A lot has been going wrong for the country - high inflation, poor quarterly numbers, a currency that has depreciated more than 25% in the past 14 months... The list goes on. Plenty of reasons for foreign rating agencies to be wary of both &mdash; the Indian economy and companies that represent India Inc's finest, and in which FIIs have substantial stakes.

Are foreign rating agencies deliberately targeting India?

Business Standard

Graphic shows select results from the latest Bloomberg National Poll.

Obama narrowly favoured by swing voters

The BluFin Business Cycle Indicator (BCI) suggests India&rsquo;s cyclical slowdown continued in May 2012. BCI, which indicates the state of the business cycle in India, fell to 157.6 in May, compared to a reading of 158.0 in April.

Business Cycle Indicator confirms downturn

The colour red, representative of the Left, may have theoretically been replaced by green, the official colour of the Trinamool Congress when its leader Mamata Banerjee stormed Writers&rsquo; Buildings last year, but Bengal apparently remains loyal to the colour of yesteryear. An official of an international personal computer and laptop manufacturing major told reporters, that by far the majority in West Bengal prefers red laptops and netbooks &mdash; so much so that the company makes sure it has a steady supply of red laptops for Bengal. The comment is interesting, especially given the current chief minister&rsquo;s dislike of the colour and her new penchant for painting Kolkata in hues of blue and white.

Red still clicks in Bengal

As Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee prepares to leave for Rashtrapati Bhavan, here is a glimpse of select members of the top team that worked with him&nbsp;(Click&nbsp;on graphic)

Appointments pranab made during his tenure

A year and a half since it occurred, it might make sense to describe the hopefully labelled &ldquo;Arab Spring&rdquo; of December 2010 as little more than a brief winter of discontent. From Tunisia, where it all started with the suicide of a fruit seller, through Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Syria and the Emirates, it would be difficult to find a civil rights protestor satisfied with the outcome of those globally televised protests. If anything, the region has become even more radicalised and minorities more vulnerable than ever before. North Africa and West Asia remain a long way from the civil rights and prosperity for which people took to the streets.

Broken spring

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has relied on the notice given by Independent Media Trust (IMT) and associated entities to put together a sequence of acquisitions that are inter-connected and interdependent on each other.

The RIL-Network18 deal as seen by CCI

This was a comment on a blog in reaction to the launch of Microsoft&rsquo;s new tablet, &lsquo;Surface,&rsquo; featuring a cover-cum-keyboard and a kickstand. The &lsquo;Surface&rsquo; is Steve Ballmer&rsquo;s answer to the iPad produced by arch nemesis, Apple Inc.

Newsmaker: Steve Ballmer

On Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s (BJP&rsquo;s) leader in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, described the face-off between the party&rsquo;s Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, and its ally from the Janata Dal (United), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, as &ldquo;irrelevant&rdquo; and &ldquo;unfortunate&rdquo;. Unfortunate it may be for the BJP, but hardly irrelevant. The national executive meeting of the BJP in Mumbai recently was widely seen as endorsing Mr Modi&rsquo;s prime ministerial ambitions. Mr Kumar has, in the past, made his discomfort with Mr Modi publicly known, preventing him from campaigning in Bihar as far as possible. He will have been emboldened by the fact that the state&rsquo;s Muslims appear to have rewarded his distancing by swelling the mandate that returned him to power. Mr Modi, meanwhile, has lashed out at &ldquo;leaders from UP and Bihar&rdquo; who are &ldquo;mired in caste-based politics&rdquo;.

Bursting the bubble

The rising subsidy bill has put everyone in government in a spot of bother. So much so that a food ministry proposal to allocate additional grains to states for distribution through ration shops was reworked twice &ndash; that too, downwards &ndash; before it was finally approved. The food ministry first demanded an allocation of 26 million tonnes of wheat and rice over and above the normal annual allocation. This would have not only met one of the states&rsquo; main demands but also ease chronic shortages. The proposal was turned down apparently because the subsidy burden of Rs 33,000 crore was considered too high. Later, the ministry scaled down the requirement to 14 million tonnes, which would have entailed an additional subsidy of around Rs 16,000 crore over and above the Rs 75,000 crore pegged for 2012-13 (the subsidy is needed because the grain would be sold at rates much cheaper than their cost of procurement and storage).

Granular thinking

There will be some high-profile absentees, but 120 heads of government are still turning up at&nbsp;Rio&nbsp;de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20. Their task is so daunting that they are practically set up to fail: to chalk out a strategy for earth-friendly economic development, focused at eradicating poverty and hunger and meeting basic needs while simultaneously conserving the planet&rsquo;s natural assets. This is even harder than it sounds; a UN report put out ahead of the&nbsp;conference says that of the 90-odd objectives agreed to in the original Earth Summit at Rio in 1992, barely four have seen adequate progress. However, that summit did serve as a progenitor for a series of crucial and unprecedented global accords.

