Despite policy inaction and slowing growth, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continue to bet on India&rsquo;s long-term attractiveness.

India continues to charm FIIs

Business Standard

Over the past couple of months, numerous scandals have rocked global banks and promulgated the inability of regulators to monitor and fix what is being deemed as widespread wrongdoing in the global financial industry (Click on graphic)

Season of scams

In the last 10 years, I have followed the principle of asset allocation of 60:30:10 for my portfolio. Now, that most of my responsibilities are over, I want to take some risk with my money. I recently read about investing in arbitrage opportunity in commodities and managed commodity futures.

Investing:  Rishi Nathany

There is a particular pattern to the recent mob assaults on young people &ndash; especially young women &ndash; that are generally being seen as moral policing run wild. The attacks are carried out in areas that are otherwise supposed to be safe &mdash; immediately outside a bar in the centre of town, say, as in Guwahati, or in a private residence, as in the attack on the Mangalore homestay last week.

Immoral policing 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is miffed with the Union government&rsquo;s decision to reshuffle the Cabinet, and has termed the entire exercise futile. Senior BJP leaders allege there are cases against P Chidambaram, and he should not be heading the finance ministry; they have also ridiculed M Veerappa Moily as the &lsquo;minister on permanent transfer&rsquo;. BJP leader Prakash Javadekar rues the fact that the latter was first given charge of the law ministry, then shifted to corporate affairs, and now has the additional charge of the power ministry. &ldquo;Moily is the minister on permanent transfer,&rdquo; quipped Javadekar.

Ministerial chairs

This week, the media turned up in full strength at the venue of the indefinite fast of Anna Hazare: Jantar Mantar. A stone&rsquo;s throw away sat the comrades of the Left parties on a dharna: But not a single TV reporter bothered to look in that direction. The Left was demanding access to subsidised food grains be universalised. Amid frustrations over rotting food grains and the Food Security Bill, the comrades could not stop lamenting the fact of media indifference (towards them) and obsesssion (with Anna Hazare).

Commies left out

The BJP leaders are distributing saffron- and green-coloured sweets, their hues inspired by the party&rsquo;s flag, in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, to celebrate its victory in the recent local elections. The state BJP president, Prabhat Jha, had promised he would distribute laddoos and sweets if BJP fared well in the elections. Now everyone, it seems, is savouring the moment.

Sweet taste of success

Some incredible designs by travelling hippie craftsmen in Goa.

My Life My Style: King Jassim

Apropos R Gopalakrishnan&rsquo;s article &ldquo;The next leadership challenge: employee engagement&rdquo; (August 2), I would like to add that the causes of employee discontent and subsequent revolt are not so difficult to spot. History shows labour turmoil and social unrest are mostly the result of perceived unequal treatment and unfair dispensation of rewards. Searching for sophisticated answers is, therefore, a fruitless and misleading exercise.

Letters: The price of discontent

The blackout in almost half the country due to grid failure has made the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) very happy. That&rsquo;s because the western grid was completely unaffected. The western grid consists of five states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Barring the first, all the other states are ruled by the BJP. The party&rsquo;s managers claim that the grid was unaffected because BJP-ruled states are much more disciplined and avoid overdrawing. But the party&rsquo;s problem is how to encash this advantage with voters. A senior party functionary in Chhattisgarh explained that though grid discipline was a big deal, the party will find it difficult to leverage it with voters. That&rsquo;s because it involves explaining the concepts of a power grid, overdrawing and grid discipline before claiming that the party has succeeded in each of these parameters.

Power play

Even as the prime minister reallocated the crucial portfolios of finance and home just a week before the monsoon session of Parliament, the updated list of Cabinet ministers was not reflected on either the Prime Minister&rsquo;s website or that of the Cabinet Secretariat. In fact, the UPA government seemed to have tied itself in knots over the Cabinet list on its official websites and is now wary of uploading the list that would reveal the order of precedence of the ministers. The last time it attempted to put up a list, it incensed Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who felt he had been &ldquo;insulted&rdquo;. Now it appears that the final list will only be uploaded after the monsoon session closes in September, when another reshuffle is due.

