To launch cash transfers on January 1, the government&rsquo;s target is 80 per cent Aadhaar coverage for each of the shortlisted 51 districts. In the last of a four-part series, Business Standard captures the state on the ground in the west.

Ready for rollout?

Business Standard

To launch cash transfers on January 1, the government&rsquo;s target is 80 per cent Aadhaar coverage for each of the shortlisted 51 districts. In the second of a four-part series, Business Standard captures the state on the ground in the south.

Ready for rollout? 

For compensation packages to be better than that of last year&rsquo;s, what we really need to ask ourselves is whether we are better off in terms of good governance. With the Indian economy under stress, inflation looming large, corruption spreading, and an ineffective central government, the Indian diaspora is falling apart. With most foreign investors adopting a wait-and-watch policy, the job creation scenario is going to take a hit, thereby adversely affecting compensation packages.

Students' corner 

Last week, Goldman Sachs upgraded Indian stocks. On Wednesday, the foreign brokerage said that growth in the Indian economy would increase to 6.5 per cent next financial year, and to 7.2 per cent in 2014-15, from 5.4 per cent this financial year. The stock markets have rallied, betting on a recovery, but economic indicators on the ground give mixed signals.

Goldman Sachs & the Indian Economy

India is a young country and it appears that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is keen to record this fact. Its biometric machines have been reconfigured to scan fingerprints up to 60 per cent coarseness &mdash; a feature that didn&rsquo;t exist in the earlier machines. As a result, many elderly people, who tend to have relatively faint finger marks that get fainter in the cold weather, cannot enroll in the system. Now, this is clearly a chronic problem. Officials manning the scanners told a colleague to send a mail to the UID help desk. Each of these mails would then be used as part of a campaign to get UIDAI to do something about it, the officials said.

Out of print

Undeterred by the Opposition&rsquo;s renewed attack against him, the newly sworn-in Maharashtra deputy chief minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar announced his move to take them head-on. Speaking to Sanjay Jog after his re-induction into the Prithviraj Chavan-led Cabinet, Pawar said he would concentrate on giving priority to effectively deal with the problem of water scarcity in various parts of the state. Pawar would retain finance and power departments.

Opposition will keep levelling allegations: Ajit Pawar 

The suspension of the Indian Olympic Association, or IOA, by the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, on Tuesday followed a long confrontation between the two bodies. The last straw for the IOC, however, was that the IOA refused to postpone the election it had scheduled for Wednesday &mdash; an election that the IOC claimed was fatally weakened by government interference.

Shamateurism reigns 

Policy makers should not overreact to the milk glut in India, since this has largely been caused by poorly advised government policy in the first place. The accumulation of surplus stocks of skimmed milk powder (SMP) is the consequence of the government&rsquo;s two ill-timed decisions two years ago as a panicked reaction to the protein-driven high food inflation &mdash; banning the export of milk products and simultaneously ordering import of SMP. These coincided with a rebound in domestic milk output after a post-2009 drought dip. To confound matters, the lifting of the export ban was delayed, for inexplicable reasons, till global prices had nosedived &mdash; making exports unviable. The dairy industry, too, erred: it mistimed increases in the consumer prices of liquid milk. This prevented a rise in sales in the wake of comfortable availability and resulted in a drop in the price paid to milk producers.

Skimming over milk 

Until Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party promised to back the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance on Friday&rsquo;s crucial vote on foreign direct investment in retail, a desperate ruling government had been scrounging for every vote in the Rajya Sabha &mdash; being low on numbers in the upper House. The government was heavily banking on the presence of the 10 nominated members, prominent among them actress Rekha and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar. The mischievous opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party camp, would have loved to ensure that Tendulkar did not make to Parliament that day. The ruse proposed, if reports are to be believed, was to use their BCCI contact and heavyweight Arun Jaitley to ensure that a cricket match was slated for that crucial Friday. As luck would have it, the third India-England test match which started on Wednesday was sure to roll on till December 7, the third day of the test, and the day of the Rajya Sabha vote.

Passing the Test

Weddings wait for nothing and no one, especially in India where nuptial times and dates are divinely ordained. Adjourning a case recently, a high court judge asked the senior counsel of the petitioner whether December 17 would be fine for the next hearing. The counsel requested the judge to postpone it by two days because December 17 was a &ldquo;big day&rdquo; for him. Those present in court, especially the press, started wondering which big case the senior lawyer had to attend on that date. After a little deliberation, the lawyer offered an explanation. &ldquo;There is a marriage in the family and so, lordship, please give some other date,&rdquo; he said.

