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India Inc from grey to green

Business Standard

Shivendra Gupta&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Raddi business?&rdquo; (August 6) serves as a timely reminder that readers should not consider circulation figures when subscribing to newspapers. Thankfully, reading a newspaper is such a habit-forming activity that circulation wars do not impact a reader&rsquo;s choice directly. However, if your favourite paper is shown in a poor light in terms of its reach, you may have second thoughts about your choice.

Letters: Reading in

That the government&rsquo;s refusal to rationalise the price of diesel in India is blowing a hole right through its Budget estimates for 2012-13 and its own credibility &ndash; leading to a further widening of the fiscal deficit and worsening of long-term inflationary pressure &ndash; is well known. Even a hike to take into account increased global oil prices has been endlessly postponed, and now it looks like it won&rsquo;t happen at all, because of the weak monsoon. The generators used by farmers to power the tubewells that inundate their fields with groundwater are working overtime &mdash; and they run on diesel. Raising diesel prices, it is argued, would add to farmer distress, though of course the government has no problem somehow simultaneously claiming it can target drought relief through an additional diesel subsidy to affected farmers.

A dieselised economy

Last week New Delhi Television (NDTV) filed a suit in New York against Nielsen Holdings and its affiliate companies for over $1.3 billion in damages. The law suit claimed that the global research firm had fudged television viewership data. Its contention: Nielsen&rsquo;s refusal to invest in its Indian arm, TAM Media Research, and the corruption that led to manipulation of viewership data in favour of some television channels had caused a loss of revenue for NDTV. The lawsuit brings out into the open what the industry has discussed and dismissed for years &mdash; that the sample size for the ratings measurement is very small and that the process lends itself to corruption. It also emphatically reveals that the Rs 33,000-crore Indian television industry has not been proactive on issues that matter for its long-term health. One such is the ratings system; a TV rating is a time-weighted average of the total time that people in sample homes spend watching a certain show.

Hating ratings

My son would go abroad in two years to study. I would like to know if I can hedge my foreign exchange risks.

Banking:  Prashant Joshi

The money that the Centre had been sending to the states for development schemes has been of no use to Congressmen in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh. That&rsquo;s because Chief Minister Raman Singh&rsquo;s photograph is attached to every identity card issued for different schemes. So, although the schemes are funded by the Congress-led Union government, a smiling picture of Singh has diverted the political benefits to the BJP kitty. Finally, on Sunday Union Minister of State for Home Jitendra Singh visited the Naxal-infested Dantewada district and local Congress leaders brought the matter to his notice. The minister offered little help. First, he told his partymen that they should lodge a case against the chief minister; then realising that the slow pace of justice is unlikely to help, he lamely suggested that they visit beneficiaries and orally inform them about the centrally-sponsored schemes.

Congress' photo finish

Even as newly appointed Power Minister Veerappa Moily avoids naming the people responsible for grid failures on consecutive days, there is clear-cut evidence pointing to Akhilesh Yadav, the young and inexperienced chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Apparently, his predecessor Mayawati used to draw power from three grids, whereas Yadav chose to draw power from the northern grid alone, causing it to collapse. At his first press conference, Moily steadfastly ducked queries on who was responsible for overdrawals, saying that a report would be submitted in 15 days. When a journalist pointed out that official figures showed that Uttar Pradesh overdrew 1,000 million units, Moily, a veteran politician, replied, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to start with the blame game.&rdquo; No doubt the Congress&rsquo; recently developed warm feelings for Yadav&rsquo;s Samajwadi Party has something to do with his reticence.

Power politics

Information technology chose an inopportune moment to fail Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal. He was in Mohali recently to unveil the foundation stone ceremony of a Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) centre. When the time came to unveil the stone, the remote switch to draw the curtain failed to function despite repeated attempts. Finally, the minister gave up and walked down the dais to unveil the stone manually. Punjab Chief Minister Punjab Parkash Singh Badal, Governor Shivraj V Patil, Director General - STPI Omkar Rai were also present.

Switched off

This refers to the edit &ldquo;The 2G tightrope&rdquo; (August 7). The minimum price of Rs 14,000 crore set by the government is stiff. There is no doubt that the move will help the government fill its coffers and reduce the fiscal deficit for the current year but it will impact end-users and affordable mobile telephony. Sure, telecom companies like Uninor have a small window of opportunity but will it be worthwhile for them to re-enter the fray? Indeed things would have been smoother in the telecom sector had the Centre ensured fair 2G allotments during A Raja&rsquo;s tenure.

Letters: Users lose

The article &ldquo;A newspaper that wanted to fly&rdquo; (August 7) raises some disturbing questions. First, were funds raised in Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCHL) to provide capital to Aviotech? Second, the Securities and Exchange Board of India&rsquo;s (Sebi&rsquo;s) rule on disclosing pledged shares was skirted by creating &ldquo;lien&rdquo; on shares. In effect, the promoter may have taken loans by providing his shares as security, which may not be invoked as a pledge till the last minute by which time everybody is rushing to get out. Sebi should consider making it mandatory to disclose shares on lien as well.

