What do you think about investing in gold saving schemes of jewellers? I am wary of other products for investing in gold.There are various gold saving schemes offered by jewellers where they provide an installment scheme to customers to buy gold jewellery, after which they pay the last installment. However, there are various factors to be considered before investing in such schemes. First, these schemes are not regulated. Moreover, they only enable you to buy gold jewellery, where making charges could be high. Additionally, if you want to invest in gold and not jewellery, you could consider investing through a gold exchange-traded fund or e-gold. if you want to go for the gold savings scheme offered by jewellers, make sure you understand the conditions and be sure about the reputation of the jeweller.Are multi-cap funds better products for investing than equity diversified ones? The former has given higher returns last yearMulti-cap equity funds ha

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Business Standard

The companyâ€™s presence in India dates back more than 40 years to the early â€™70s, and since then it has been providing the country with military hardware and solutions

Finmeccanica in India

Learning from a landmark mercury control deal

Lessons for climate change

What the industrial output decline says about Budget needs

No turnaround yet

The Indian model of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is likely to be closer to the Canadian model â€” which is called the Harmonised Sales Tax (HST). In Canada, they say â€œeverything that moves will be taxed and anything that doesnâ€™t move will be taxed till it starts movingâ€. India has not yet decided what all will be taxed or left out when GST is finally implemented, but taxpayers are likely to wish that the Canadian theory is not applied in the Indian context.

Taxing model

At an investment bankersâ€™ conference recently, a senior Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) official shared an anecdote while he was explaining measures the market regulator had taken in the recent past. The official said he was the youngest of his 11 siblings, and those of them who invested in the stock market complained that they never got allotments when they applied for initial public offerings (IPOs). A smart aleck from the audience immediately quipped, â€œNow we know why Sebi has completely overhauled the IPO allotment process.â€

Missing links

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the spiritual guru, is known for breathing techniques that have reportedly taught thousands of people to relax. But a recent session in Bangalore had at least one executive in a cold sweat because of the VIPs attending one of the sessions. At the end of his talk, the guru asked the audience to meditate for five minutes before concluding the session. Far from relaxing him, this order sent the executive in charge of logistics into a tizzy. Thatâ€™s because the meditation session stretched well beyond five minutes and the VIPs had to leave for an urgent appointment elsewhere. But no one had the courage to offend the spiritual guru by leaving in the middle of the meditation.

Tense meditation

Corporate Affairs Minister Sachin Pilotâ€™s statement at a farmersâ€™ meeting in Haryana that the United Progressive Alliance government would not hesitate to roll out another scheme waiving farm loans, if the need arose, is irresponsible. It reflects the general sense of indiscipline prevailing in Manmohan Singhâ€™s ministry where those who are close to the powers of the party do not hesitate to issue policy statements without consulting him. The banking system is already facing the problem of non-performing assets, which is also prevalent in the agricultural sector. Pilotâ€™s statement will raise the expectations of farmers, and even those who are willing to repay their loans will postpone it. Was the minister authorised to make this promise? To undo the damage, the finance minister needs to deny the possibility.A Seshan  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew D

Letters: Pilot's 'loan waiver' folly

Apropos the editorial â€œThree more damsâ€ (February 6), China aims at building a series of reservoirs on the Tibetan Plateau on the tributaries of Brahmputra for power generation and irrigation. The river and its tributaries have been revered as the soul of Assam. Chinaâ€™s overall designs will mean catastrophic consequences for India, and Bangladesh â€” the lower riparian nations. Water resources in both India and Bangladesh are overstretched owing to increased demand from a growing population and economic developments. Currently, there is a lack of political will to bring up this vital issue with China. Besides, there is no international law on the economical and equitable distribution of water. A sovereign nation can freely use natural resources existing in its territory, unless restricted by a treaty or an international customary law. Globally, only the â€œHelsinki rules on the uses of the waters of international riversâ€ exists, but these are guides and not laws. In the absence

Letters: Dam problems

Afzal Guruâ€™s hanging is victory of our countryâ€™s patriotic forces. It exposes the falsehood of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had said in a press conference before the last parliamentary election, that a decision on Guruâ€™s mercy petition would be made only after decisions were taken in the earlier 21 mercy petitions. It is a pity that curfew had to be declared in Kashmir to prevent untoward incidents. That signifies the need to abrogate the obnoxious Article 370, and bring Kashmir on a par with all other states. Kashmirâ€™s special status comes in the way of its development. The article was inserted in the Constitution as a temporary measure and its continuation has resulted in the exodus of patriotic Indians from Kashmir to other parts of the country, and prevented citizens from other states to enter Kashmir. It has adversely affected secularism in Kashmir. The time is ripe to liberate the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, implementing the resolution passed by both the Houses of Pa

Letters: Repeal Article 370

Renewable energy capacity in the US has nearly doubled since 2008, while prices have seen a sharp drop. Intel, Kohlâ€™s, Whole Foods, Staples, etc, use only green power for their US operations, according to a ranking of top renewable consumers released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Showing the way

MCX-SX, which launched its equity platform on Monday, has chosen to lessen the influence of financial stocks on its benchmark index SX-40 compared to the main gauges of other exchanges. The bourse kept the financial sector's weightage on the index at 22 per cent, the lowest among the three exchanges, by keeping away State Bank of India from its main index. The weightage of the oil and gas and technology sectors on the SX-40 is similar to that on the Sensex. The influence of consumer goods on the new index exceeds the sectorâ€™s influence on Sensex and Nifty. SX-40 has returned 16.6 per cent in 2012-13 so far, compared with 15 per cent by the Nifty and 13.5 per cent by the Sensex. SX-40 was able to give higher returns, thanks to the presence of United Spirits and Titan Industries