Divine intervention

A few days ago, Jignesh Shah of the Financial Technologies group personally congratulated Ashish Chauhan on his appointment as CEO and managing director of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) when they met at a conference at Trident hotel in Mumbai. The significance of this gesture lies in the unstated tension between BSE and Shah&rsquo;s Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX). In a recent interview to a financial daily, Shah accused an exchange of misrepresenting facts about the securities transaction tax (STT). He was probably hinting at BSE because Chauhan had at a public function in October said the lack of STT on commodity trading was shifting trading volumes to that segment. The large volumes on the MCX platform are through arbitrageurs who benefit from lack of transaction tax. On the other hand, STT has been a key catalyst for driving down equity cash market volumes, which affected BSE the most.

Exchange programme

The foreign retail biggies should try a new model of retail in India &mdash; one which will be a true win-win for all the parties concerned. They should designate the existing small retail shops as their franchises, instead of trying to set up huge shopfronts like elsewhere in the world. It will be a one-shot solution to objections raised against retail FDI. Besides, consumers will benefit from access to quality goods at reasonable prices closer to their homes, instead of driving long distances to a typical large format store &mdash; the space for which is unlikely to be available in the city proper.

Letters: Saving small shops 

Apropos G David Milton&rsquo;s letter to the editor &ldquo;Ayodhya&rsquo;s legacy&rdquo; (December 6), the demolition of the disputed Babri structure was undeniably condemnable, but holding L K Advani&rsquo;s rath yatra solely responsible is unfair. Three &ldquo;secular&rdquo; politicians holding vital power positions between August 7, 1990 and November 2, 1990 played important roles here. On August 7, 1990, the then Prime Minister V P Singh announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission report &mdash; which had been kept pending for over two decades. His aim was to rob his rival Devi Lal of his OBC (other backward classes) vote bank, and to divide the Ram Janambhoomi Aandolan and the Hindu votes on caste lines. This forced the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to pick up the &ldquo;Mandir&rdquo; issue and Advani, the then BJP president and a minister in the V P Singh government, decided to undertake the rath yatra.

Letters: The 'secular' triumvirate

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Growth crisis deepens&rdquo; (December 3). The case for accelerating growth could not be stronger for a nation where a sizeable population lives below the poverty line; that must create adequate livelihood opportunities for its growing labour force; and where a massive expansion in infrastructure investment is required. We need more private investment to achieve higher growth, which in turn will attract greater investments, and keep the economy growing at higher rates. Sadly, this might be the year that India records the lowest annual growth in a decade. With agriculture not doing well, the economy facing an industrial slowdown and global economic turmoil far from over &ndash; and unlikely to get better before 2014 &ndash; we might have entered a period of low growth that is here to stay. The consequences could be damaging.

Letters: Low growth is here to stay

Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee President Arjun Modhwadia is at his unrelenting best when it comes to taking a jibe at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Releasing the party manifesto on Tuesday for the Assembly elections, Modhwadia likened certain industrialists to cheerleaders. &ldquo;There are some 10 or 15 industrialists who are like cheer girls, always praising Modi,&rdquo; the Congress leader said. Who are these cheerleaders? The hint came in his next comments. The Congress manifesto, he added, was common man-centric, promising what the party had already implemented when it was in power 17 years ago. &ldquo;There would be no favours to the Tatas, Adanis, Rahejas or the Satyam Computers,&rdquo; Modhwadia claimed, betraying his shaky knowledge of the corporate sector with the last name.

Modi Premier League

The top 5 deals this year accounted for 25.29 per cent of the total investment in terms of deal value. In the largest deal this year, Bain Capital invested $1 billion in information technology company Genpact. Lodha Developers and Vornado Realty Trust acquired Jawala Real Estate for $491.02 million from DLF Ltd.

A snapshot of PE activity & deals

Ranbaxy Laboratories may be facing troubled times but its Managing Director and CEO Arun Sawhney has lost neither his wits nor his wit. During a recent interview with Business Standard, asked why he does not give interviews often, he said he did not think of himself as &ldquo;photogenic&rdquo;. Pointing to our photographer, he added, &ldquo;In fact, had I known that I would also be photographed during the interview, I would have at least shampooed my hair before coming here.&rdquo; The accompanying picture explains the joke.

Bald humour

Subir Roy&rsquo;s column &ldquo;JNNURM has been business as usual&rdquo; (Value for Money, December 5) provides a cogent analysis of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM&rsquo;s) failure to benefit substantially from its prime movers. The need for the survival of big cities and towns cannot be faulted. There is a continuous exodus from villages to urban cities, in search of a living and better lives. However, the pace of infrastructure (more housing, roads, educational and medical institutions, among others) does not match the needs generated by this growing population.

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