Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar&rsquo;s party may have expressed chagrin at his not being designated number two in the Cabinet after Pranab Mukherjee&rsquo;s departure. But his clout within the government was well in evidence last week when Food Minister K V Thomas called a press conference to discuss the government&rsquo;s preparations for drought in parts of the country. Now, the poor chemistry between Thomas and Pawar is among the government&rsquo;s worst-kept secrets. Yet Thomas called off the conference at the last minute &mdash; at Pawar&rsquo;s request. No official reason was given but sources said Pawar wanted to address the media after holding a meeting with his colleagues in the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on drought, which he chairs.

Pawar-ful display

Business Standard

The undivided Reliance group had made the onerous task of raising money from the public into a fine art. Even in the era of tight controls on capital issues, the group managed to raise hundreds of crores through innovative methods, such as issue of convertible debentures. On occasions, the money raising came first and the projects came later, some analysts say. The group has regularly come up with public issues, each the largest of their respective times.

Flag bearer no more?

Contribution to economy 
Family businesses form the backbone of the Indian economy, with gross output equalling about 60% of GDP or about 90% of India&rsquo;s industrial output
Number of mid-sized FBs
The number of mid-sized family firms in India between Rs 50 crore and Rs 1,000 crore of revenue stood between 4,655 and 8,547 in 2011(Click on graphic)

All in the family

Almost half of India went powerless yesterday for several hours. Three regional grids &mdash; supplying electricity to northern, eastern and north-eastern states &mdash; collapsed, resulting in a power outage in more than 20 states that severely disrupted all economic activities, brought to a standstill several essential services and adversely affected the services of over 300 trains including the Metro network. The scale of the disruption was unprecedented. And coming as it did just a day after a similar collapse of the power grid for the northern region, with almost similar consequences, it underlined once again the depressing state of the country&rsquo;s power sector and its poor governance by regulators.

Powerless at noon

I think it (the first quarter monetary policy review of 2012-13) is a highly conservative one, not one that would accelerate economic growth in the country.

Keeping rates high will not help: Rajeev Talwar

&ldquo;We neither have an upward bias, nor a downward bias.

Growth-inflation dilemma 

The Reserve Bank of India, in its first-quarter review of monetary policy, kept the benchmark policy rate constant at 8 per cent. The only change it made was to lower the statutory liquidity ratio for banks from 24 to 23 per cent; RBI Governor Duvvuri Subbarao said that he wanted to ensure that &ldquo;liquidity pressures do not constrain the flow of credit to productive sectors of the economy.&rdquo; This is perhaps an odd concern.

Well below trend

My mother is 52, has high blood pressure and stays alone.

Life Insurance:  V Philip

Venu Rajamony, joint secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), has been appointed press secretary to President Pranab Mukherjee. From handling multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he will now be handling the press at Rashtrapati Bhavan. How did an Indian Foreign Service officer get this job? A skit performed by finance ministry directors at a DEA retreat earlier this year portrayed Rajamony as an official who would not miss a chance to publicise any government initiative in the media. Officials who put up the spoof are now taking credit for highlighting his press publicity skills.

A skit in time

The presence of a digital wall clock in the reception area of Sanchar Bhawan, headquarters of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), and the question of who had it installed appear to have become key issues in the special CBI court hearing the 2G spectrum allocation case. The clock is germane to the controversial &ldquo;first-come-first-served&rdquo; basis, on which spectrum was allocated to the exclusion of some applicants. It provided the time at which each company submitted its documents and, therefore, establishes whether undue favour was accorded to some applicants. Even so, there was something faintly Kafkaesque about the fact that prosecution witness and former DoT Director Sudhir Kumar Saxena was asked to explain &ndash; in some detail &ndash; to the court how the clock came to be there.

Clocked out

In &ldquo;Beijing to the rescue&rdquo; (July 30), Claude Smadja quotes an imagined &ldquo;unwritten social compact&rdquo; to deliver economic well-being as some kind of legitimisation of holding on to power under the so-called &ldquo;Mandate from Heaven&rdquo; in Chinese tradition.

Letters: Who will rescue China?

This refers to the article &ldquo;Cracking the tomato code&rdquo; by Surinder Sud (July 31). Although one should factor in the risks and consequences genetically modified (GM) crops may possibly bring, the attempts to produce new and innovative crops should be encouraged because consumption levels are on the rise across the world. If independent scientific studies can establish the safety of the improved varieties of crops, it is the government&rsquo;s responsibility to make such new crops available in the market.

