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

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

Accounting fiasco 

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?

John McAfee, 67, the pioneer of anti-virus software and founder of McAfee, has been in hiding since mid-November. He is wanted by Belize police for questioning after McAfee&rsquo;s neighbour, American expatriate Gregory Faull, was found murdered.

Scanning McAfee

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

India fraud report

India ranks fourth in the 2013 global manufacturing competitiveness index compiled by the consultancy Deloitte, even as the country&rsquo;s growth rate has been pulled down in recent quarters by sharply falling manufacturing performance. This is a truly odd combination; how to reconcile the two? The short answer is that the recent fall from grace has been captured by India&rsquo;s rank sliding from second in 2010 to the current fourth.

Decoding Deloitte

The ongoing dispute between the Indian company GMR Infrastructure and the Maldives government over the former&rsquo;s contract to build an airport for the Maldives&rsquo; capital, Mal&eacute;, throws up some knotty questions. Most importantly, to what degree should the Indian government step in to protect the interests of its corporate citizens abroad? Some would argue that even if the Maldives have entered into a poor deal, the sanctity of contracts requires it to be kept.

A classic MNC problem

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

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!

The release of the election manifesto for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat by Chief Minister Narendra Modi is a good point at which to take stock of his growing stature within his party even before he wins the coming Assembly elections, as is expected. The past few days have seen a cascade of endorsements of Mr Modi&rsquo;s prime ministerial aspirations from all corners of the BJP. Its leader in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, said over the weekend that Mr Modi was &ldquo;capable of&rdquo; being and &ldquo;fit to become prime minister&rdquo;. Her Rajya Sabha counterpart, Arun Jaitley, said it was &ldquo;natural&rdquo; the BJP keep Mr Modi &ldquo;ahead&rdquo; of other aspirants. Other leaders, such as Gopinath Munde and Venkaiah Naidu, have expressed similar sentiments.

Mr Modi's new supporters

The new Basel III norms, which are to be implemented from January 1, 2013, should render the global banking system much less vulnerable. But their implementation starts at a time when Indian banking is under stress. Public sector banks (PSBs), which hold roughly 70 per cent of all assets, are in especially poor shape. There is provision for Rs 15,000 crore of PSB equity infusion in the 2012-13 Budget.

Govt's bank challenge

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.

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