As the Sensex crossed the 20,000-mark briefly on Tuesday, investors are searching for drivers that can help continue the recent winning run.

Sensex @ 20K: Quo vadis?

Business Standard

Narendra Modi and his bureaucrats may be extremely happy that the Vibrant Gujarat Summit of 2013 beat the earlier edition in terms of footfalls. Over 1.6 million people visited the summit at Mahatma Mandir and the trade shows at Helipad Ground in Gandhinagar this year compared to 700,000 people who visited the 2011 event. But foreign delegates seemed to be at a loss. Henk Schouten, general manager of Schouten Europe, which makes &ldquo;chicken-look-alike&rdquo; vegetarian snacks, was in town looking for an Indian partner. He barely managed to meet anybody relevant. &ldquo;There are so many people here. Families with kids all over the place. I am at a loss. I couldn&rsquo;t meet many relevant people for my business,&rdquo; Schouten said, adding &ldquo;they should charge an entry fee for the summit&rdquo;. The suggestion, however, is unlikely to go down well with Modi who is likely to want to beat this year&rsquo;s footfall at the next event.

Vibrant footfalls in Gujarat

Doctors leaving patients to the mercy of God is a common scene in films, but in Chhattisgarh, medical practitioners actually subjected themselves to the benevolence of the supreme being for real. The problem arose over eye camps organised by the state government and social organisations. In October 2011, more than two dozen people went blind after contracting infections following mass cataract surgery at one such camp. In December last year, 15 people suffered a similar fate. Clearly, the hygiene in these camps left much to be desired, but this fact does not appear to have occurred to the supervising ophthalmologists. Instead, they have decided to perform a havan &mdash; not for their patients but for themselves to overcome the problems they face.

An eye for God's mercy

Low-cost tablets are meant to help poor students do better at academics but it has now become a popular freebie to attract voters &mdash; or so more and more politicians seem to think. First it was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. Now, Food Minister K V Thomas thought fit to recently distribute free tablets to students from his constituency. Clearly, the old attractions of cheap rice are pass&eacute; &mdash; even for the food minister.

Tablets: a dose for votes

Being the premier educational institutions, IITs need to be independent and sustainable. The tuition fee is paid only by about 50 per cent of the under-graduate students exempting SC/ST students and all other students who have an annual parental income less than Rs 4.5 lakh.

Student's corner

This refers to Rajiv Kumar&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Taxing the super-rich is lazy policy&rdquo; (January 15). Taxing the super-rich will reduce investment by the private sector and increase evasion. The Hindu rate of growth coincided with the period when the income tax rate was far too high. John Maynard Keynes famously said the marginal propensity to consume of the super-rich is zero. They invest 100 per cent of their extra income. But in the case of the government, the marginal propensity to consume is quite high. It consists of (a) cost of collection, (b) bureaucratic waste owing to not knowing where to invest, (c) waste in unsustainable projects, (d) uncontrolled expenditure in populist projects (e) greater propensity to increase subsidy when more money is available, and so on. What remains, that is the net amount, is much less than what a private investor would have invested. The government is much less efficient as an entrepreneur than the private investor.

Letters: Super-tax on the super-rich

The Rail Budget will be presented in over a month from now. Most railway ministers take populist decisions by introducing new trains &mdash; a good number of them to or passing through those constituencies or states to which they belong. But the need of the hour is to not introduce any new train, since the trunk routes are overstretched. This is resulting in most trains running behind their scheduled time at intermediate stations, except perhaps at important junctions because of the large cushion provided in the time-table. The cargo movement carrying essential goods like coal and petroleum is also hampered by innumerable halts to make way for passenger trains. The railway minister, inter alia, should ensure that more funds are provided for replacing worn-out rolling stock. Sufficient funds also need to be allocated for the employment of more Railway Protection Force personnel to make rail travel safe for the public, particularly for women.

Letters: Hopes from the Rail Budget

&ldquo;Industrial houses have a proven track record and an experienced team at the helm.

Should industrial houses be given bank licences?

The government has finally declared what action it intends to take on the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR), which were announced with much fanfare in the last Budget and prompted widespread concern among investors. A committee headed by Parthasarathi Shome, now an advisor in the finance ministry, had gone into GAAR and come out with several recommendations, many of which have been accepted by the government and others that have been slightly modified.

Watering down GAAR

The markets have greeted the results of India&rsquo;s two information technology leaders, TCS and Infosys, with a degree of added enthusiasm, which may not be fully deserved. Infosys has done better than otherwise would have been the case. This is because it is recognising for the first time the gains from the acquisition of Lodestone. This is not a fortuitous event and the firm is fully entitled to take credit for its action whose positives will continue to flow over time.

IT leaders please

This refers to your editorial &ldquo;Reason, not fear&rdquo; (January 14). The shrinking acreage and rising population demand an urgent increase in agricultural productivity. This cannot be achieved without technological innovations. The time has come to decisively usher in the gene revolution, the safety concerns of which need a scientific solution. It&rsquo;s not a legal problem that can be solved by judicial intervention. The judiciary and media should stay off the path of science. Else, the poor will suffer the most.

