Three small states under the UPA rule have seen rapid growth rates over the past five years. But among the larger states, NDA-ruled states have come up with better results, with Bihar, MP and Jharkhand much ahead of others.

India`s fastest growing states*

Business Standard

El Ni&ntilde;o is a weather phenomenon characterised by the warming of the sea-surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, affecting the generation of clouds, rainfall and winds in the tropics

El Nino raising its hood 

Salman Khan may have hogged the limelight with the success of his latest film Ek Tha Tiger but it is the Shiv Sena that has co-opted the title, punning on it to portray their elderly party leader Bal Thackeray. So posters showing Thackeray as &ldquo;Ekta Tiger&rdquo; (Marathi for &ldquo;the only tiger&rdquo;) are vying with those of the Khan hit. The target is not the actor but Thackeray&rsquo;s nephew and founder of breakaway party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena Raj Thackeray, who appears to have hijacked the Sena&rsquo;s ideological platform with his prominent protest against the Assam-related demonstration by Muslims in the city which turned violent.

Tigers burning bright

The Indian state has once again, over this week, shown its inability to grasp the essentials of new media and the internet. In the poorly planned blocking of several websites and accounts on the social networks Twitter and Facebook, it has demonstrated not just the wrong instincts, but a wholesale lack of effectiveness. This is more than just a free speech issue, though that is an important argument.

The web's laughing stock  

Energy companies, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp, are creating more market value per employee than any other industry, aided by technology that helps them bring oil and gas out of the ground. Three oil producers made the top 10 in an analysis showing which Standard &amp; Poor&rsquo;s 100-stock-index companies have the most valuable employees, based on their August 20 market capitalisation divided by the number of workers.

Most Valuable Employees

Mock common admission tests (CATs) are conducted by every CAT prep institute to prepare students to face the real thing in October. The CAT coaching centre for which I work decided to begin the season with a Sunday Mock to gain an advantage over our competitors. As we inch closer to developing an online platform to enable our students to take the Mock on the screen, our first Mock was a paper and pencil one administered for free. We marketed it across all colleges in Mumbai to get the highest number of students to appear. The Mock was followed by a detailed analysis of both Math and English sections. The idea is to impress prospective students enough for them to join us for the one-year prep course.

A Sunday Mock-tale

The Vedanta group, controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal will seek its shareholders&rsquo; approval to increase its earlier offer price by up to $650 million (Rs 3,588 crore) to buy the Indian government&rsquo;s stakes in Hindustan Zinc and unlisted Bharat Aluminium Co (Balco) on August 28. Cumulatively, the revised offer price of about $3.93 billion (Rs 21,717 crore) implies about 20 per cent increase in the UK-based group&rsquo;s January offer. If the proposed stake sales go through, it will be positive for shareholders of both Hindustan Zinc and Sesa Goa, say analysts at Barclays Capital.

Decoding Vedanta's moves   

I am about to get married. I earn Rs 40,000 per month and my would-be-wife earns Rs 30,000. While planning our finances together, what are the things we need to keep in mind? Both of us have commitments towards monthly investments in two mutual fund schemes each and two annual payments towards life insurance.

Financial planning: Malhar Majumder

The Mahapatra Committee report had recommended an increase in provisioning on restructured assets from 2% to 5%. But bankers have resisted the move as it will erode their profitability. Final guidelines on restructuring would be released later, but the Reserve Bank said the intention to suggest higher provisioning was to avoid any fragility in the banking system due to cyclical downturns.

Asset quality worry

India&rsquo;s warship-building capability is ramping up with its most experienced shipyards, Mazagon Dock Ltd, Mumbai (MDL) and Garden Reach Shipbuilders &amp; Engineers, Kolkata (GRSE), soon to deploy vastly improved infrastructure. Their new integrated yards, which are geared for &ldquo;modular&rdquo; shipbuilding, are expected to reduce the time needed to build a warship while also improving construction quality. This will help create the 160-ship armada that the defence ministry requires for the Indo-Pacific region, which is looming ever larger as the world&rsquo;s most vital geo-strategic patch. Defence shipyards like MDL and GRSE have been building for decades, hamstrung by global technology denial regimes and Indian industry&rsquo;s technological limitations. Over time, these shipyards have gained invaluable experience in the many complex facets of building warships. Their prime customer, the Indian Navy, is pleased with the battle-worthiness of the vessels that it gets.

Towards maritime power

It is rare, in India&rsquo;s fractious polity, to see almost all its major political parties agreed on a policy proposal. However, that unusual sight is currently visible in the general agreement, at a recent all-party meeting, to the need to ensure that reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government promotions stand up to judicial scrutiny. One of the dissenters, the Samajwadi Party, doesn&rsquo;t object to the nature of the provision, but to its scope, saying that Other Backward Classes, or OBCs, its main political base, should not be ignored. This lack of discussion and debate over what is, after all, a far-reaching and important issue is worrying.

