Piaggio has returned to India with Vespa, a scooter priced at Rs 66,666 - a price tag that is approximately 30 per cent more than Honda Activa, the largest selling scooter in India.

Riding on rough terrain

Business Standard

Sports is the preferred marketing tool over celebrities, events and product placements in movies, music, art.

Sports as a marketing tool

To launch cash transfers on January 1, the government&rsquo;s target is 80% Aadhaar coverage for each of the shortlisted 51 districts.

Ready for roll out?

I am shifting from Bangalore to Delhi soon. I have a car with a Bangalore registration.

General Insurance: Bhargav Dasgupta

KPMG surveyed 293 CXOs* from Indian and multinational companies with presence in India to find how fraud has grown.

India fraud report

Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi wanted to implead himself in the Public Interest Litigation against Section 66A filed in the Supreme Court because he had a case pending in Mumbai under that section. Chief Justice Altamas Kabir decided to allow his impleadment. While passing the necessary directions, he found the petitioner&rsquo;s name was spelt &ldquo;Assem&rdquo; in the petition. &ldquo;So it&rsquo;s A, double S, not A-S-double E?&rdquo; he asked Trivedi&rsquo;s lawyer. The lawyer said whatever was in the petition was right. The judge was not convinced. &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; he said. Now, the lawyer became a little unsure. &ldquo;Whatever is in the affidavit is right,&rdquo; he said. The judge looked for the affidavit and found that it spelt the name &ldquo;Aseem&rdquo;. Now, the lawyer became apologetic &mdash; &ldquo;Sorry sir, it was my mistake.&rdquo; The judge shot back, &ldquo;Which is the mistake &mdash; Ass or Asee? Make up your mind,&rdquo; leaving the court hall in splits.

Law and 'Ass'

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani, who has played a key role in getting Aadhaar off the ground, is no longer at the centre of things now that the Aadhaar-based cash transfer exercise has acquired a political colour. As an official close to developments commented, the &ldquo;Big Boys&rdquo; have taken over and UIDAI is playing a supporting role, an oblique reference to Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh&rsquo;s grandstanding on the cash transfer scheme.

UID's new champs

The sudden &ldquo;bullish&rdquo; turn in the market has given companies an opportunity to come out and launch their initial public offerings (IPOs), which where put on hold for several months owing to poor market conditions. No, it&rsquo;s not that smooth sailing. Most companies will have to wrap up their public offerings before December 15 because foreign investors stay away from the market ahead of the long holidays. Therefore, only a small window of opportunity is available to companies. This is making them pull out the stops to ensure that their IPOs are a success. One such company, an arm of India&rsquo;s leading mobile operator, is using charter planes to travel to different cities in a single day to market its offering.

Up in the air

Apropos the editorial &ldquo;France vs Mittal&rdquo; (November 30), not only have battles of globalisation been drawn in France, but the issue of country risk has also come to the forefront. To assume that only steel maker ArcelorMittal is at risk is incorrect. Such problems have implications for other industrial groups that have business units in different countries. For developed nations like France to create problems for globalised units is regressive. The issue of country risk needs to be revisited by all industrial bodies, and action be taken wherever necessary. International bodies like the World Bank and the UN should also address these issues that have far-reaching implications for business communities of the world.

Letters: Parochialism in France?

This refers to &ldquo;&lsquo;Enemy&rsquo; ballistic missile to be downed in space next month&rdquo; (December 3). The plans of the Indian military to purposely &ndash; and explosively &ndash; destroy an object in space will be disastrous in light of international efforts to reduce the threat posed to both manned and unmanned missions by orbital space debris. India seems committed to join China as the &ldquo;worst offender&rdquo; in this regard. China tested a missile in January 2007 by exploding a weather satellite, drawing broad international condemnation for its contribution to the debris problem; material from that explosion, including at least 950 large pieces, continues to orbit the earth at altitudes most heavily used by space missions, including the International Space Station.

Letters: India's disastrous mission

This refers to Shubhashis Gangopadhyay&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Aadhaar, the focus changer&rdquo;. Why should unique identification (UID) be limited to only handling subsidies? It can be used for many other documents to make our lives simpler and reduce (if not altogether eliminate) corruption. To start with, UID numbers remain unchanged despite a person&rsquo;s changed residence or economic status, and so on. That same number could be used as the passport number, the driving licence number, and can even be substituted for PAN. That would allow authorities to track a citizen throughout the length and breadth of the country.

Letters: Making lives simpler

Gold is giving India&rsquo;s policy makers headaches these days. Why, precisely? Well, the amount of gold imported by Indians increased considerably over the past year and some, as Table 1 shows.

StatsGuru-02-December-12

Consumers could be wasting their money on sports drinks, protein shakes and high-end trainers, according to a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the British Medical Journal. The investigation into the performance-enhancing claims of some popular sports products found &ldquo;a striking lack of evidence&rdquo; to back them up.

