Bharti Airtel&rsquo;s disappointing results have led to the stock touching a two-year low. Almost every analyst is rushing to downgrade the company. With reports being titled &lsquo;Not worthy of a medal&rsquo; and &lsquo;The wait for good things gets longer&rsquo;, analysts have lowered the company&rsquo;s rating, price target and financial projections.

Ten reasons why Bharti Airtel's stock is at a two-year low

Business Standard

It&rsquo;s not common for Indian CEOs to make public statements on rivals. As M&amp;M briefly overtook Tata Motors as the No. 3 passenger-vehicle maker in the country in April-June 2012, Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata complimented M&amp;M on its feat while exhorting his colleagues to regain lost ground. In response, M&amp;M Chairman Anand Mahindra thanked him on Twitter.

Compliments & competition

Amid talks of slowing growth, there has been very little analysis on what actually ails India at the macro level. Following are the three scenarios where India stands at present, and what will happen if it allows the current mess to continue, or gets its act together, according to a study by the Planning Commission.

Shaping India's future

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

India's mobile market

Ten reasons why Bharti Airtel&#39;s stock is at a two-year low

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

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

There is no need for breast-beating about India&rsquo;s modest Olympic performance. The fact is that the country&rsquo;s performance is improving, steadily even if slowly. At the present rate of progress, India should figure among the top 20 medal-winning countries two Olympics from now. Don&rsquo;t mock that admittedly modest objective. The fact is that if you are a poor or hot country, you don&rsquo;t do well in Olympic contests. And if you are both poor and hot, the dice are really loaded against you.

Not for the poor and sweaty

The index of industrial production, or IIP, is a notoriously volatile series. But it serves to confirm the slowdown in the Indian economy.

StatsGuru: 13-August-2012

This refers to Sukumar Mukhopadhyay&rsquo;s letter &ldquo;&hellip;or a display of dislike?&rdquo; (August 10). It is now beyond debate that policy decisions favouring retrospective amendments to the Income Tax Act and the introduction of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules were more about showing the Supreme Court its place in the constitutional scheme, and didn&rsquo;t stem from a genuine concern for equitable application of the law and its rational interpretation. The recurrent noise unleashed by tax officials over the predicament of the Vodafone decision bears ample proof of their efforts to score brownie points.

Letters: All the FM's men

This refers to Sunanda K Datta-Ray&rsquo;s column &ldquo;The blundering BJP&rdquo; (Where Money Talks, August 11). The fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has changed the chief minister in Karnataka for the second time in 11 months says all is not well in the party. How can the people of Karnataka expect good results from such a volatile government? The present crisis in the BJP government in Karnataka shows that the party needs the right direction and leadership to move ahead. The time has come for the BJP leadership to take the party forward by resolving all the issues with which it is plagued.

Letters: A party in disarray

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has started well in his assignment and indicated priorities that are right. He should add &ldquo;timely refunds to tax payers&rdquo; to his list. It is unjustifiable for the government to defer refunds to the next financial year for the sake of showing a lower fiscal deficit in the current period. It can do so now because the accounting is on a cash basis. Once the system shifts to an accrual basis, it will not be possible. But it may take years. In the meantime, the FM should lay strict guidelines for timely assessment and refunds so that the tax payer does not have to wait for more than a year or so. In the past, refund cheques were delayed in despatch. In one instance, I found the cheque had to be revalidated by the officer because its validity had expired. It had been lying in the office for several months.

Letters: Taxing delays

The so-called decontrol of petrol prices has added to government-owned oil companies&rsquo; troubles. That&rsquo;s because they are not compensated for the losses they sustain from selling petrol at subsidised rates &mdash; that are actually mandated by the government. Why? Because, the government argues, petrol prices are technically decontrolled! But now, the burden of selling petrol below cost is telling on these companies&rsquo; bottomlines, adding to the under-recoveries from diesel and cooking fuel. So much so that chief executives are now willing to talk freely on this subject, a major change from their earlier reticence. At the IndianOil press conference, for example, Chairman R S Butola pre-empted all questions on petrol under-recoveries by volunteering information on the issue and suggesting that prices needed to be raised by Rs 3 a litre.

