: Sanjay Agarwal

Every Monday, Business Standard analyses one familyâ€™s financesand suggests a suitable way forward

Case study

Do banks also lend for very old properties? Most banks would consider a 30-year old property to be old. At the same time, some might agree to lend for a 50-year property if it is well-maintained, its future life is adequate and valuations are good.Does the home loan tenure for such properties depend on the age of the property?Most banks or housing finance companies sanction a home loan towards purchase of a resale property with the understanding that it is repaid before the property is very old. Say, for instance, a 50-year old property is considered old by a bank and you plan to buy a property which is 40 years old. In that case, the maximum home loan tenure you will be allowed will be 10 years. This may be changed or negotiated, depending on the bank and condition of the property.

Tipping point

This refers to the editorial â€œDoordarshan made anewâ€ (February 5). The facile assumption that the independence of Prasar Bharti from the government could reform and turn around the fortunes of the public broadcaster is to challenge the conventional wisdom of the triumph of hope. In fact, the idea suggested for financing the public broadcaster through the imposition of â€œlicence feesâ€ on â€œTV ownersâ€ is hare-brained. Why should the public be taxed to keep alive and floating this white elephant, which has no meaningful content to offer to its viewers? If taken to its logical conclusion, why not levy â€œair taxâ€ on air passengers to keep Air India flying, or levy â€œtelephone taxâ€ on telephone users to keep state-run MTNL and BSNL going. And the jamboree goes on. Having diagnosed the ills of the public broadcaster, the solution ought to be immediate dismantling of Prasar Bharti, and foreign direct investments in the print and electronic media to generate meaningful competiti

Letters: Dismantle Prasar Bharti

What happened in Allahabad last Sunday was  nothing new. It would, in fact, have been a surprise if such an incident would not have taken place on a day when 30 million people had gathered in a city with a population of 1.1 million, which itself is three times of what it was 50 years earlier. What is surprising is that the Central, state and civic authorities, on the basis of their past experiences, had not taken adequate steps to prevent such a tragedy. In fact, the state government had encouraged people to gather in larger numbers, and had announced that it had made every possible medical and police arrangements to ensure the safety of pilgrims. The long-term solution here lies in proper education, so that people in general cast off superstitious beliefs, like the one which makes them believe that a dip in holy waters on a particular day in 12 years could bring them salvation.R C Mody, New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor,

Letters: Ensuring public safety

Apropos M J Antonyâ€™s column â€œWhen wheels of justice clogâ€ (Out of Court, February 12), I wish to recount my experiences as a witness in one diamond case. Over a period of 34 years, I have been called to the court eight times for cross-examination. On my seventh visit, I found that the judge was a lady. It seemed she hadnâ€™t joined the service long ago. I was nearing retirement and so, I took courage and even from the witness box, I said, â€œYour ladyship, can I tell you something?â€ She said, â€œYes.â€ I said, â€œHeraclitus had said, â€˜One cannot step into the same river twice.â€™ In my case, I cannot see the same judge twice. Each time I appeared in the court for this particular case, I met a new judge.â€ She smiled and did not take it amiss â€” thankfully. The case is in its 35th year now. There are many witnesses in this case, and there are innumerable cases like this. In this light, I would suggest that a separate bench should be reserved for all cases that are more than

Letters: From the witness box

Ministers have a habit of concealing things in the belief that they will never be revealed. But in this age of transparency, it is difficult to keep things under wraps. This is precisely what happened recently when a senior minister insisted that the Forest Rights Act would not be diluted and the consent of the gram sabhas would be needed to clear infrastructure projects in the area. Another senior minister of the Cabinet spilled the beans when he disclosed that the same minister had written a letter on January 21, agreeing to bypass the gram sabhas. That was just days before the former minister denied that he had advocated diluting the Act.

Spilling the beans

French President Francois Hollande had a hurricane tour of India, and it seems his staff back in the Ã‰lysÃ©e Palace in Paris also prepared his agenda in a rush. This was the presidentâ€™s first bilateral visit to any Asian country, and maybe that is why his visit to Mumbai was mentioned as â€œBombayâ€ in the agenda at the official website, though the name of Indiaâ€™s financial capital changed in the nineties.