Letters: Private, limited

Devastating floods in Assam in the beginning of the belated monsoon season and widespread water scarcity in most urban centres in the pre-monsoon summer months are grim pointers to India&rsquo;s mismanagement of its water resources. The flawed strategies pursued so far focused more on exploitation than on its conservation, storage and sustainable use. Going by official estimates, the country receives, on an average, about 4,000 billion cubic metres (BCM) of rainwater annually. However, a sizable part of it is allowed to flow down wastefully to the oceans for want of capacity to impound it in surface ponds or guide it down to the underground water reserves. Even if the country&rsquo;s 84 major reservoirs get filled up to capacity, no more than 154.4 BCM of water can be held in them. Other water bodies, natural or man-made, dotted all over the country, too, cannot hold much water due to a lack of proper maintenance and unchecked siltation.

A national resource

&ldquo;With the average cost of supply at over Rs 5 a unit, every 10 per cent increase in agricultural supply will add Rs 7,500 crore to the deficit.

Should power subsidies to farmers be scrapped?

Finance Minister P Chidambaram can be sure his staff are happy about one thing: office timings. Unlike his predecessor who would come to North Block around 11 a m, the new minister starts his day before 9 a m. That doesn&rsquo;t make a difference to the staff because that is their official reporting time in any case. What makes the difference is that Chidambaram leaves at 7 p m, unlike his predecessor who would usually stay in office till 11 p m, which meant staff and officials had to do the same. Naturally, people are not complaining, though Chidambaram is considered a tough taskmaster.

A question of timing

The Rs 35 lakh bill that the Planning Commission ran up to renovate two toilets may be old news but it was a popular topic for speakers last week from different groups who descended on Jantar Mantar but otherwise have little in common. Sanjay Singh, a Team Anna member, cited it to show the contrast between the &ldquo;poverty of crores of people who live on Rs 17 a day while a toilet costs so much just to repair&rdquo;. Nearby at an agitation staged by Left parties, the same example was cited by a Communist Party leader to lament the government&rsquo;s reluctance to distribute surplus and often rotting food grain among the poor.

Toilet troubles

East Asian carmakers are renowned for precision and reliability, merits that are rooted in their manufacturing processes. But, in India, the former head of a foreign car manufacturer reveals, it also means that contract workers sometimes get the rough end of the stick. The result, an auto sector analyst adds separately, is that East Asian carmakers probably churn out better products than their Indian counterparts. And the latter usually take it a little easier on their lot of contract workers. So, that&rsquo;s the new ethical quandary for the conscientious car buyer.

Work ethic

It appears that Team Anna&rsquo;s decision to float a political party is neither unanimous nor well thought-out. The policies announced by Arvind Kejriwal may be laudable, but are they practical? Moreover, the fact that Anna Hazare &ndash; who is pivotal to the anti-corruption movement &ndash; has maintained that he will not contest elections may prove to be a setback for the party. The anti-corruption movement was at its peak last year, but Team Anna failed to cash in on its popularity. Now, with its decision to take a political plunge, we only hope it does not attest to author George Bernard Shaw&rsquo;s assertion that &ldquo;political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes&rdquo;.

Letters: ...but will Team Anna win?

This refers to the edit &ldquo;IAC&rsquo;s next chapter&rdquo; (August 9). Team Anna had hoped against hope for the political class in general and the government in particular to show more sensitivity and responsiveness to the public mood than they actually did. So, the next course of action had to be to try and play the game on the electoral turf. If Team Anna&rsquo;s party positions itself as single-point party, it may not be a serious contender as a party of governance. However, it could still win a few seats and that will certainly help Team Anna get its anti-corruption Bill passed in Parliament.

Letters: The battle rages on

The article &ldquo;Taken for a ride&rdquo; (August 5) lacked balance and was poorly researched. For instance, the discrepancy between what contract workers say they earn and what companies claim they pay can be easily explained. With five to 10 per cent going to the service provider&rsquo;s service charges and deductions being made on account of provident fund (PF) and employees state insurance, the gap between the take-home pay and the cost to company (CTC) is huge. And the most significant &ldquo;cut&rdquo; is taken by the government! The government has imposed a 12 per cent service tax &mdash; which accounts for the single largest gap between the take-home pay and CTC. In fact, the article should have made a case for scrapping the service tax on contract labour services. With the service tax scrapped, contract workers will certainly benefit since companies will pass on part of the savings to contract labour wages.

Letters: Why blame companies?

The long 2G saga may be nearing a conclusion with the announcement of spectrum auction terms. Operators will bid for 5 MHz in each circle, with a reserve price of Rs 2,800 crore per MHz for GSM spectrum in the 1800-MHz band (that is, a base price of Rs 14,000 crore), and Rs 3,640 crore per MHz for CDMA spectrum in the 800-MHz band (Rs 18,200 crore). Only 13.75 MHz of spectrum per bandwidth per circle is to be auctioned in this round, implying allocation of no more than two or three licences.

The 2G tightrope

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, or NPPA, has turned down the request of drug companies to raise insulin prices. Domestic insulin-makers Biocon and Cadila had argued that the cost of production and packaging had become higher, and multinational corporation Eli Lilly wanted the depreciation in the rupee vis-&agrave;-vis the dollar to be factored into the price.

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