There is a great need to revive the economy and introduce reforms today. Prime Minister Manomhan Singh, after getting additional charge of the Finance Ministry had given out strong signals of wanting to &quot;revive the animal spirit in the Indian economy&quot;.

Will Manmohan Singh introduce reforms this quarter?

Business Standard

A survey of 1,206 face-to-face interviews of adults in Pakistan shows that roughly four-in-10 believe that American economic and military aid is actually having a negative impact on their country, while only about one-in-10 think the impact is positive. Only 22% of Pakistanis have a favourable view of India, a small improvement from 14% last year. India is ranked higher than Taliban and Al Qaida as the biggest threat.

Threat perspective: Pakistan

For the past three days, my efforts to log on to the LPG transparency gas portal have failed. After reading &ldquo;Popular Gas&rdquo; (Chinese Whispers, June 28), I guess I know why.

Letters: Website of intrigue 

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

Imposing a duty would raise costs for the troubled power sector, but also allow India to grow its manufacturing base
Anil Sardana 
Managing Director, Tata Power
&ldquo;It is counterproductive to increase project costs through duty increases since the burden will eventually be borne by the consumer&rdquo;
The recent discussions between the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office, the Planning Commission and different ministries including the power ministry on imposing import duty on power equipment

Should import duty on power-generation equipment be raised?

The recent round of summits &ndash; the G-20 summit in Los Cabos in Mexico and the Earth Summit at Rio &ndash; was a tough experience for most leaders. The beleaguered German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had a particularly difficult time, fending off pleas that she go easier on the austerity measures she was demanding for the struggling Greek economy. In response to one forcefully-expressed demand that she change her stance, she made a revealing statement about her helplessness in the face of German domestic opinion on the subject: &ldquo;If I change my stance,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll no longer be the leader.&rdquo; Unsurprisingly, she missed the Earth Summit to return to Berlin to prepare for the ongoing European leaders&rsquo; meeting.

Tough summits

Not all the participants, however, found the summits so uncongenial. India&rsquo;s normally reserved prime minister was beaming with enthusiasm at a press conference on board the special Air India aircraft that was bringing him back from Rio. After the press conference ended, he even shook hands with journalists, and enquired after some of them. Whether it was the prospect of returning to take charge of the finance ministry, or the memory of delivering a dressing-down to European leaders, or the simple fact of being away from the ceaseless demands for action that has marked the past year of his premiership, is not known. Whatever the reason, one journalist suggested to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he should always look confident, even back home. Dr Singh nodded with a smile &mdash; but, as usual, without speaking any words.

Odd PM out

Life insurance: Deepak Sood

The India visit of the Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, Muhtar Kent, made for front-page headlines. He had a crowded schedule; besides inaugurating the second season of Coke Studio India, he met a large number of leading Indians from all walks of life: Planning Commission member Arun Maira, R K Pachauri of The Energy &amp; Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund boss Ravi Singh, sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan, former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra, educationist Shyama Chona and former CII boss Tarun Das, amongst others. He also met over 500 Coke employees at the ITC Maurya, accompanied by John Elkann Agnelli, the 40ish chairman of car maker Fiat, and major Turkish clothing retailer Omer Taviloglu. Oddly, no government leaders were on his itinerary &mdash; except for Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, with whom he has developed a personal friendship after frequent meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Ignoring government?

This refers to the report &ldquo;Among 440 rising global cities in 2025, India to have 36: Report&rdquo; (June 28). The June 2012 edition of McKinsey Global&rsquo;s report on the &ldquo;Emerging 440&rdquo; global cities should draw the attention of planners in India at all levels. We should plan for developing hundreds of global &ldquo;towns&rdquo; across geographical areas with population-based representation. These towns should have all basic facilities like transport, potable water supply, health care, comfortable accommodation for locals and tourists, self-regulated markets, good educational institutions and so on. Such towns will act as filters to ensure that the emerging global &ldquo;cities&rdquo; are not suffocated to extinction by migration from rural and semi-urban areas, where the majority of the country&rsquo;s population now lives. Sporadic approaches to achieve this objective are being made in states like Kerala and around cities like Mumbai and Bangalore.

Letters: Some global 'towns' please

This refers to your edit &ldquo;The political freelancer&rdquo; (June 28). It is amply clear that small political parties are nothing more than the personal fiefdoms of their leaders. Most of these parties do not stand for any clear political ideology. So, in effect, they play the role of pressure groups to extract benefits from the government of the day. It may, therefore, be time to revisit, not just the anti-defection law, but also the role of a party whip in enforcing discipline.

Letters: Petty politics

Jairam Ramesh&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Recalling Abid Hussain (June 27) was deeply moving. One wished Mr Hussain had been given a greater role in the country&rsquo;s economic affairs. A great economist and a fine human being indeed, Mr Hussain will be missed by all. It&rsquo;s a pity that both the print and electronic media failed to report this huge loss to our country adequately.

