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Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn&rsquo;s rather distinctive hairstyle has attracted attention in the past, with at least one person mistaking him for a spiritual guru. He good-naturedly bore some more gentle ribbing on the subject last week, this time from R Ramakrishnan, CEO of Polycab Wires, who was speaking at an event at which Gokarn was chief guest. Ramakrishnan presented Gokarn with a book authored and published by him titled My African Odyssey &ndash; A photo journey to Kenya and Tanzania. The cover bore a picture of a lion with a wind-tossed mane. As he handed him the book, he looked askance at Gokarn&rsquo;s wife Jyotsna Bapat and said the next time Gokarn had a bad hair day, she could remember this book because he would look just like that lion on the cover.

Hair raising

Walmart, the $444-billion US retail chain, filed 29 lobbying disclosures with the US Senate for domestic and foreign markets between 2008 and 2012 &mdash; a period during which India was part of its agenda. The disclosure it made in the third quarter of 2012 shows &ldquo;discussions related to FDI in India&rdquo; as one of the 12 items listed for lobbying. But Walmart is in good company.

The 'lobbying' loop

An illustrative list of allegations of corporate governance failure by MNCs in India(Click on graphic)

Corporate governance of MNCs in India: Is the slip showing?

India&rsquo;s road to free trade with the world has been bumpy and slow. Partly, this is because the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation negotiations, while still technically alive, is pretty much on life support. However, it is also true that bilateral and multilateral negotiations with big trade blocs like the European Union (EU) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) have faced many hurdles. Some of these are the product of domestic political exigencies that come in the way of attempts to open up trade everywhere. But much of the reason is that, simply put, the Indian state&rsquo;s lack of capacity hampers its ability to move forward speedily with delicate negotiations. That&rsquo;s partly why the agreement with Asean to extend free trade to services and investment took several additional years to be concluded, although the broad principles were largely agreed upon early on.

Not enough minds

When Sachin Tendulkar played the Ranji Trophy opener earlier this year, it was considered a momentous event, enough for reports on the sports pages of major dailies. That&rsquo;s because the last time he played in a Ranji match was January 2009. It is significant that Mr Tendulkar&rsquo;s 2012 participation in India&rsquo;s oldest domestic cricket tournament was driven by a need to get into form ahead of the home series against England. Every other Indian cricketing star replicates this rare appearance in domestic tournaments. Once they make it into the national team via the domestic circuit, they are conspicuous by their absence in the tournaments that elevated them. The result is that Indian cricket periodically suffers a drought of cricketers with sufficient international exposure to hone their skills before they enter the big league.

Passing the Test

When companies are down in the dumps, they do many innovative things to boost morale. But by any standards, the HR department of Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which operates the MTS brand in India, has displayed unique ingenuity in its efforts to strengthen employee engagement. Sistema is set to lose its telecom licence in January, a fallout of the telecom allocation controversy, which leaves the future of the company&rsquo;s 3,500 employees in India and Russia in a state of uncertainty. To keep them going while the Supreme Court considers a curative petition the company has filed, Sistema has announced that it would produce a calendar for 2013 with photographs of destinations in India and Russia that employees have taken during the year. Entitled &ldquo;My MTS Travelogue&rdquo;, the calendar will display selected pictures by its employees on each of the pages with details of the photographer.

Photo finish

Apropos A Seshan&rsquo;s article &ldquo;India is suffering from inertial inflation&rdquo; (December 10), experts have interpreted the inflation phenomenon in different ways. That has added to the confusion of policy makers. The inflation versus growth trade-off &ndash; relevant as it may be analytically &ndash; is not as constraining in policy formulation as it is made out to be.

Letters: Back to basics

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma&rsquo;s attempts to defend the government&rsquo;s policy allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail ended up providing ammunition for the Opposition to target him. In an attempt to highlight the hysteria that Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley had created with his powerful oratory against retail FDI, Sharma said, &ldquo;Even my mother, who is old and not even literate, is worried. She is one of those who does not even utter her husband&rsquo;s name and even she was alarmed [hearing Jaitley&rsquo;s tirade].&rdquo; &ldquo;Yeh Anand ne kya kar dala [what has Anand ended up doing],&rdquo; the minister said, quoting his mother. To this an amused Jaitley promptly replied, &ldquo;Mr Minister, even your own family members are not convinced about this policy. If not us, you should at least heed them.

Family plots

This refers to Jacob Sahayam&rsquo;s assessment of the present status of United Progressive Alliance-II in his letter to the editor &ldquo;UPA III?&rdquo; (December 10). The political apparatus&rsquo; ailment is spreading fast into the vitals of the government at all levels. Industrialist Ratan Tata has expressed concern at the depleting credibility of governance and sought an &ldquo;irreversible commitment that the law of the land has sanctity&rdquo;. The goings-on in Parliament and in other legislative bodies, the open spats between &ldquo;responsible&rdquo; heads of organisations on the one side and the political leadership on the other, continuous strictures from courts and media reports on unethical and corrupt practices by the rich and powerful, are all agonising.