Tangled web

The government may have finally started taking measures to minimise the impact of the drought and the Met office has only recently started talking about drought-like conditions in several parts of the country. But not everyone in the government was unaware of the impending crisis. Way back in June, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh had warned chief ministers of many states of the prospect of deficient rainfall. The information was sent in the context of a probable increase in demand for work under the Centre&rsquo;s employment guarantee scheme if the monsoons failed.

Drought: early warner

Parsvnath Developers&rsquo; chairman and managing director is in a perpetual meeting these days &mdash; at least when it comes to talking to journalists. Every time he takes a call and figures out that it&rsquo;s a journalist on the line, his stock answer is, &ldquo;I am in a meeting&rdquo;, after which he disconnects. In fact, the in-house management team appears to follow the same policy. Previously media-friendly, the developer discarded its public relations firms after it reported a net loss last quarter.

Built-in denial

The article &ldquo;Building fast and cheap&rdquo; (August 4) rightly focuses on infrastructure projects for which an astronomical outlay of Rs 31 lakh crore has been estimated. Imagine the colossal loss to society caused by deficiencies in decision-making and implementation. The concluding sentence of the article says it all. In our country, not only is there a lack of public participation in the decision-making process, but there is very little critical media focus and analysis on infrastructure projects. Even the national auditor is handicapped and has been seeking an increase in his powers since special purpose vehicles created for infrastructure management are excluded from his audit purview.

Letters: Too many roadblocks

The finance ministry doesn&rsquo;t seem to have digested the fact that Pranab Mukherjee has moved to Rashtrapati Bhavan, just a few metres down the road. A conference room in North Block, which hosted many Groups of Minister meetings when Mukherjee was in harness, still has photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former President Pratibha Patil. Maybe new incumbent P Chidambaram will take time out from his busy catch-up meetings this weekend to replace the photograph.

In the picture

The Reserve Bank of India&rsquo;s (RBI&rsquo;s) website is one of the best among those of central banks in the world. It is up to date and makes it unnecessary to write to the Bank for data and information on most of the items of interest to the economic analyst. After the announcement of the quarterly policy review, the RBI holds two separate interactive sessions through conference calls: one with the researchers and another with the media. They are webcast and it is useful. It would, however, be of great help to the researchers if complete transcripts of the two sessions were also posted on the website. The identification of an RBI official who made a particular statement is also of interest. It becomes difficult to note down points in long hand while listening to the question and answer sessions. The transcripts in the archives will be useful to the future historians of the bank too.

Letters: More updates, please

The solid profits being made by the National Stock Exchange, or NSE (as shown in Table 1) seem to have lured many players into the exchange business. NSE and the two other new players, MCX and NCDEX, have all seen a slight rise in revenues over the past financial year. The Bombay Stock Exchange, once the monopolist, saw its revenues continue to shrink.

StatsGuru-08-August-12

Tamil Nadu, claiming to be the Detroit of India, has labour unrest in the automobile industry, among others. Among the allegations are that companies exploit contract workers. The industry has a different view. In an interaction with Business Standard, some answers to these queries from R Sethuraman, senior vice-president, finance and corporate affairs, Hyundai Motor India Ltd.

Labour law reforms have lagged auto sector growth: R Sethuraman

As the Kisan Baburao Hazare-led India Against Corruption ended the fast by its leaders on Friday, it promised a &ldquo;political alternative&rdquo; that would take its demands forward. Even those who have doubts about IAC&rsquo;s leadership or the nature of its demands should welcome what appears to be a change of strategy &mdash; if it is indeed such and not merely a tactical move. A new political force will only strengthen India&rsquo;s democracy; IAC, given the name-recognition of its leaders&rsquo; and the popularity of its core issues, has a head-start that most other political start-ups would envy, although sustaining a political movement with a single-point agenda will pose its own challenges.

IAC's next chapter

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.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 863 - Business Standard

India continues to charm FIIs

Season of scams

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Immoral policing

Ministerial chairs

Commies left out

Sweet taste of success

My Life My Style: King Jassim

Letters: The price of discontent

Power play

Tangled web

Drought: early warner

Built-in denial

Letters: Too many roadblocks

In the picture

Letters: More updates, please

StatsGuru-08-August-12

Labour law reforms have lagged auto sector growth: R Sethuraman

IAC's next chapter

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