China&rsquo;s ruling Communist Party has unveiled its new leadership line-up to steer the world&rsquo;s second largest economy for the next five years, with Vice President Xi Jinping taking over from outgoing president Hu Jintao as party chief.

Circle of power 

Business Standard

Kavery Kalanithi of Sun TV group has retained her position as the country&rsquo;s top paid business woman, although her pay package declined to Rs 57 crore in 2012, according to Fortune magazine (Click on graphic)

In the driver's seat

Bal Thackeray was the mascot of Marathi pride and Hindutva who aroused extreme emotions but could never be ignored (Click on graphic)

End of an era

&lsquo;Loss of ownership rights over land assets was a primary cause underlying the Singur struggle, whereas the Haldia problem links to labour unrest.

Is Haldia Mamata Banerjee's Singur?

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Defend your choices&rdquo; (November 19). It seems the key personnel in the UPA government and the Congress party carry a personal vendetta against the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for exposing the mega scam through his statutory audits. The CAG had given three estimates of presumptive losses relating to the 2G spectrum auction of 2008. They were based on data provided by the government. And it was the Opposition and the media that hyped the Rs 1.76 lakh loss, not the CAG.

Letters: Blaming the CAG

When someone like Bal Thackeray dies, spare a thought for the harried people at 24x7 news channels. Clearly, a flurry of calls were made to leaders cutting across party lines, and celebrities of all sorts for suitably sonorous and sombre reactions to Thackeray&rsquo;s death on Saturday. Every single news-channel editor needed a quick quote over the phone &ndash; or &ldquo;phono&rdquo;, as they&rsquo;re apparently known in the industry. In all the chaos, some wires can get crossed. One sufferer in consequence was Minister of State for Shipping and South Mumbai Member of Parliament Milind Deora, who was startled to receive a call asking what he, (the late union minister) Vilasrao Deshmukh, thought of Thackeray&rsquo;s death. A disgusted Mr Deora tweeted angrily: &ldquo;Just got a call from a news channel asking me for a phono. I was also asked if I&rsquo;m Vilasraoji. Pathetic! I obviously declined.

TV's crossed connections

It is encouraging to see a lot of Indian companies across industries engaging customers in the digital landscape. While some have successfully created high volumes of conversation across various channels including blogs, forums, and social media sites, others are reportedly engaging customers through contests, humorous videos and events on social media.

Connecting the digital way

    The town is referred to as the &ldquo;first filling station in the world&rdquo;. It is part of the Bertha Benz Memorial route. In August 1888, Benz drove in one of Benz&rsquo;s newly-constructed&nbsp;patent Motorwagen&nbsp;No. 3 automobiles from Mannheim to Pforzheim, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over more than a very short distance (about 104&nbsp;km). On the way, she had to find&nbsp;Ligroin, a&nbsp;solvent&nbsp;available only at&nbsp;dispensing chemists&rsquo; shops, to use as fuel. Thus, the still existing Stadt-Apotheke in&nbsp;Wiesloch became the world&rsquo;s first&nbsp;filling station.

Answers to last week's quiz (#279)

Some of the most vocal opposition to the cap on LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinders has come from within the government. Food and Civil Supplies Minister K V Thomas, in particular, has written to the prime minister seeking a review on the cap, as it would hurt the Congress electorally. It &ldquo;will not go well&rdquo; with voters, especially the middle class, he said. Mr Thomas&rsquo; opposition, caused one senior Congress Cabinet minister to apparently ask what it was about Congressmen from Kerala that made them as left as the Left &ndash; referring also to Defence Minister A K Antony&rsquo;s well-documented concerns about free trade arrangements and foreign investments. Mr Antony has spoken out in Cabinet about the former, and held up foreign direct investment into the defence sector after it was cleared by the commerce ministry.

As left as the Left?

Even as Mumbai shut down in paralysed anticipation of possible violence surrounding Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray&rsquo;s death on Saturday, other parts of Maharashtra were wracked with violence over sugar cane prices. As one Delhi wag put it: &ldquo;They say Delhi is the city of dynasties. But it&rsquo;s Mumbai where royal family dynamics play out on the street.&rdquo; The reference was to the widely-believed &ldquo;secret story&rdquo; behind the disputes over sugar cane prices &mdash; the open differences between Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar and his assertive nephew, Ajit Pawar. The younger Mr Pawar has been feeling sidelined of late; and it is generally assumed that the farmers protesting a lower-than-acceptable price for their sugar cane harvest from refining mills are part of an attempt to pressure his uncle, and remind everyone of the power he wields.

All in the families

The continuing collapse of the India story is generally supposed to have taken its toll of foreign investors&rsquo; optimism. Yet not all foreign corporations are the same. Asked about subdued growth and other issues on the sidelines of an event in Mumbai recently, a senior official with a storied foreign bank commented that the &ldquo;media might not believe in the country, but we believe India has great potential&rdquo;. His company&rsquo;s belief and optimism were unchanged, he added. On being asked why, he pointed out that, perhaps, his corporation had the benefit of perspective, and an institutional memory of times that were much more difficult: &ldquo;We have been here for the last 150 years. We will be here for the next 150 years at least.