Lettes: Start a gene revolution

Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world&rsquo;s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even for the subsequent crops. Also, the government is sitting on mammoth foodgrain inventories worth over 66.5 million tonnes, three times the buffer requirement, even as the market prices of rice and wheat are high, hurting ordinary consumers. Furthermore, the annual production of cereals already exceeds the anticipated demand in the terminal year of the 12th Plan (2016-17). Yet the government continues to raise the minimum support prices (MSPs) and offer other incentives to ensure higher production of these cereals.

Balancing a diet

Apple shares dipped below $500, the first time in almost a year, after a report said the firm had slashed orders for iPhone 5 components from its Asian supplier (Click on graphic)

Apple shares tumble on report of cuts

To express solidarity with protests against the recent gang-rape and death of a paramedic student in Delhi, the Madhya Pradesh government decided to organise a candlelight march in honour of women on January 18. The state Cabinet held informal discussions and decided that government officials and workers of all ranks, students and teachers, social workers and anyone else who wanted to join, will participate in the march, which will be organised at all district headquarters. The trouble is that schools and district headquarters are open only during the day. Strangely, a Cabinet rank minister also clarified to a gathering of curious journalists that this march will be organised in the day. To which a state official quipped, &ldquo;The state is on top when it comes to atrocities and rapes, according to the National Crime Bureau record.

Candles in the light of the day

Inflation is not just pinching the common man, it bothers finance ministry mandarins for professional and personal reasons. One senior official in the ministry recalled how rising prices have deprived him of a favourite Bengali condiment, Gondhoraj lebu, the aromatic lime variety found in West Bengal and not easily available in Delhi. He ruefully said when he asked his mother the reason she had stopped providing a piece with his meals, she retorted that it was no longer affordable because the price had gone up from Rs 5 to Rs 12 a piece.

Sour truths about inflation

Men and women in black may have trouble participating in programmes that Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh attends. Not because he has an aversion to black, but because that&rsquo;s the colour of the protest flags local Congress workers waved at Singh when he attended a function organised to commemorate the first foundation day of Balod district. The protests were against the rape of minor tribal girls in a girls&rsquo; hostel by a contract teacher and a watchman in Kanker district that only came to light after one of the parents reported it. The Congress claims that the fact the crime was committed for over two years reflects the failure of the state administration. But Singh&rsquo;s humiliation at a function where he had expected credit was enough for the security agencies. Strict instructions were issued that such incidents should not recur and the police duly obliged.

Black mark for Raman Singh

Apropos Mihir S Sharma&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Peacemakers&rsquo; courage&rdquo; (Policy rules, January 12), it is wrong to say we have sanctified public outrage as the highest form of politics. Whether it is on corruption, inflation or violence against women, people&rsquo;s anger was never about &ldquo;politics&rdquo; but the natural anger of the ruled for the rulers having crossed the limits of inefficiency in their basic responsibility of governance. Such anger needs no-one&rsquo;s sanctification. There may be another such outburst if the political leadership continues with its 60-year-old policy with Pakistan. New Delhi pursued confidence-building measures with Pakistan even after the Mumbai terror attack, but Islamabad has responded with hostility all along. After Pakistan&rsquo;s many ceasefire violations and the recent killing of two Indian soldiers, it is certainly time for India to stop registering &ldquo;strong&rdquo; protests, and take tough action against the nation.

Lettes: Act against Pakistan

This refers to A K Bhattacharya&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Appointments with a purpose&rdquo; (Raisina Hill, January 14). Although the writer focuses on the change of guard in the financial services department, his argument can be extended to deficiencies in implementing proper succession plans at the top in government, public sector undertakings and statutory bodies. The last few years have seen a half-hearted attempt on the Centre&rsquo;s part to fill vacancies at crucial positions &mdash; adversely affecting the Reserve Bank of India and UTI, among others. In fact, the last-minute decision on the Presidential candidate last year left North Block unguarded for sometime. Then, the hasty decision to shift the home minister to finance, who has now taken the responsibility to complete the entire United Progressive Alliance-II agenda in 2013, is proving to be costly for the political leadership.

Lettes: Succession plans

Infosys shares rose 3.5 per cent to Rs 2,807.25 on Monday, extending gains from Friday, even as most top brokers kept ratings unchanged after the company&rsquo;s better-than-expected third quarter results. However, most broking firms upgraded their price targets for the stock. While most analysts cheered the October-December results, they said the stock&rsquo;s rally on Friday factors in the optimism surrounding the stronger-than-anticipated earnings.

Infosys Technologies: back in the reckoning

The implementation of General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) should be deferred by three years to April 2017, the Parthasarathi Shome committee had suggested (Click on graphic)

GAAR: All about the tax plug

It should go without saying that the media has a role in informing and educating a citizenry about the issues of the day, providing background, context and holding the powerful to account. A case study in how not to go about this is currently being provided by the electronic media in its coverage of recent raids and counter-raids on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, in which two Indian soldiers have been killed, and one allegedly subjected to post-mortem mutilation.

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