Quotas and consequences

Despite drawing a blank on the disvestment front in the current financial year up till now, why is the disinvestment department so confident of meeting the Rs 30,000 crore target in the remaining six-odd months? According to a senior official, Finance Minister P Chidambaram is working overtime to convince his colleagues in charge of the ministries handling companies listed for disinvestment this year to support the finance ministry&rsquo;s effort. So now, much depends on the new finance minister&rsquo;s persuasive powers, especially since they&rsquo;re pitted against a sluggish market.

Hard-selling divestment

A reputed business school was hosting a Reserve Bank of India deputy governor for a conference. When asked about media coverage for the event, the communications officer of the business school expressed utter surprise that the press even knew about it. Apparently, the conference was a closed-door one that was supposed to be out of bounds for the media. The business school administration, however, had reckoned without the central bank&rsquo;s transparency. RBI had, in fact, proudly announced details of this conference on its website.

Open secret

With too many business schools vying to attract students, one method these institutes use to differentiate themselves is highlighting the names of high-profile campus visitors. To prove this, they even take photographs of their visitors. A senior executive from a media group learnt this the other day when he visited an institution. The college wouldn&rsquo;t let him go till he agreed to a photoshoot. For this, they even have coats ready, just in case the visitor isn&rsquo;t wearing one.

Coating the facts

Apropos the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on coal blocks, it needs to be understood that a bulk of the coal being produced is used by the power sector and about 80 per cent of coal-fired power is generated by public sector companies and state electricity boards. At increased coal prices &ndash; an inevitable result of competitive bidding &ndash; power generation costs would have gone up. Is the CAG justified in raising the alarm over loss to the exchequer given that a major part of the coal being produced goes to public utilities that are striving to provide reasonably-priced power to homes, railways (again a public utility) and industry? There has been a pattern in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition since the 1977 elections to make allegations a year or two ahead of elections. The CAG seems to have come in handy for this purpose.

Letters: So much for coalgate

This refers to M J Antony&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Creditors in a domineering role&rdquo; (Out of Court, August 15) that portrays the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (Sarfaesi) Act as a harsh and draconian legislation. It alleges that banks don&rsquo;t distinguish between wilful defaulters and marginal people who are defaulters and that banks don&rsquo;t adopt alternate remedies before resorting to the provisions of the Sarfaesi Act. The most derogatory remark the piece makes is that during the auctions of secured assets, there are manipulations in prices and banks adopt dubious stratagems through private treaty.

Letters: Banking on the Sarfaesi Act

I am 31 and have my own business. I recently started supplying plastic to few manufacturers in and around my factory which is located in Andheri. I have a godown of about 5,000 sq ft. I want to get my factory and godown insured against fire.

General Insurance: Gaurav Garg

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh now has a &ldquo;new&rdquo; portfolio, according to angry civil society groups protesting against the proposed Land Acquisition Bill drafted by his ministry. They&rsquo;re calling him urban development minister. At a protest staged at Jantar Mantar by Medha Patkar-led National Alliance of People&rsquo;s Movements, speakers from Chindwara and Betwa said the objective of the new Bill seems to be to facilitate urbanisation. &ldquo;It is surprising that the Bill is coming from Jairam Ramesh who is a rural development minister. He is actually playing the role of urban development minister. He is enabling the shrinking of rural and agrarian land, grazing land, in fact any land through such a law that would make every transfer possible provided there is compensation,&rsquo;&rsquo; said forest cultivator Manik Bhai from Sonebhadra. Displaced people from Indore&rsquo;s Betwa industrial corridor echoed his views.

Jairam's 'urban' portfolio

With Sumit Bose, now revenue secretary, and R S Gujral, now expenditure secretary, having swapped jobs, has P Chidambaram put in place his core team for the critical 2013-14 Budget? Most officials in the finance ministry say no, the expectation being that Gujral, who remains finance secretary by virtue of seniority, is still in exit mode. But an official close to the finance minister suggests that with Arvind Mayaram filling in the important post of economic affairs secretary, Chidambaram has in place the key bureaucrats he particularly wanted, so Gujral&rsquo;s exit or continuance has become a minor issue.

Team work

Alokananda Chakraborty&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Friends as brand endorsers&rdquo; (Rules of the Game, August 20) raises an interesting issue: why are we seeing a sudden spurt of &ldquo;friendship&rdquo; in brand communication across various categories? It is easy to associate this development with the Facebook mania that is sweeping the country. But the answer lies in what the article asserts: &ldquo;Friends&rdquo; are beginning to give Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Salman Khan a run for their money. Friendship opens a zone in which everything is free &mdash; a liberation from the traditional accounting of valuation as the primary motivation behind all our actions.

Business Standard

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