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Case study

Business Standard

The second-quarter results of the major Indian software companies threw up few surprises. TCS has continued to better expectations and Infosys has been unable to meet them, possibly paying for its inherent conservatism. There is by now a pattern in the market&rsquo;s response to Infosys&rsquo; results. In their immediate aftermath, the company&rsquo;s stock takes a beating; but, by the time the next quarterly results are due, the stock makes up lost ground.

IT scenario unchanged

Inflation and interest rates are not the only issues exercising the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) these days. The incidence of fraudsters invoking the central bank has become frequent, too. So much so, in addition to running the standard warning scrolls on its website, RBI recently added a footnote to its official leatherhead. Written in English and Hindi, it says, &ldquo;RBI never sends mails, SMSes or makes calls asking for personal information like bank account details, passwords, etc. It never keeps or offers funds to anyone. Please do not respond in any manner to such offers.

In spirit and letterhead

The weakness of Indians for &ldquo;imported&rdquo; goods is well-known and there is no dearth of businesses wanting to exploit this. A pharmacy in Bangalore is now seen sporting a board proclaiming &ldquo;Imported Ayurvedic medicines available&rdquo;. What is more, it has no dearth of customers wanting to lay their hands on the &ldquo;imported medicines&rdquo; for a wholly indigenous medical science.

'Imported' to India

Karl Slym, who recently joined as managing director of Tata Motors, said he had four new faces to introduce at the launch of Safari Storme on Wednesday, because the company has overhauled its top management over the past month. He is, therefore, the first face the media required to be acquainted with, followed by that of Ranjit Yadav, president, passenger car business unit and Neeraj Garg, vice-president, commercial, passenger car business unit. But the most interesting face of the lot, he said, was of &ldquo;The Beast Refined&rdquo;. He was referring to the new SUV (sports utility vehicle).

Facing the Storme

Apropos the article &ldquo;Relationship manager or salesman?&rdquo; (October 22), I would like to recount my recent experience with a leading private sector bank. Ten days before my short-term fixed deposit of Rs 30 lakh was due to mature, my relationship manager called me for a meeting at the branch. She tried to convince me to put the money in one lot into a hybrid fund (with a huge component of gold investment) of a competitor bank&rsquo;s mutual fund. The fund&rsquo;s return was good owing to its gold component, she said. But I refused to risk such a big amount in a single fund.

Letters: End of a relationship

In a welfare state, the government is expected to support all its senior citizens by providing pension. Ideally, this should be a universal obligation. Unfortunately, in our country it is only a privileged few in the organised sector that receive what can be considered a decent pension. By introducing the new pension scheme, the government has tried to bring all categories of employees under the pension umbrella. If it is not able to provide pension to all its senior citizens, the least it can do is exempt from taxation all forms of earnings that fall under the &ldquo;pension&rdquo; category. All earnings earned through pension schemes operated by insurance companies and mutual funds should also be exempted from taxation.

Letters: Don't tax pension

Apropos Kishan S Rana&rsquo;s article &ldquo;A message for Mr Nehru&rsquo;s ears only&rdquo; (October 20), the nation must draw useful lessons from history and resolve to regain our lost prestige as a service to the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru and the soldiers we lost in the 1962 war. The Indian political class must realise that we cannot afford another attack on our sovereignty.

Letters: Lessons from history

In distant Whitehall, the political class is having a pretty bad week. Andrew Mitchell, the powerful Chief Whip of Britain&rsquo;s ruling Conservative Party, had to resign after reports emerged that he had sworn at police officers preventing him from entering Prime Minister David Cameron&rsquo;s residence at Number 10, Downing Street. That Mr Mitchell called the policemen on duty &ldquo;plebs&rdquo;, underlining a perceived class disconnect between the Conservative leadership and the British people, made it worse. This impression was only reinforced when, on Friday, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had to upgrade the second-class ticket he had bought after he had settled into a first-class railway compartment. Of course, any possibility that rules do not apply to the politically powerful is distasteful &mdash; and this point was made not just by opposition parties but by many within the two parties of government, too.

Cross-party consensus?

Much criticism has been directed at Friday&rsquo;s agreement in Brussels among the European leaders to make the European Central Bank the bloc&rsquo;s financial supervisor, mainly for the slow pace at which it will be implemented. But the agreement that will bind the 17-nation monetary union more tightly via a central bank oversight body could also be considered an indicator of the durability of the euro zone.