Not just another summit

Subir Roy is a bit unfair to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in his analysis of the economy (&ldquo;RBI lets everybody down,&rdquo; June 20). Monetary policy has to take care of money supply in the economy. It cannot be blamed if public confidence in the economy is low. Money does not pour in just because cost of borrowing is low. It pours in if the rate of profit is higher than the cost of borrowing. The current state of the economy does not ensure confidence in the market. There is no serious attempt to regulate the fiscal deficit. Most states are busy showering election freebies without any worthwhile programme to refill the state kitty. Neither the Centre nor states have a plan of fiscal management, let alone executing it. Monetary policy cannot cure this fiscal illness.

Letters: Right on the money

There has been a strategic shift in branch distribution in the last three years, with the large rise in semi-urban branches. These branches contributed 53.5 per cent of the total branches added during the three years ended March 2012. Semi-urban and rural branches contributed 13 per cent to the incremental retail loan growth in FY12. The management believes the product range, service standards, technology and customer profiling would provide an opportunity for growth in new geographies, without compromising the asset quality. Maintain add.

Analysts' corner

Much criticism was heaped on state-owned life insurer Life Insurance Company for its participation in the auction of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation&rsquo;s (ONGC&rsquo;s) shares to shore up subscription to the oil and gas company&rsquo;s public offer earlier this year. But a senior finance ministry official thinks the criticism was unwarranted.

PSUs as milch cows

Apropos the report &ldquo;No laughing matter, HC frowns on laughter club&rdquo; (June 19), it is true that laughter clubs should not be a nuisance to others. But trained laughter professionals are aware of this fact and are taught to take care of the venue and timings of laughter sessions so that they don&rsquo;t disturb people. It is not fair to discredit laughter yoga that is practiced scientifically and spiritually for wellness.

Letters: Funny side up

This refers to the edit &ldquo;Work for an upgrade&rdquo; (June 20). The prime minister&rsquo;s assurance that the government will not change policies abruptly and take steps to revive investor sentiments is welcome. Indeed, we would like to see the growth rate revert to eight to nine per cent. The priorities for the new team that will take over the finance ministry are well-known: twin deficits, the subsidy system and reforms. The good thing is that we have had good agricultural output and there is no threat to food security. We are in a position to export foodgrain. On his return from his foreign tour, we hope the prime minister will act fast to turnaround the economy. The mantra should be reform to regain.

Letters: Reform to regain

Microsoft&rsquo;s share price has gained 0.75 per cent on Nasdaq after the company announced on Monday the launch of its tablet, Surface. Investors saw in it an attempt by Microsoft to ring-fence its Windows franchise. The personal computer market is fast evolving from laptops to tablets, and Apple&rsquo;s iPad lords it over this market with a share of almost 50 per cent. With its own tablet, Microsoft will perhaps be able to ensure a longer life for Windows, the latest version of which, Windows 8, is to be launched soon. That the Surface might bring Microsoft in conflict with its big customers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard doesn&rsquo;t seem to bother investors, nor does the question of whether Microsoft will be able to develop a sufficiently large ecosystem of software applications, or apps.

Microsoft's big gamble

No, there is nothing fixed about the number of credit cards or mobile phone connections a person can have.

Debt Counselling: Sanjay Agarwal

The mixed reactions of the IITs to MHRD's proposal only reflects their doubt in the move's effectuality to enable them ascertain the best brains of the country. However, considering that a single entrance examination will reduce the stress level of students along with ensuring transparency and fairness, all IITs except Kanpur have pitched in favour of the decision. The division of the test into JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced will help them preserve their conventional style of testing. Lastly, given the impact the new pattern bears upon the educational system and its stakeholders, the extension sought on its incorporation is definitely justified.

Student's corner

The dispute over engineering entrance examinations gets to the heart of several issues on which India needs to take a call. Worldwide, school-leaving examinations grade a broad range of basic skills, while higher education requires specialised aptitudes. Most premier institutions of higher learning wind up using school-leaving results as a pre-qualifier and devise additional criteria. In the UK and the US, for example, universities often require student applications to be accompanied by essays and recommendations in addition to results from standardised school-leaving exams. India has a plethora of school boards with varying syllabi and uneven examination standards, and so a single-stage admission process would be difficult to implement fairly. It is also true that having to sit for a multitude of entrance examinations places a huge burden on higher secondary students. Hence the desire to introduce a common entrance test (CET) for engineering.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 874 - Business Standard