For France, it's Bombay

If there are differences over concluding the Indo-European Union free trade agreement (FTA), the fact was underlined, maybe unwittingly, at a high-powered conference on economic cooperation between India and France.

Trade-offs on an FTA

China's rise raises questions for world trade

Multilateralism dying?

Corporate results confirm worst fears about growth trajectory

Future tense for India Inc

Delhi leaves behind the sarkar, and flowers as a cityThere used to be a clichÃ© about cities in India, back when Bombay was Bombay and Calcutta was Calcutta: that Bombay had the energy, Calcutta the intellect. And then there was Delhi, a sarkari town set in the arid northern plains, which supposedly had neither. That was never completely true, but now, more than two decades after liberalisation, it is slowly becoming clear how completely inaccurate that has become. True, there are scorching afternoons in the height of summer when it feels like nothing will ever move in Delhi, whether a file, an idea, or a person. But, come winter, and the blossoming of the city is evident.Consider, for example, the space that cultural activity has staked out for itself in the past few years. In recent weekends, Delhi and its environs saw the Jaipur Literature Festival (not in Delhi, true, but in a place picked a short distance away, and it frequently felt like everyone fr

NCR comes of age

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) surged this month, with mega deals for iconic companies such as Dell and H J Heinz Co fuelling optimism that more buyers are ready to embrace $10-billion price tags. Almost $40 billion in deals were announced on Thursday alone, led by Heinzâ€™s $23-billion takeover by Berkshire Hathaway Inc and 3G Capital

Mega-mergers are back

A few people in the power corridors might have heard about Rajiv Tyagi, a doctor who has been named as one of the alleged beneficiaries in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal with Italy. An old friend of Tyagi said he used to know the doctor when he was handling the election of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan from Allahabad between 1984 and 1989. â€œAfter 1989, I only heard stories about his prosperity that he had bought a house in Sainik Farms and another in the west-end areas of Delhi,â€ said the senior National Democratic Alliance leader.

The success quotient

Congress spokesperson P C Chacko, one might say, has all the trappings of an astute politician. But, speaking to the media last week in his home state of Kerala, he put the party in a spot when he said, â€œThe Congress would be taking a decision on whether Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson P J Kurien should continue in his constitutional post before the Budget session... in the wake of the revelations in the Suryanelli gang rape case.â€ Next day, in Delhi, the party went onto to disown his remarks as â€œpersonalâ€. An unabashed Chacko, when he met reporters soon after that, without taking recourse to the customary excuses of being quoted â€œout of contextâ€ or â€œmisreportedâ€, simply said, â€œThose were my views but as party spokesperson, I stand by the partyâ€™s views.â€

New defaulter

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to corner Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on his alleged statement in which he blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP for training terrorists, the main accused in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast bombings, Swami  Aseemanand started a three-day hunger strike in a jail in Ambala to protest against the home ministerâ€™s statements. Senior leaders of the BJP have asked Shinde, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi to apologise to the party.

Jailed movement

During the quarter ended December 2012, foreign institutional investors (FII) were net buyers, while LIC & domestic mutual funds were net sellers. FII holdings in the Sensex rose to the highest level in the last five years. (Click on graphic)

Drawing fiis

Finance ministry has recently recommended public sector banks to be more cautious before deployment of any credit to the highways sector

Budget 2013-14: Wishlist

Songs downloaded from iTunes hit the 25-billion mark this month. That's a long way from the store which started life as just a digital jukebox in January 2001, before even the iconic iPod was launched. Some of the highlights from that journey

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 772 - Business Standard

Budget: Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore

Debt Counselling: Sanjay Agarwal

Case study

Tipping point

Letters: Dismantle Prasar Bharti

Letters: Ensuring public safety

Letters: From the witness box

Spilling the beans

For France, it's Bombay

Trade-offs on an FTA

Multilateralism dying?

Future tense for India Inc

NCR comes of age

Mega-mergers are back

The success quotient

New defaulter

Jailed movement

Drawing fiis

Budget 2013-14: Wishlist

Striking the right notes