Letters: Cashing in on GM crops

Apropos Statsguru (July 23) and your editorial &ldquo;Worries over growth&rdquo; (July 26), I strongly believe the Reserve Bank of India should opt for a rate cut to improve confidence and growth &mdash; by spurring demand in non-core areas (other than food and fuel). The current tight monetary policy doesn&rsquo;t seem to be helping reduce inflation since in India inflation is primarily driven by food and fuel, whose demand does not change much with price. India&rsquo;s policy makers must realise that we live in a globalised world, where money flows across borders are significant, but movement of people looking for employment is still severely restricted. Therefore, those who have very little to fall back on have to depend on opportunities for employment within the country. Besides, excessively high rates do tend to distort money flows and encourage excessive speculation.

Letters: Too tight for comfort

&ldquo;The Met models are still the best &mdash; not always completely accurate in their forecast, they are the best all the same.

Are IMD's monsoon predictions reliable?

Apropos the report &ldquo;43% engineers in India can&rsquo;t write correct English,&rdquo; poor knowledge of the language applies equally to other professionals. Most of them burn the midnight oil polishing their technical skills without paying enough attention to language, despite its growing importance in today&rsquo;s corporate world. As a result, their understanding of the nuances of English is poor. Here is one example. An engineer received an enquiry from a lady officer in a company. He sent a reply that read: &ldquo;Dear Madam, With reference to your above please see my below&rdquo;. The gaffe was lost on him even after the context and nuance were explained.

Letters: Below the line

Almost a third of India&rsquo;s organised labour force is on contract. This is an inevitable consequence of archaic labour laws that make it impossible for India Inc to disengage permanent workers even if they can&rsquo;t afford them, don&rsquo;t need them or they don&rsquo;t perform. Companies such as Maruti Suzuki India have thus used contract workers liberally &mdash; almost half the workers at the company&rsquo;s Manesar plant have that status.

Unfair contract

Almost unnoticed, the price of a barrel of Brent crude has crept back up past $105. A few weeks ago, it had dipped below $80. Since then, it has risen with hopes about the global economy.

The overdue diesel hike

Madhya Pradesh&rsquo;s farm sector grew a whopping 18 per cent last year. Claiming all the credit for it, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Saturday it all started when he was snubbed by New Delhi a few years ago for not producing enough cereals. He had gone to ask for additional wheat and rice for Madhya Pradesh but was told how could he make such a demand when the central agencies weren&rsquo;t procuring any in his state. Last year&rsquo;s harvest was so bountiful, said Chouhan at a function organised by Business Standard Hindi in Bhopal, that all warehouses were filled to capacity and he commandeered everything he could to cover the grain lying in the open fields. One senior officer, a south Indian, stopped drying his lungi outside, according to Chouhan, fearing the government might confiscate it to protect the grain.

Against the grain

On the face of it, Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar and anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare may not have a great deal in common, yet political parties in Maharashtra are keenly discussing how they, in fact, do. Sure, the relationship between the two is hardly cordial and where one has participated in electoral politics for 45 years, the other prefers to draw his power from civil society. The two might be at loggerheads right now but both have managed to consolidate themselves in India&rsquo;s capital, New Delhi, and have proved troublesome for the Congress in different ways.

Same difference

Deep inside western UP&rsquo;s sugarcane-growing region, where corruption is a way of life, an afternoon conversation at a small-town grocery store isn&rsquo;t about the monsoon. Instead, the portly shopkeeper and his customers would much rather deliberate Anna Hazare&rsquo;s renewed movement and Pranab Mukherjee&rsquo;s elevation to the top of Raisina Hill. Hazare&rsquo;s fight against corruption won&rsquo;t work, the shopkeeper declares, because, after all, he&rsquo;s been unable to stop Mukherjee. &ldquo;Oh, those crowds won&rsquo;t come again and again,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;Anna can keep fasting but Pranab is relaxing now in a very big house.

Fast forward

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Pay the price of honesty&rdquo; (July 28) does not go far enough since it doesn&rsquo;t talk about the stellar role the middle class plays in getting a system to perform better, however marginally. Take a simple example: at each CNG station in Delhi, long lines, mostly of auto and tempo drivers, are a common sight. We don&rsquo;t see anything similar outside petrol or diesel stations. Why? Because the middle class uses petrol and diesel and would kick up an unbelievable shindy if these fuels were in short supply. Journalists and television news anchors, also middle-class, would spout contempt, leading to quick corrections; but not a word is heard on CNG supply.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 865 - Business Standard