Only six companies gave positive returns over the decade. After Google, two Indian firms, TCS, &amp; Wipro, top the list.

Global value creators in Infotech

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As a politician, an MP and a minister, Pranab Mukherjee impressed most of those he met over his decades-long career with his impressive and accurate memory for dates, events and details. More than one colleague has likened him to a &ldquo;walking encyclopaedia&rdquo;; and Mr Mukherjee, himself, is known to digress into the historical context of an event while journalists or civil servants are waiting breathlessly for a quote or an instruction. This tendency was amply illustrated when he emerged after filing his nomination papers for president. All those gathered there prepared for an unusual event &mdash; an active politician&rsquo;s first statement on retiring from party politics while simultaneously campaigning for the country&rsquo;s highest post. Mr Mukherjee looked over his glasses at the media and informed them: &ldquo;This will be the fourteenth presidential election.&rdquo; After a moment, he added: &ldquo;Although it will be the thirteenth president who will be sworn in.

History lessons

The draft guidelines released on Thursday provided the much-needed clarity on General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) sought to be implemented by the Union Government(Click on graph)

GAAR: Reaching far and wide

Car makers witnessed mixed sales, with diesel variants showing better growth.

Auto sale watch: A mixed bag

Your edit &ldquo;Lessons from a letter&rdquo; (July 2) has pointed out the sorry state of the All India Tennis Association (AITA). Being a professional body, it should have known that the warring tennis players, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, would have never agreed to play together. It is rather sad that Sania Mirza, the top-ranked female tennis player in India, had to write a letter to AITA to express her disappointment at being treated as &ldquo;bait&rdquo;. We hope AITA has learnt its lesson. This is also an opportunity for AITA to review its functioning and take more interest in promoting the game and other players. It needs to look beyond the big names in Indian tennis, and spot talented players and support them adequately.

Letters: Play the game 

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia talks about the state of the economy and whether adequate policy corrections are in place, in an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN&rsquo;s Devil&rsquo;s Advocate show.

It's imperative for the govt to reassure investors: Montek Singh Ahluwalia

India&rsquo;s mutual fund industry is in trouble, and much of the reason is its own underperformance. They struggle to beat the markets &mdash; meaning that investors would do better to invest in cheaper, index funds than in managed mutual funds. As Table 1 shows, several large fund houses have completely failed to beat the market benchmarks; several of these have all of their schemes doing worse than their chosen benchmarks.

StatsGuru-02-July-12

Your edit &ldquo;The political freelancer&rdquo; (June 28) highlights the rot in our political system that has set in owing to power-hungry political parties. Indeed unprincipled coalitions are formed for power and loyalties are switched for personal gains. The example of the minority government of UPA-II &ndash; which survives on &ldquo;outside support&rdquo; &ndash; has rightly been cited. In all this, governance and the interest of people and the country are casualties. We need amendments in the Representation of the People Act. Post-poll alliances should be allowed on the condition that they are sustained for the entire term of the House and if a party wants to break away, elected members of that party should resign and seek re-election. Also, if a politician is elected on party A&rsquo;s ticket and wants to switch loyalty to party B, he or she should resign from the House and seek re-election on party B&rsquo;s ticket.

Letters: Coalition casualty 

This refers to T N Ninan&rsquo;s column &ldquo;PM as FM&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, June 30). The rising optimism in the market after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took charge of the finance ministry is palpable. Dr Singh should continue to hold the finance portfolio till 2014 so that he can usher the second round of economic reforms. As prime minister, he may have lacked assertiveness, but one cannot deny that Dr Singh will do justice to the finance portfolio. He knows his job well and has already taken some positive measure to boost sentiments within hours of taking charge of the finance ministry. On a lighter note, one could draw a parallel between Dr Singh and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. We may recall that as the captain of the Indian team, Tendulkar was not a great success. But as a batsman his contributions to the country are beyond question.

Letters: Batting for the PM

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Closer to Nasa&rdquo; (June 28). The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will have to be careful about retaining its suppliers. The organisation is known for its poor payment record and delays are quite endemic. Departments in charge of payments conveniently brush this issue aside as being part of the deal; kickbacks are also common. E-procurement is one way to go about it &mdash; but registering on Isro&rsquo;s website is a task in itself. The reason for this slackness is that Isro is not a commercial organisation. It works on its own terms. Same is the case with the US&rsquo; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) &mdash; contractors keep complaining of delays, harassments and kickbacks. Moreover, Isro is not held accountable for and judged severely on its failures.

Letters: Isro's payment trap

Not all state leaders, of course, understand press conferences as well as Ms Banerjee. In Karnataka, during the political drama surrounding the resignation of ministers in the BJP government to pressure Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda to make way for someone chosen by the former chief minister, B S Yeddyurappa, TV news channels were besieging the latter&rsquo;s house, sending live &ldquo;breaking news&rdquo; back to the studios. A minister coming out of the house was asked the reason he quit &mdash; but he didn&rsquo;t seem sure what he should say, although he&rsquo;d taken such a big step. After a few seconds of some vague answer, he realised he could have said something more convincing &mdash; and so he said, firmly, &ldquo;Cut, and take again.&rdquo; He didn&rsquo;t realise it was a live feed.

