Only a few Indian companies have a clearly articulated dividend payout policy. According to JP Morgan, companies wanting to enhance shareholder value would do well to have a consistent payout policy &ndash; with stable to rising dividends. &ldquo;Our analysis shows that companies with such a policy have consistently outperformed the benchmark over the last decade,&rdquo; said Bharat Iyer, JP Morgan's India equity strategist in a note to clients.

Reaping rich dividends

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Number of subscribers in India , which is world&rsquo;s second-biggest mobile market(Click on graphic)

India's mobile market

Share buybacks, which are gaining popularity, have a positive impact on stock prices over a 12-month period. An analysis done by Morgan Stanley shows that since 2005, about half of the stocks have outperformed the Sensex over 12 months after the start of the buyback. The foreign brokerage says buyback coupled with positive change in fundamentals is the recipe for excess returns.

Creating value

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has decided to insulate itself from the vociferous criticism it has faced for frequent revisions in its data &mdash; not to forget the infamous goof-up of industrial production numbers in January. Since June, all its press releases begin by providing the sources of its data, which is 16 agencies from which it gathers the information. In January, CSO had had to face considerable flak when it revised growth in the index of industrial production from 6.8 per cent to 1.1 per cent after it discovered that the Directorate of Sugar had overestimated output by about three times.

Once bitten

Agricultural output may ebb this year owing to an inadequate and erratic monsoon, but that should not obscure the fact that several states have reported sustained and high agricultural growth in the recent past &mdash; including states that have been chronic laggards.

Beating the monsoon

Sahara India Pariwar, as the name suggests, makes no bones about its assumed consanguinity, calling itself the &ldquo;world&rsquo;s largest family&rdquo;. But in these days of labour discord, the group&rsquo;s Chairman Subrata Roy took it a step further, emphasising how there were &ldquo;no unions&rdquo; in the organisation that says it will generate 143,000 new jobs through its new retail venture. Moreover, apart from the tag of chairman, Roy is also known as the group&rsquo;s managing worker, &ldquo;Saharasri&rdquo; and &ldquo;Chief Guardian&rdquo;.

Family man

In his column &ldquo;Still southward bound&rdquo; (Front Running, August 13), Devangshu Datta highlights the interesting fact that over the past 12 months, foreign institutional investors have invested Rs 55,000 crore in Indian equities whereas domestic institutions have withdrawn Rs 8,000 crore from equities and invested Rs 3.8 lakh crore in debt &mdash; in the hope of making windfall gains if the Reserve Bank of India reduces interest rates. He also mentions that India is likely to remain among the three fastest-growing economies.

Letters: Still strong

This refers to the report &ldquo;Investment bankers to follow uniform due diligence norms&rdquo; (August 8). First, due diligence requirements and guidelines have been clearly detailed in the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009. All merchant bankers, even if they are not members of the Association of Investment Bankers of India, have to follow these. So, there is no need for more new and &ldquo;uniform&rdquo; guidelines. After all, the quality of due diligence is what differentiates one bank from another and each must be allowed to develop its own methodologies as an instrument of competition.

Letters: The diligence test

Apropos Sunita Narain&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Courage wins over poison&rdquo; (Down to Earth, August 13), agricultural pesticides contaminate everything that is essential to human health &mdash; food, soil or ground water. The most dangerous repercussion of the indiscriminate use of pesticides is the poisoning of our water resources that are already scarce. More needs to be done to promote and propagate organic farming in the agricultural sector. We need more research in this area to find better and natural methods of pest and disease control.

Letters: Farming au naturel

T N Ninan&rsquo;s speculations in his column &ldquo;New FM, new taxes?&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, August 12) are reasonable. Due reviews and remissions should be made to plug loopholes in the taxation system to attract investment. Needless to say, the finance minister is expected to lessen the tax burden on the common man.

Letters: New expectations

I read that online term plans are hassle-free and usually offer large coverage at an economical price.

Life insurance: Deepak Sood

Public sector banks (PSBs) share a disproportionate burden of restructured accounts. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) argues if economic downturn is the reason for debt recast, that should reflect across all bank groups and not just PSBs.

Loan recast: PSBs bear the brunt

The performance of the State Bank of India (SBI), the country&rsquo;s largest lender, is in a way similar to that of the Indian Railways. Both, because of their size and critical positioning, are significantly linked to the overall health of the economy. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the first quarter of the current year the bank has reported a sharp rise in non-performing assets (NPA), indicating borrowers&rsquo; inability to service their loans in the present economic environment.

SBI's sharp downturn

The Indian economy has been plagued by several crises in the last few months. Yet, the nature of India's national conversation of late has been such that it does not adequately capture their complexity and potential for harm to the economy.

The six crises

I am 29 and work with a multi-national company. I own two credit cards and have been carrying forward the balance by paying only half of it for two months. While one card company charged me an interest rate of 18 per cent, the other charged me 23 per cent.

Debt counselling Sanjay Agarwal

When he saw a family of four on a scooter Ratan Tata had a dream and the Nano was born. When the finance ministry had a dream to empower the middle class by offering tax benefits to first-time retail investors, it chose a similar photo for a presentation on the subject. It also faced a hurdle, though smaller than the one Tata faced in West Bengal. Once the photograph was viewed by senior officials, it was withdrawn. Reason: of the four people on the scooter - husband, wife and two children - only the rider was wearing a helmet.

Out of the picture

Finance ministry officials seem to be playing musical chair these days. After Pranab Mukherjee and some of his staff left North Block, many rooms around the finance minister&rsquo;s office were up for grabs. The fact that several rooms are vacant in a building in which getting a room is a bigger feat than managing the economy is certainly novel - it has to do with the fact that P Chidambaram has arrived with two officers, compared with six in Mukherjee&rsquo;s regime. Among those who have been quick to claim (or reclaim) their rooms is Madhulika Sukul, joint secretary in the Expenditure department. She regained the room that was occupied by Omita Paul, Mukherjee&rsquo;s advisor and close associate. Shaktikanta Das, additional secretary in Economic Affairs, is moving to Sukul&rsquo;s room so that Rajat Bhargava, joint secretary (Budget), can move into Das&rsquo;s room, which is traditionally reserved for bureaucrats of that rank.

Rooms with a view

With B-schools mushrooming, the challenge of finding good quality faculty has risen several notches. So, one B-school did the next best thing: Get hold of any visitor who walks into the campus who holds an MBA degree and a senior position in a firm. Or so the general manager of a media house learnt the hard way the other day. He went to meet the principal of a B-school, hoping to get the institution to place an advertisement in his publication. Alas, he was not allowed to leave the campus until he gave a few students a one-hour lecture. The term &ldquo;visiting lecturer&rdquo; just got a whole new meaning.

Visiting lecturers

Apropos your rather funny edit &ldquo;Not for the poor and sweaty&rdquo; (August 13), the main argument seems to be that hot and poor countries fare poorly; ergo India deserves to be lauded on its rich haul of six medals (two silver and four bronze). If hot climes is a criterion, it perhaps is irrelevant to the writer that Brazil pulled in 17 medals of which three were gold and five silver; or that Australia won 35 medals (7 gold and 16 silver).

Letters: No excuses, please

In his column &ldquo;The RBI&rsquo;s free pass&rdquo; (Policy Rules, August 11), Mihir S Sharma is too strident in singling out the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the drop in net profit margins of the sampled companies and for the decline in growth. Margins depend on input costs also, more so in the manufacturing sector in which non-availability or high cost of raw materials (like minerals) and power and transportation take a heavy toll.

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