The industry ignored measures that would have improved iron ore quality, but then, the mining ban has done considerable harm too
Sushim Banerjee 
Director General, INSDAG*
&ldquo;Iron ore shortage will hit the industry hard, but the steel industry did not pay attention to beneficiation or pelletisation, which could enable it to use fines or convert low-grade ore to high-grade ones&rdquo;
India is shortly going to add around 26 million tonnes of steel through brownfield expansion, and this

Is the government killing the steel industry?

Business Standard

Nearly 200 countries are meeting in Doha for annual talks to stall global warming. Here&rsquo;s a snapshot of what happened in Doha on Day 2, and what the domestic industry thinks about the global talks.

Doha day-2

What to make of the compromise allegedly worked out between Egypt&rsquo;s President Mohammed Morsi and the judiciary to curb the sweeping powers he gave himself last Thursday? Those powers, among other things, put his rulings outside the purview of judicial review until a new Parliament is elected. The agreement, as purveyed to the press by a presidential spokesperson, suggests that only &ldquo;sovereign decisions&rdquo; would be kept outside judicial oversight.

The Pharaoh complex

Gold importers in India, the world's biggest buyer of the metal, continued to be on the sidelines, as prices steadied near their highest levels in about two months(Click on graphic)

Gold prices near 2-month high

Like elsewhere in India, the marriage season in Mumbai is considered the opportune occasion to display wealth. But even by that yardstick, a wedding in the family of a well-known city realtor touched new heights. The builder booked the entire Oberoi hotel in south Mumbai for the wedding and presented Audis, Mercedes and BMWs to wedding guests in a lucky draw. The first prize was Rs 1.5 crore in cash! The builder is well known in Mumbai&rsquo;s richie-rich circles for spending Rs 300 crore in cash to build a temple in Rajasthan.

Wedded to wealth

At a banking conference last week, spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was teaching bankers how to meditate. As a starting point, he asked the audience to close their eyes. Many bankers did not do so, despite being asked several times. It was the programme host who provided the explanation at the end of the session: they are bankers, he said, that&rsquo;s why they&rsquo;re a little scared to close their eyes.

Eyes wide shut

At an event in Mumbai, Finance Minister P Chidambaram took time out from his customary caustic remarks for the press, whom he accused of financial illiteracy, to joke with the audience. &ldquo;I know what you expect me to say &mdash; a number of revolutionary things. But first, I&rsquo;m not a revolutionary and, second, functional or not, Parliament is technically in session,&rdquo; he said, setting off a wave of laughter in the audience.

Non-revolutionary

Apropos your editorial &ldquo;UID&rsquo;s unintended effect&rdquo; (November 27) the implementation of Aadhaar may lead to financial profligacy, but it will have its own advantages in terms of cost effectiveness by cutting down the multi-layered subsidy delivery system through the state and district administrations. Direct transfers will also help plug the diversion of subsidies. This is evident, for example, in a project to reform the public distribution system (PDS) using Aadhaar in the Kotkasim district of Rajasthan. Before the project, PDS shops in the district used to sell their entire allotted stock of 84,000 litres of kerosene a month. Now that Aadhaar has been implemented, they sell 22,000 litres a month. This is ample proof that subsidised kerosene was being diverted for other purposes. It is, however, a fact that, with or without Aadhaar, there is no stopping our politicians&rsquo; extravagant use of state finances for doling out sops to keep their vote bank intact.

Letters: Aadhaar's benefits

The untimely death of Indian national Savita Halappanavar in Galway in the Republic of Ireland, who was denied a necessary abortion, should warn the world about the dangerous fundamentalists who govern a backward and problematic country. Medical staff failed to act to save a woman in the prime of her life. This is disgraceful and shows up the Republic of Ireland for what it is: an ultra-Catholic theocracy devoid of freedom and bonded to iron-fisted fundamentalism.

Letters: Fundamental backwardness

The import of two items contributes disproportionately to India&rsquo;s record trade gap and current account deficit. One of these, namely energy imports, is unavoidable. The strong demand for the other item &ndash; gold &ndash; is driven by several factors and may perhaps be reduced. India imports up to a quarter of annual global production, and gold imports equal 75 per cent of the current account deficit.

Chains of gold

Coca-Cola&rsquo;s Support My School initiative in India has been touted as one of the biggest CSR initiatives by corporate India and is beamed on NDTV with a lot of fanfare. Coca-Cola is not the only company that has effectively bundled, branded and communicated its CSR efforts; too many companies have started communicating their CSR efforts too early in too conspicuous a way.

CSR: A marketing tool?

The central government is going full speed ahead with the operationalisation of the Aadhaar platform. About 50 districts will have various pilot projects running soon; and it intends the entire country, more or less, to have access to the Unique ID-empowered variants of existing schemes by the end of 2013, according to a recent statement by the finance minister. The movement to cash transfers for welfare spending is overdue and presents the possibility of considerable saving.