TV lessons

Mr Mukherjee&rsquo;s attempt to become most enthusiastic amateur historian in Rashtrapati Bhavan faces a few hurdles, but the most prominent of which is West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Ms Banerjee, who tried to block his candidature, is not known for changing her mind, after all. Yet, oddly, someone seems to have given her advice on social media. A very short while ago, she was convinced that Facebook and Twitter were the medium of &ldquo;conspiracy by CPM and Maoists&rdquo;, and she and the internet had pretty much declared war on each other. Yet word has now percolated out at Writers&rsquo; Building that the chief minister will no longer address the media, but will make all her official comments &mdash; on Facebook.

Internet lessons

Across Delhi, taps have run dry. Water shortages in the scorching weeks just before the monsoon hits the national capital are not unknown; but there is little question that this year they have been more than normally acute. Nor, unfortunately, is Delhi&rsquo;s situation unusual. While it perhaps suffers more than others &ndash; being located, after all, in a semi-arid climatic zone &ndash; cities in other parts of India also experience such scarcity annually. A recent World Bank report ranked Delhi and Chennai as the worst-performing metropolitan cities in terms of water supply among 27 big Asian cities. This is in spite of the fact that this problem is both predictable and preventable. The causes are simple and straightforward: mismanagement of water, coupled with its wasteful use, and the unchecked degradation of water bodies.

Towns without water

The confusion at the end of last week between the finance ministry and the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office over whether or not the draft guidelines for the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) bore the imprimatur of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should not detract from one basic fact: the conversation has started on how to implement GAAR swiftly, fairly and transparently. The prime minister&rsquo;s initiative to have a public review and discussion on the rules is welcome and timely, though, clearly, the manner in which it was done gave rise to an avoidable degree of misunderstanding. Changes in tax policies often have implications that go beyond the revenue department&rsquo;s predictions, and without a wide-ranging consultation with those affected by the changes, governments can frequently slip up. In India, this has been seen to happen several times in the past &mdash; the banking cash transaction tax and the fringe benefit tax are just two examples.

Preparing for 2013

A usually dormant media cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suddenly become relevant. No senior leader is ready to make statements before the media, if its media cell representatives are not present. At a recent BJP meeting, General Secretary Ananth Kumar only made a statement in presence of the media cell members. BJP leaders believe this makes the sound byte look official.

Officially speaking

Even the Congress members are left tongue-tied at the quick U-turns signalled within 24 hours of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taking over the finance portfolio. Hard-pressed to explain if the PM had no say in running the finance ministry while former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was at its helm &mdash; when the government should be working on the principle of &ldquo;collective responsibility&rdquo; &mdash; a senior Congress leader with tongue-in-check said, &ldquo;The UPA government and the finance ministry were so long working on a reverse principle &mdash; &ldquo;Strategic autonomy, differential responsibility&rdquo; &mdash; thereby Mukherjee was acting autonomously of the PM and the Cabinet.

Power and autonomy

Newly appointed Uttarakhand Governor, Aziz Qureshi, is trying to play the peacemaker between India and Pakistan. Qureshi has expressed &ldquo;disgust&rdquo; on the way &ldquo;wrong&rdquo; news was given and later corrected by the Pakistani government on the release of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian on death row in Pakistan. &ldquo;During the last few years, Sarabjit&rsquo;s case has not remained confined to the members of his family. His release became a common wish, demand and desire of many peace-loving Indians,&rdquo; said Qureshi. He has also asked both India and Pakistan governments to start &ldquo;jihad&rdquo; against hunger, poverty, illiteracy, superstition, disease, sorrow, suffering and natural calamities.

Playing the peacemaker

The troubles at the highest levels of Indian tennis over the past week serve as explanation for why this country has consistently underperformed in terms of sporting achievement: its sports administration is stuck in a previous century &mdash; culturally and organisationally. The All India Tennis Association or AITA richly deserved the humiliation it was handed by Indian tennis&rsquo; top-ranked woman, Sania Mirza, in the letter that she wrote after her participation in the London Olympics was confirmed. She pointed out that it was unacceptable for a national sporting federation, in the 21st century, to use one of the most successful Indians in the sport&rsquo;s history as &ldquo;bait&rdquo; for another player&rsquo;s participation and compliance. The reason, which she did not have to spell out, was that she was a woman, and the AITA is incapable, apparently, of putting female achievement on a par with that of a man.

Lessons from a letter 

The government&rsquo;s continued dithering over the key question of raising import duty on power equipment shows policy paralysis has not spared even a critical infrastructure sector like power generation. Almost two years ago, a committee chaired by Planning Commission Member Arun Maira concluded that there was a need for a level playing field for Indian power equipment manufacturers, who were getting edged out of the Indian market as a result of a surge in imports, in particular from China. Significantly enough, the committee had not recommended a blanket ban on imports of power equipment from China or any other country. Instead, it had made a sensible recommendation to levy a 10 to 14 per cent import duty on such power-generating machinery.

Level the playing field

IKEA, the euro 25-billion Scandinavian retailer, wants some alterations in the guidelines for foreign investment in single-brand retail before it invests in India. Under current guidelines, any foreign retailer that invests more than 51 per cent in an Indian venture must source 30 per cent of its stock from Indian small enterprises. IKEA, in its 37-page application of June 22, has said that the 30 per cent sourcing criterion should be computed over a period of 10 years and not every year, and that there should be flexibility in the definition of small enterprises. Instead of junking the demands as another attempt by a multinational corporation to subvert national policy, the government must consider them on merit. IKEA has said that it is ready to source from small enterprises, but these enterprises may not remain small all their lives. At the moment, such enterprises are defined as those with an annual turnover of about Rs 5 crore or less.

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