Foreigners and foreigners

The tape-recorded interview of the minister of state in the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office, V Narayanasamy, leaves no doubt about the government&rsquo;s intention to make the Comptroller &amp; Auditor General (CAG) a multi-member body. The CAG has reported a number of mega scams of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Letters: Weakening the CAG?

In the column &ldquo;Mumbai state of mind&rdquo; (Worm&rsquo;s Eye View, November 17), the writer laments his two-hour travel time from the city to Vashi for a lecture once every week. Imagine the plight of millions of commuters, who live in several new habitations from Panvel to Vashi &mdash; spending more than two hours each way daily to reach their offices in the city, using the rickety and strained Harbour Line via Kurla. Earlier, a proposal was made to build a road-cum-rail bridge connecting Nhava Sheva with Sewri. That would have vastly reduced their travel time. But, two years back, the state government arbitrarily announced that it was dropping the rail portion of the plan, without giving any reasons. The newspapers also did not comment &mdash; many did not even notice. Later, even the road bridge did not take off.

Letters: Disconnected lines

Sangeeta resides with her 2 children in their self-owned flat in Thane. Just a year back, her husband died due to cancer. Being the sole earning member, Sangeeta juggles between her job as a teacher in a private school and giving private tuitions at home in the evening to supplement her income.

Case study

Industries like agrochemicals, seeds and fertilisers have corrected considerably. The valuations seem appealing at current levels. Similarly, engineering businesses, too, have underperformed due to a sluggish business environment and high interest rates. India cannot do without infrastructure and fresh asset creation, if it has to grow at seven per cent plus. Hence, sooner than later, the business environment for these companies will start turning around. However, investors would need adequate patience, to get returns out of stocks in these sectors.

Investing: Paras Adenwala

The government&rsquo;s concerted attack on the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is more than worrying: it misses the point. And it reveals a clear lack of understanding of what serves India in terms of policy. The peg, of course, is the recently concluded, Supreme Court-ordered 2G auction to replace the licences handed out by the telecom ministry under A Raja in 2008. The low incomes from the auction have led Union ministers to question the CAG&rsquo;s computation of presumptive losses in the earlier spectrum sale. They have called the 2G scam figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore a myth and said that such calculations sensationalised the issue, in addition to restricting the space in which the government could operate. Certainly, the CAG came up with figures for presumptive losses that many believed to be an overestimation. But it presented three scenarios depending on which the amount could have been between Rs 57,000 crore and Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Defend your choices

Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray bestrode the city he renamed Mumbai for decades. He dominated its politics and greatly influenced the governance of India&rsquo;s richest state, although he never held any official post. When his party controlled the municipal corporation, he did not become mayor. When it &ldquo;stormed Mantralaya&rdquo;, as he described its victory in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1995 Maharashtra Assembly elections, he did not become chief minister. But his power remained absolute; he famously boasted of his &ldquo;remote control&rdquo; of the Manohar Joshi-led state government. On Sunday, the long lines of mourners that brought Mumbai to a standstill, the official condolences from India&rsquo;s leaders, might deceive an onlooker into thinking that Bal Thackeray&rsquo;s career was no different from that of many other regional strongmen. But that would be a mistake.

Bal Thackeray's true legacy

The question of corporate debt is taking on new urgency, as it becomes increasingly clear that reversing an investment slowdown will become difficult when so many major companies are debt-laden. Table 1 reveals the private companies with the most consolidated total debt for last financial year. Most of these, clearly, are in infrastructure (including telecom) or heavy industry.

StatsGuru: 19-November-2012

The Board of Control for Cricket in India or BCCI has not been known for its ability to think long term. True, it could argue that the spectacular success in this country over the past decade or so of the game it has steered should suggest it knows what it is doing. But there are repeated instances of the BCCI&rsquo;s willingness &mdash; indeed, eagerness &mdash; to push for a quick cheque now as opposed to working towards the longer term health of the game, in all its versions. That is, of course, the exact opposite of how a sports administrative board should behave. Consider the most recent examples, connected to the ongoing series. England&rsquo;s team is visiting India, and is playing the first Test of that series at the moment. However, the readers of British newspapers have to do without photographs of the action.

Strangling a sport

In 1966 when Prabodhankar (a person who spreads the light of knowledge) Keshav Thackeray who was a leading light of Maharashtra's social reform movement announced at a mammoth rally at Mumbai's historic Shivaji Park, &quot;I am offering my Bal for the cause of Maharashtra.&rdquo;&nbsp;Prabodhankar could not have imagined that his son one day would rule the state through his famous remote control, a man who would arouse curiosity, passion and hate across the nation.

Of cabals and kings: Balasaheb's profile

This week I complete six months in Mumbai &mdash; make that THE Mumbai. It is so different a state of mind to any other place in India that, when they say you become one with the crowd &ndash; never mind the individuality you try desperately to cling to &ndash; they couldn&rsquo;t be more right. If you live in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, or any other Indian city, you follow the same rules of living, albeit at different scales. But Mumbai has an idiom of survival all its own.

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