Sports drinks may be fooling you!

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Ponty Chadha&rsquo;s world&rdquo; (November 29). A government dependent on markets, directly or indirectly, to raise revenue for itself is prone to perversion. The way Gurdeep Singh Chadha has operated in three states, assuring them of tax revenues, is just a step before fascism. We wonder what locus standi Chadha &amp; Co, as enterprises with profit motive, had in terms of curbing smuggling of goods they produced. Enough reasons have been given for him to be targeted by rival gangs. The police department is to blame for this fiasco. This is similar to the strategy adopted by Chhattisgarh, promoting the Salwa Judum against Naxals. Kashmir did the same by arming civilians with weapons. All of them were failures.

Letters: The government's job

This refers to the report &ldquo;Centre&rsquo;s guideline on Sec 66(A) of IT Act has no backing of law&rdquo; (November 30). By definition, law is &ldquo;a rule or system of rules recognised by a country or community as governing the actions of its members&rdquo;, while justice, simply put, is &ldquo;the administration of law in a fair and reasonable way&rdquo;. The apex court&rsquo;s considering taking suo motu cognisance of the recent arrests, and its surprise to the fact that nobody had so far challenged the provision (contained in Section 66 (A)) of the Information Technology Act, points to the catastrophic phase our country&rsquo;s architecture responsible for dispensation of justice is going through. In the absence of a will to administer law in a fair and reasonable way, guidelines from the government and rulings from court will have limited potency. This will should come as a credible message from the highest level. It will be next to impossible to make laws mischief-proof.

Letters: Law and justice

This refers to the report &ldquo;Microfinance is in danger zone: Ramesh&rdquo; (November 28). Jairam Ramesh&rsquo;s statement that microfinance does not provide a panacea for alleviating poverty is exemplary. Foreign and local donors who support the microfinance sector in the name of poverty reduction should take that seriously. Instead, microfinance funds could be used more productively in alternative investment opportunities, including rural infrastructure (through food-for-work programmes) and agricultural research. Rural infrastructure includes an array of options &ndash; from roads to energy &ndash; essential for reaping the benefits of agricultural research. Studies have shown that the rate of return of these investments can be as much as at least 300 per cent.

Letters: Utilise MFI funds better

What can a central bank do to control the demand for gold? Precious little, going by a conversation between two respected former governors of the Reserve Bank of India, C Rangarajan and Y V Reddy, at an event organised by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. Reddy joked that the prejudice against gold has a gender bias. He looked at Rangarajan and recalled that he once told him that his wife (Rangarajan&rsquo;s) had this fondness for gold and kept buying it. Rangarajan tried to dissuade her, but in the end he agreed that she was right.

The golden rule

The Chinese may be making faster inroads into Africa than India, but the China phobia runs strong in some countries on that continent. According to an Indian businessman who visited South Sudan capital Juba, a ramshackle town with one hotel charging $500 a night and where the army polices the streets at night, a sign outside the government&rsquo;s offices read, &ldquo;No Chinese allowed&rdquo;. This was after the country discovered an underground pipeline built by the Chinese that ran parallel to an overland pipeline taking crude oil out of the country to a port in North Sudan, from which the country recently split.

China syndrome in South Sudan

Sahara group counsels wanted to submit drafts for Rs 5,120 crore with the Supreme Court on Friday. They requested the Chief Justice to allow them to deposit the drafts with the court. &ldquo;I have not seen so many zeroes in my life. Sebi [Securities and Exchange Board of India] is not accepting it. SAT [Securities Appellate Tribunal] has directed us to you. We don&rsquo;t know where to keep it,&rdquo; one of the lawyers pleaded, pointing out that the Supreme Court-determined deadline ended that day. &ldquo;Even we have not seen these many zeroes. You can keep it in your pocket from where you took it out,&rdquo; the judge said with a smile, adding that the matter would be listed for hearing on Monday.

Zero sums

The issue of REC or Rural Electrification Corporation bonds, which opened on Friday, will give tax benefits under section 54EC of the Income Tax Act. REC plans to raise Rs 4,500 crore through the issue. The interest rates on offer are 7.72 (for 10-year bonds) and 7.88 per cent (for 15-year bonds) &ndash; marginally higher than average wholesale price index measure of inflation at 7.36 per cent (March-November). Investors can use these bonds as a safeguard from long-term capital gains tax. Any capital gain as a result of a transfer of a long-term capital asset, say property sale, is not charged tax if the gains are invested in REC and National Highways Authority of India bonds. For example, if you have sold property and are sitting on capital gains, reinvesting the amount in these bonds will save you tax.

Tipping point

Every Monday, Business Standard analyses one family&rsquo;s finances and suggests a suitable way forward(Click on graphic)

Business Standard

Business Standard

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