Fuel for thought

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which is in opposition in Andhra Pradesh, is hankering for the limelight. So, it was quick to claim credit when the Central government put on hold its directive to Reliance to prioritise natural gas supply for the Ratnagiri Power Project in Maharashtra within a week of issuing the initial order. TDP leaders claimed it is their pressure tactics that forced the government to rethink its order. What tactics were these? TDP MPs led by Nama Nageshwar Rao had sought appointments with the prime minister, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy &mdash; none of which materialised. What actually transpired was that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, of the ruling Congress party, met Manmohan Singh on August 6 and made the point that diverting gas would deprive Andhra Pradesh of fuel for its power plants. The turnaround from the petroleum ministry came within 24 hours of this meeting.

All gas

D K Mehrotra, who is three or four months into his job as chairman of LIC, the country&rsquo;s largest insurer, was so solicitous of the comfort of financial services secretary D K Mittal that he managed to create a traffic jam in Mumbai. Both were at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mittal for the central board meeting, and Mehrotra for the customary lunch RBI hosts afterwards. Later, when they were waiting for their cars outside the central bank headquarters, Mehrotra&rsquo;s was the first to drive up. He then offered Mittal his car but the financial services secretary chose to wait for his car instead. But Mehrotra continued to press his offer, apparently oblivious of the long line of cars forming behind his. Eventually, he reluctantly got into his car after Mittal literally forced him in.

Car seva

Shaping India&#39;s future

Millions followed the voyage of NASA&rsquo;s Mars Rover, Curiosity. The excitement hit fever pitch during the &ldquo;seven minutes of terror&rdquo; on August 6 as the 900-kg vehicle decelerated from 21,000 kmph to a touchdown at the Gale Crater on the surface of the red planet. The descent was flawless. The time taken varied less than a second from simulations. As the $2.5-billion (approximately Rs 13,900 crore) Curiosity entered the Martian atmosphere, it deployed heat shields, fired retro-rockets to slow, released a parachute to act as an airbrake, and shed ballast in the form of 75 kg tungsten weights. Curiosity&rsquo;s onboard computers took all the decisions. Mars is about 14 light minutes (252 million km) distant at the moment, which meant there was no question of relaying instructions from Earth mission control. Software is being uploaded to what is now the Internet&rsquo;s most distant node for a battery of experiments to be performed over the next two (Earth) years.

The red planet 

After the exit of the &lsquo;UPA&rsquo;s troubleshooter-in-chief&rsquo;, Pranab Mukherjee, there was eager anticipation as to who would fill in his seat (Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha). In this regard, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde&rsquo;s debut has been far from impressive. On Thursday, amid a debate on the Assam violence in the Rajya Sabha, he did the unthinkable: He tried silencing actor and MP Jaya Bachchan by casting doubts on her understanding of the subject at hand: Ethnic violence. &quot;This is a serious matter, not the subject of a film,&quot; he said. This led to an uproar, and he was compelled to apologise afterwards. The day before, in his very first speech on the Assam violence, referring to Bodoland Territorial Area District, he mispronounced territorial, ludicrously, as terrorist. His all-too-frequent fiascoes have earned the title &lsquo;Shinde's shindigs&rsquo; from the Opposition.

Staggering from the start 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra was upset with the Pune police, after it decided not to allow the people to celebrate Dahi Handi during Janmashtami celebrations. The police is on the alert after the recent blasts that took place in Pune. But, the BJP decided to defy the diktat, asking supporters to celebrate in every colony.

A festive, and defiant, spirit

The golf course in the Lucknow cantonment is frequented not just by the armed forces, but also by a large number of civil servants and politicians. The present UP chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, has no misgivings about officers catching up with a game of golf before coming to work. This was, however, not the case with Mayawati, his predecessor. She had warned officers against playing gilli danda at the golf course before reporting to work. Needless to say, no one even tried teeing her off.

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