Letters: Mr Hussain will be missed

The recent announcement that the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) may outsource the manufacture of communications satellites and launch vehicles marks a paradigm shift. The space agency needs to focus on research to meet ambitious targets like its planned Mars Mission, Chandrayaan II, developing higher-powered satellites and so on.

Closer to Nasa

Online portals provide more&nbsp;transparency&nbsp;as well as options for students which they could otherwise not get in a small room of a college.

Student's corner

Politicians are supposed to be quick-witted, and many of them are. But it&rsquo;s rare for Indians to see their wit on display. An example of how things could be was provided last week when, after hectic and tiring deliberations on the euro-zone crisis, the leaders of the G-20 countries assembled at the Convention Centre in Los Cabos in Mexico for a group photograph. The horde of assembled photographers was about to shoot when someone noticed there were only 19 leaders there &mdash; Manmohan Singh was missing. Nobody seemed to know where he&rsquo;d gone.

Photo zinger

In India, usually, the humour on display is a little more caustic. Congressmen, in particular, lose no opportunity to badmouth civil society leaders Kisan Baburao Hazare and Ramdev; sometimes as examples to escape tricky situations. A senior Congress spokesperson, who holds considerable clout in the party and is in the habit of addressing media persons only in Hindi, was asked to repeat his statement in English for the benefit of south Indian television channels; unwilling to do so, he shot back: &ldquo;First get Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare to address you in English, then come to me.&rdquo; Naturally, the journalist was left without a reply.

Hypocrisy hilarity

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced certain liberalising measures relating to the capital account. The central bank&rsquo;s press release does not mention the objective, but one can guess it. If the idea is to improve capital inflows to relieve the downward pressure on the rupee, it is not likely to be realised by raising the ceiling on foreign subscriptions to government securities. They will go into the forex reserves of the RBI, which will give an equivalent credit to the government account in rupees. Thus, the funds will augment the bank&rsquo;s reserves and not the forex supply in the market. There may not be any addition to net RBI credit to the government. RBI should clarify the accounting procedure for the benefit of analysts. It will, however, mean the monetisation of current fiscal deficit that will have an expansionary effect on money supply.

Letters: Short measures

Of course, not all Indian politicians are shy about demonstrating their quickness of wit. At the launch of the LPG transparency portal on Friday, the executives of oil companies were giving a demonstration of its usefulness. The consumer number of one of the journalists was used to show how the portal works. The journalist had used three subsidised gas cylinders over the past year. Many insisted that the consumer profile of Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy should also be shown. The portal showed that the minister got 26 subsidised cylinders in the past year. It turned out that was modest by politicians&rsquo; standards; the new portal also shows former Telecom Minister A Raja consumes as many as 47 a year; former Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan gets 60; and Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal&rsquo;s house gets delivered 369 a year, meaning the taxpayer subsidises his kitchens by Rs 1.27 lakh.

Popular gas

It is shameful that some of the most reputed business houses in the cement industry are involved in the unethical practice of making profits by deliberately underutilising their production capacity (&ldquo;Competition watchdog bites Rs 6,300 crore off cement firms,&rdquo; June 22). It is time the Indian cement industry resorted to ethical, though tougher, methods of increasing profits. The labour productivity in the industry is just about 1,400 tonnes per employee (based on CMA figures for 2010-11). Investment in training and development together with work simplification could help. Similarly, there is a wide scope for cost reduction, particularly in two areas &mdash; power consumption and transportation. The use of better quality inputs and modern technology (like vertical roller mills) will make the industry more energy efficient. Reduction of detention time of wagons and recourse to schemes like own-your-wagon or build-operate-lease-transfer will provide potential savings.

Letters: Alternatives to cartelisation 

This refers to the report &ldquo;Central Bank likely to impose curbs on gold coin sale&rdquo; (June 27). The Reserve Bank of India should take serious steps to curtail gold coin sales by not only banks, but other channels also like MMTC, post offices and so on. By doing this, the government will achieve two targets: one, it will be able to gradually wean investors away from such non-productive assets; and, two, it will save considerable amount of foreign exchange that is spent on gold imports.

Letters: Stop gold coin sales

This is the age of the political freelancer. Parties across the country are abandoning the constraining comfort of coalition discipline for free-floating, shifting and temporary alliances. The political manoeuvring around the presidential election makes this particularly clear. In the past, it might have been a straightforward contest between clear-cut alliances: one led by the Congress, one led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), perhaps with a candidate backed by the Left parties thrown into the mix. This presidential election, however, has seen the candidates split the coalitions wide open. Pranab Mukherjee is the Congress&rsquo; candidate, but it is quite clear that some of its coalition partners are not on board. On the other hand, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is unable to oppose Mr Mukherjee&rsquo;s candidature as a unit, with the Shiv Sena, for example, making its support for his presidential run apparent.

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