Letters: Restore trust in governance

This refers to T N Ninan&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Unhappy pairings&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, December 8). Economic theories suffer from two most common problems. One is an association between the two factors in the nature of cause and effect &mdash; without any solid basis for which is the cause and which is the effect. Hence, one cannot be sure if low per-capita income causes high corruption, or vice-versa. Two is a lack of knowledge of all possible factors that can impact a certain situation. So, to postulate a cause-and-effect relationship between per-capita income and corruption is too gross.

Letters: Gross economic factors?

Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s martial brand of politics has not just earned her a place in the Time magazine&rsquo;s list of 100 most influential people, she has earned plaudits from the most unexpected of places: a black belt from Kukkiwon in South Korea, headquarters of the World Taekwondo Academy. Members of the institute are expected to travel to India in February and confer Banerjee the title of grand master in Taekwondo for her fighting spirit.

Mamata Banerjee, black belt

Yes, provided the senior citizen's name is the first one in the account. Usually, senior citizens earn an interest rate of 25-50 basis points (bps) more than other deposit holders. Some banks give up to 75 basis points extra. Also, the tax on the FD will apply to the senior citizen, as he is the first account holder.

Tipping point

The patient who had come to the sports injury centre at New Delhi&rsquo;s Safdarjung Hospital complained of persistent pain in the knee. It was, he told the specialist at the centre, perhaps caused by the squash he played everyday. The specialist examined it thoroughly and told the patient, &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you try cycling? It will cure your knee. Even I do it.&rdquo; The patient agreed. &ldquo;That shouldn&rsquo;t be a problem. I know a thing or two about cycles.&rdquo; The patient wasn&rsquo;t exaggerating: He was, after all, Pankaj Munjal whose Hero Cycles is the world&rsquo;s largest maker of cycles.

Master cycle

Apropos Aditi Phadnis&rsquo; column &ldquo;Revenge of the fallen&rdquo; (Plain Politics, December 8), the writer incorrectly mentions that B S Yeddyurappa belonged to north Karnataka. He was born in K R Pet Taluk of Mandya district, located plumb in the middle of the old Mysore region in south Karnataka. He shifted to Shikaripur in Shimoga district (which again is in south Karnataka) and found employment in a rice mill owned by a prosperous trader. No doubt Yeddyurappa possessed some extraordinary qualities that the mill owner married his daughter to him. Thereafter, Yeddyurappa&rsquo;s fortunes changed for the better. Meanwhile, he was an active Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker (and office bearer). His association with the RSS ensured that he was also an active member of the Jan Sangh (the Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s precursor); he effectively used this association to climb the political ladder.

Letters: The making of Yeddyurappa

This refers to T N Ninan&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Unhappy pairings&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, December 8). The writer considers causality in correlating corruption with underdevelopment. This may or may not be true. In fact, the converse may well be true. It is possible that because of corruption, the average income is low. In such a situation, reducing corruption becomes a pre-requisite for ensuring development. Consider an analogy. Indian Institutes of Technology have performed remarkably well and are clean. It is because they are clean in their admission process that they select the best students and then, the turnout is excellent. It is not the case that because they are good performers, they are clean.

Letters: Cause and effect

After eight-and-some years of minimal, marginal and timid reform, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) suddenly seems to have discovered the possibility of fixing welfare delivery through cash transfers and the Unique ID system, and has pushed for a rapid roll-out of the Aadhaar framework. It is due to be &ldquo;rolled out&rdquo; by January 1 &mdash; more precisely, as Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told this newspaper, the digitisation of the databases for some schemes in some districts will happen over January. Within six months, the government claims most of the 29 schemes that are part of the initial Aadhaar framework will work in most of the selected 51 districts.

The pressures on Aadhaar 

The latest report from the United Nations&rsquo; AIDS body notes that India has managed to bring down the count of people affected by HIV/AIDS by as much as 57 per cent. That&rsquo;s an encouraging and creditable achievement. But it should not make the authorities overconfident. Slacking off in the campaign for the prevention and treatment of AIDS would quickly erode any gains made so far.

A changing enemy

This past year has been one of gloom for India &ndash; except, apparently, when it comes to the stock markets. As Table 1 lays out, the Sensex has massively outperformed pretty much all major indices. China&rsquo;s major stock market index actually lost value this year; the Sensex gained a quarter of its value at the beginning of this year. It is the conventional wisdom that much of this is because of high foreign institutional investments into the Indian market.

StatsGuru-10-December-12

The United Nations&rsquo; 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) on climate change ended its fortnight-long conference in Doha with, as always, minimal and marginal progress. It is easy to view the results of this conference as depressing. Still, there were some minor achievements.

Postponed, again

Economic growth continues to trend downwards and trends in corporate earnings have not been encouraging either. For the first time in three years, core revenues for India&rsquo;s top companies grew by single digits in the quarter ended September 2012. Yet the stock market is buoyant, giving out a distinctly different signal. The biggest factor pushing the markets up is that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continue to buy Indian equities by the bagful. During the year so far, FIIs have invested nearly $21 billion (about Rs 1.14 lakh crore), and many foreign brokerages have revised their growth estimates for India upwards for the next year. Most feel the central bank will cut rates soon, which should help, and that consumption will remain resilient, helping anchor demand. Stock markets are never the best indicators of the real economy but they do provide vital clues about future business conditions.

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