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 

Business Standard

Chinese affiliates of five accounting firms were charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday with violating securities laws.

Accounting fiasco 

Out of the 53 cities that have a population of over one million, according to the 2011 Census, only 16 can have foreign-owned retail stores. The remaining cities are in states that are opposed to foreign direct investment (FDI) or are yet to decide. Business Standard does a quick check to figure out which cities are ready for foreign direct investment in retail, based on the Gazette of India for retail FDI policy and the 2011 Census.

Sold on retail 

It has been reported that the tax authorities have sent Kingfisher Airlines a fresh tax notice. An elementary lesson a public finance student learns during undergraduation is that the taxation of an entity should be based on its ability to pay tax. In the case of the cash-strapped airline, one wonders whether our tax authorities are unaware of even the basic cannons of taxation.

Letters: Taxing Kingfisher

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? 

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

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.

Letters: Intention vs implementation

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

Twenty years on, the nation is still grappling with the extraordinary wrongness of the act of vandalism in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. No archaeologist or theologian was ever able to prove satisfactorily that the 16th century mosque was built atop the very birthplace of Lord Rama. Even if it was so done by the Mughal emperor Babur, two wrongs could not have made one right. Still L K Advani undertook the 6,000-mile rath yatra across the country and recruited hordes of kar sevaks armed with trishuls and bricks to follow him to Ayodhya &ldquo;to right a historical wrong&rdquo;. So, he could not escape the responsibility for the demolition of the disused mosque, though he later described December 6, 1992 as the &ldquo;saddest day&rdquo; of his life in a vain bid to downplay his role and throw off his hawkish image.

Letters: Ayodhya's legacy

The governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is reported to have hinted at the possibility of a new normal for inflation in formulating monetary policy. If it were so, it is likely to be around 6.5 to seven per cent against four to five per cent now. The idea is in line with the time-honoured practice of revising the target to match the achievement in our five-year plans. Eventually, it would become 9.99 per cent, since that is also below double-digit inflation.

Letters: The new normal

The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party remained absent at yesterday&rsquo;s voting in the Lok Sabha on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, which as a result gave the United Progressive Alliance or UPA the necessary numbers to defeat the challenge to its key economic policy initiative. The scene of action will now shift to the Rajya Sabha, where the UPA government is likely to face similar opposition.

Finally, debating markets

On the twentieth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by a mob of enraged kar sevaks, it might appear that the dispute about the birthplace of Rama is a thing of the past. It seems no longer a salient issue in Indian politics; even the Bharatiya Janata Party merely pays lip service to it and speaks instead of economic nationalism or national security. Like its current standard-bearer, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the party seems more than willing to not make a polarising message explicit in 2012. For a post-liberalisation India, discussions of economic prosperity could well make the divisive rhetoric that caused and followed the demolition irrelevant.

Twenty years, second class

The Reserve Bank of India should not allow banks to buy back gold.

Should RBI allow banks to buy back gold?

The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai is close to the fabled film city, so it was inevitable that the institute would receive proposals for film shoots on campus. Many years ago, IGIDR Founder-Director Kirit S Parikh said in his speech at a conference at the institute, film-maker Manmohan Desai wanted to shoot a scene there for a film starring Sridevi and Amitabh Bachchan. Sridevi was to play the daughter of a rich father who had studied at the institute. But, Parikh said, he did not allow the shoot because he believed that the institute&rsquo;s academic contribution would be seriously compromised. The institute was established by the Reserve Bank of India.

An academic question

IGIDR&rsquo;s salubrious location also adjoins a reserve forest and S Mahendra Dev, director and vice-chancellor, said leopards often visit the institute as a result.

Leopards in a spot

Thanks to the absence of weekly ratings owing to the digitisation of television sets in the major cities, the mad 24-hour scramble among news channels has waned. A senior TV journalist summed up the change: the channel is showing more news because there is no pressure of ratings on the editors and the competition for eyeballs has diminished substantially. The bigger question now is how long this can be sustained since ratings are directly related to revenues.

Off the charts

This refers to the report &ldquo;MPs to set up forum to highlight child survival issues&rdquo; (November 16). The leadership of Members of Parliament who recently launched an initiative to help drive down India&rsquo;s unacceptable high child mortality rate is praiseworthy. India has the highest number of child deaths in the world. One in five of the world&rsquo;s children who succumb to diarrhoea and pneumonia are from India &mdash; and many of these children die because their bodies are weakened by malnutrition. India&rsquo;s future demands that we reverse this trend and, in this regard, the new Parliamentary forum is a tremendous step forward.

Business Standard

Business Standard

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