Euro zone redux

Does the Reserve Bank of India face a changed situation, allowing it to cut rates in the coming fortnight? Overall growth remains anaemic, though the precipitous slide visible in Table 1 appears to have been arrested. The index of industrial production for manufacturing &ndash; visible in Table 2 &ndash; was positive in August, too &ndash; though there is little doubt, looking at the graph&rsquo;s overall shape, that the trend is downward.

StatsGuru-22-October-12

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Saturday suspended the licence of Kingfisher Airlines, denying it permission to fly. The DGCA&rsquo;s stated reason was that the company had failed to provide a viable recovery plan; failing such a plan, it was not clear that safety standards would be met. Kingfisher&rsquo;s engineers have been on strike for over a fortnight, demanding the payment of salaries which have been in arrears for several months.

A bird that won't fly

This refers to T N Ninan&rsquo;s column &ldquo;What price a Lok Pal?&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, October 20). With India Against Corruption (IAC) levelling charges of corruption against almost all parties, the next session of Parliament may turn out to be relatively peaceful. The two principal parties may finally stop maligning each other in the House, since both of them are in a spot over corruption allegations.

Letters: IAC's gift to democracy

This refers to the report &ldquo;Alarm over proposal to ban GM trials&rdquo; (October 19). The recommendation of a 10-year moratorium on field trials for genetically modified (GM) food crops will lead India to the kind of Dark Ages that Europe saw, when certain institutions were against all sorts of scientific innovations. The move will ensure that India lags its neighbour, China.

Letters: A referendum on GM

Indian Administrative Service officer Ashok Khemka may be feted by the media for raising objections to a Robert Vadra-DLF deal, but bureaucrats themselves don&rsquo;t think much of this heroism. The general impression among civil servants on Raisina Hill is that Khemka&rsquo;s record of 43 transfers in 21 years shows that he may be honest and righteous, but that&rsquo;s not good enough for a bureaucrat. The key to surviving without compromising on integrity, they say, is to never say &ldquo;no&rdquo;. &ldquo;We have to be politically correct always. Don&rsquo;t say no when your boss asks you to do something, but don&rsquo;t do it either. Find ways to avoid doing something that&rsquo;s not right, without giving him an impression that you are against it,&rdquo; said an official.

Never say never

This refers to A K Bhattacharya&rsquo;s column &ldquo;The other side of reforms&rdquo; (New Delhi Diary, October 17). Why has such an urgent need for reforms arisen all of a sudden? The answer is that all governments implement populist policies, and do not make serious efforts to increase revenue and cut wasteful expenditure. Through reforms &ndash; which are essentially corrective actions &ndash; fresh and renewed efforts can be made to put the economy back on track.

Letters: The politics of reform

G V K Reddy, chairman, GVK group, and G V Sanjay Reddy, his son and vice-chairman, were among the big guns from the Indian corporate sector at the Indo-Australia CEO (chief executive officer) forum attended by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma last week. Sanjay Reddy heads the group&rsquo;s $10-billion operations in Australia and has signed a contract for port development with Korea-based Samsung C&amp;T and Smithbridge Group Pvt Ltd of Australia in the presence of the two leaders. Maybe the occasion overwhelmed him because he cordially addressed Gillard as the Indian prime minister, to much audience laughter, recovering quickly to jokingly attribute his mistake to his dual-country responsibilities.

Indo-Aussie 'prime minister'

Among many other things, out-of-turn train bookings have suffered in the absence of a permanent railways minister. Although Road Transport and Highways Minister C P Joshi was given additional charge of railways last month, bookings for wait-listed tickets done through the minister&rsquo;s office have not been easy. Unless there is a permanent minister, getting things to move is tough, insiders say. Joshi got additional charge after the exit of Trinamool Congress minister Mukul Roy. Roy and five other Trinamool ministers quit after the party withdrew its support to the United Progressive Alliance government over its foreign direct investment policies.

Put on hold

No. You need not buy a second property. You can invest the proceeds from sale of house property in capital gain bonds issued by the National Highways Authority of India and the Rural Electrification Corporation within six months. Benefits come to you under Section 54EC.

Tipping point

I have covered my family under a family floater plan &mdash; including myself, my parents and my elder sister. However, she is getting married by the end of this year.

Business Standard

Business Standard

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