UID's unintended effect

Normally, diseases that break out during the rainy season tend to fade away on the withdrawal of the monsoon. That hasn&rsquo;t happened this year. Infections typical of hot and humid weather, such as dengue, malaria, encephalitis, meningitis and chikungunya, have tended to persist despite the onset of winter. Meanwhile, cold-weather maladies like various types of influenza, including the dreaded swine flu and bird flu, have also surfaced. Delhi alone has recorded more than 1,800 cases of dengue &ndash; the count of unreported cases must be much higher &ndash; causing scores of deaths. Mumbai, too, has seen over 700 cases of dengue, including some deaths, the most famed victim being filmmaker Yash Chopra. The situation in other cities and villages is no different. And over a dozen cases of swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus, have come to light in areas around Delhi.

Unseasonal illness 

Anyone who doesn&rsquo;t know what Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn looks like may mistake him for a spiritual guru. At least that is what the wife of Bank of Maharashtra Executive Director C V R Rajendran initially thought. Gokarn&rsquo;s special address at a banking conference hosted by the bank last week was followed by a special discourse from spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. In his inauguration speech, Rajendran said, &ldquo;When we were going through the profiles and photographs of the invitees, my wife asked why there were two Swamijis at the conference.&rdquo; When Rajendran told her Gokarn is an economist, his wife asked whether there is a relationship between the two. There is, he replied. &ldquo;One is the cause of my problem and the other is the solution; one decides how many sleeping tablets I take in a day and the other tells me how to relieve this stress.

The Swami and the economist

Gokarn got some mild revenge soon after over the issue of curbing gold demand. He suggested several financial instruments as an alternative to physical investment in gold, but Rajendran countered with a novel idea &mdash; increase locker rents 10 times to discourage people from buying gold. The idea would work because women don&rsquo;t feel safe wearing gold in public these days and store all of it in banks. &ldquo;Locker charges are not regulated, so no one stops you from doing that,&rdquo; came Gokarn&rsquo;s quick response.

Lock and stock

A finance ministry official hopes that the rupee will appreciate in two to three months once the economy is back on an upward curve. Common sense could be misleading where technical knowledge of the subject is required. If the economy grows fast, ceteris paribus, it will lead to additional imports bringing further strains on the rupee. Exports depend on the rest of the world &mdash; the economic prospects of which are not bright. Has the finance ministry done any quantitative analysis of the income elasticities of demand for exports and imports vis-&agrave;-vis the rest of the world to justify the official&rsquo;s optimism? The Reserve Bank should examine whether the depreciation of the rupee has anything to do with the large-scale forex transactions in the recent period. The heavy repo transactions need to be examined to find out their destinations. Treasury earnings can be sizeable on large transactions, even if the margins are small.

Letters: An 'optimistic' mistake

Spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is nothing if not wholly temporal when it comes to dispensing advice. Asked by one banker how to deal with a stressful relationship with his boss, Shankar&rsquo;s suggestion was that instead of contradicting his boss, the man should handle the problem with &ldquo;skill&rdquo; and make him say what he himself believed in. &ldquo;And if you think he opposes whatever you say, then say the opposite,&rdquo; he added.

Opposite attraction

For the last few months, State Bank of India in its advertisements has been asking customers to get new cheque books because the old ones will not be valid from January 1, 2013. The ads also mention that the bank will send the new cheque books to customers&rsquo; registered addresses. Recently, a news channel said this rule would apply to all other banks. When I tried to clarify that, I got different replies from four different banks. One said its cheques already conformed to the new guidelines; another said customers get a get limited supply of new cheque books; the third one said there was no reason to worry if the old cheques conformed to core banking solutions; and, the fourth bank said the old cheques could still be used for cash withdrawals after January 1. But they all maintained that the new cheque books would not be sent to the customers directly. They needed to duly fill the required slips.

Letters: New cheque books

This refers to Mihir Sharma&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Judge hanging&rdquo; (Ticker, November 24). By describing Kasab as just another &ldquo;young, deprived and brainwashed&rdquo; Pakistani, the author ignores the jihadi fervour of the Islamic terrorists, seeking salvation by killing non-Muslims. This is like describing 9/11 as a &ldquo;construction disaster&rdquo;, or Fort Hood shooting as &ldquo;workplace violence&rdquo;. If the absence of the death penalty in a country is a measure of maturity, or &ldquo;largeness&rdquo; of any democracy, the US would not pass the test &mdash; for not only it exterminates terrorists, it does so without any due process on foreign soil, without permission of the host government. Moreover, Turkey would qualify for a place at the high table in the comity of successful democracies. It is unfortunate that the writer is among those who believe fighting terror is just a competition in public school manners.

Letters: Fighting terror

Pravin Bangera and his spouse, Sushella, live in Virar, near Mumbai. Pravin works as an advertising manager with a leading media company, while Sushella is assistant manager (administration) in a logistics firm. They have a five-year-old son. Both have struggled in their careers, which prompted Pravin to enroll and complete a part-time MBA a few years before. This enabled him to get the present job.

Business Standard

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