MCX-SX goes live

Sudden tax demands could derail Indiaâ€™s long-term FDI goals but foreign companies must also conform to local lawsMukesh ButanI Chairman, BMR Advisorsâ€œThe administrative actions must be reflective of the governmentâ€™s wider policy framework, and dispel a feeling that multinationals are soft targetsâ€Last fortnight, the finance minister led several meetings with the investor community in key global financial centres â€“ Hong Kong, Singapore, Frankfurt and London â€“ as a precursor to presenting Budget 2013-14. A consistent message in his interactions suggested an unstinted endeavour to woo foreign investors by reiterating his governmentâ€™s commitment to reform and revitalise an economy suffering its worst quarterly performance in a decade. The finance ministerâ€™s visit could not have been better timed, given the February economic calendar and a spate of recent announcements to accelerate the Goods and Services Tax and the deferral

Are multinationals being treated unfairly?

Taxing transfer pricing isn't as simple as some make out

Watch your price

History has caught up with the pro-democracy protests

Arab storms

The Dabhol Power Company (DPC) as a tourist destination? This is the suggestion from politicians cutting across party lines in Maharashtra as well as state officials, following discussions over the fate of this eternally troubled project that closed indefinitely last week for want of gas. DPC, once owned by the infamous Enron Corporation, was taken over by a consortium of Indian banks, financial institutions and public sector companies in 2006. Located on a sprawling 1,500 hectare site on the edge of the Arabian Sea, the plant site checks all the tourist boxes: beaches and jungles. If the non-availability of gas continues, the state, the major buyer of power from the plant, will at least make some revenue through tourism, the reasoning goes.

Dabhol Power, tourist hotspot

Ragging in schools and colleges is common but now it appears to have raised its head in the Shiv Sena-dominated Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. A newly elected Shiv Sena corporator in last yearâ€™s Mumbai civic polls complained of being ragged by senior members, especially the partyâ€™s group leader. Her complaint was that as a junior and first-timer in the 227-member civic body, she was not allowed to speak, and when she did, she was accused of introducing anti-Sena rules. Although the Shiv Sena has tried to pacify the corporator concerned, it is worth wondering why a party would rag one of its own members.

Civic ragging

Narendra Modiâ€™s state may be the toast of corporate India but the Gujarat chief minister may just get a taste of travails, say, Naveen Patnaik of Odisha faces. Months after a group of farmers led by rebel Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly Kanubhai Kalsaria successfully stalled construction of a cement plant by Nirma Industries in Gujarat, there is fresh trouble for Modi. This time a group of farmers in Mithivirdi village in Bhavnagar district are opposing construction of a nuclear power plant in the area. â€œWe had met Gujarat minister Saurabh Patel earlier but nothing happened. We are now planning to meet the chief minister but he has no time meet farmers who are opposing this project,â€ said Krishnakant, who is part of the agitation in the coastal village.

Modi-fied challenge

This refers to the editorial â€œAfter a hangingâ€ (February 11). A close and dispassionate look at the Afzal Guru saga makes it clear that he was a sacrificial victim. His hanging followed an unfair trial â€” a convenient judgment to satisfy the societyâ€™s collective conscience, and an expedient rejection of the mercy petition for political ends. Death penalty becomes a judicial lottery when it is decided not so much by the nature of the crime as by factors like the accusedâ€™s religious or political beliefs. The hard question is whether he was kept on death row for so long for the politically opportune moment to come. In this light, it is paradoxical that the insistence that Kashmiris are Indian citizens provides them no immunity from the violation of their rights with impunity in â€œthe worldâ€™s largest democracyâ€. The sooner the State realises that the legitimate aspirations of the Kashmiris that spring from a sense of their cultural and historical identity cannot be repressed

Letters: A sacrificial victim

This refers to Anjani Kumarâ€™s article â€œZeroing in on the â€˜parallel economyâ€™â€ (February 6). The present taxation system is chaotic and fragmented. The governmentâ€™s sole purpose is collecting revenue, with total disregard for value addition and creation of wealth. Entrepreneurship â€“ the engine of growth and generation of productive employment â€“ is strangulated at every step, by way of multifarious regressive, anti-social and complex indirect taxes. Octroi, excise duty, value-added tax and service tax are a few examples. Every indirect tax instigates tax avoidance, resulting in a loss of direct tax and creation of a â€œparallel economyâ€. We should learn from the US tax system and take one step ahead, where indirect taxes are minimal and income tax compliance is 90 per cent against Indiaâ€™s 31 per cent. The fallacy of income tax is that it squeezes the capital. Personal savings, the staple food of economy as capital, is taking refuge in gold and needless property, buildi

Letters: Value addition is the key

This refers to the editorial â€œAfter a hangingâ€ (February 11). It is ironical how every issue in our country becomes political, and Afzal Guruâ€™s execution is no different. While the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that the pressure by the opposition forced the Congress to take action against Afzal Guru, the Congress said it was sifting terrorism out. But then, why it sat comfortably on Guruâ€™s file for years is beyond comprehension. While anybody attacking our sovereignty should be punished at any cost, the issue demanded the highest degree of maturity, which was sadly missing.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

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