Sesa Goa and Sterlite Industries, the two listed firms of the Vedanta group, will hold shareholders&rsquo; meets this week to seek approval for a group restructuring. Under this exercise, Sterlite will amalgamate into Sesa Goa &mdash; three shares of Sesa Goa will be issued for five shares of Sterlite. All former subsidiaries of Sesa Goa and Sterlite will either automatically become subsidiaries of the new entity, Sesa Sterlite, or will be merged with it.

Will all parents agree?

Business Standard

Gold has given reasonable returns in the past year, despite talks of the yellow metal losing its safe-haven status and being replaced by the dollar. Internationally, gold prices have increased by nine per cent since July 2011. However, in the Indian market, it has risen 38.7 per cent, as the rupee has fallen over 25 per cent and the import duty on gold has gone up by three percentage points.

Why gold prices are so high in India

The government&rsquo;s new kharif pricing policy, suggesting a steep 16 to 53 per cent increase in the minimum support prices (MSPs) of various crops, is unlikely to fully satisfy farmers even as it will stoke food inflation and swell the food subsidy bill.

Maximum support prices

Apropos Jyoti Malhotra&rsquo;s column &ldquo;The Afghan gamble&rdquo; (Mappings, June 15), it is clear that the Taliban is again on the rise in Afghanistan. The assassination attempts on President Hamid Karzai are clear pointers to the fact that Taliban fighters still harbour ambitions to rule Afghanistan and topple the current government.

Letters: Tackling Taliban

This refers to the report &ldquo;Chakrabarty gets three-month extension as RBI dy governor&rdquo; (June 14). K C Chakrabarty is the latest victim or beneficiary &ndash; depending on how you look at it &ndash; of the United Progressive Alliance&rsquo;s impaired decision-making apparatus. In the recent past, we have been observing government delays in filling top jobs. Often, procedures are rushed through and aspirants who are kept on tenterhooks till the eleventh hour become functionally ineffective at least for the initial few months. In Chakrabarty&rsquo;s case, giving a straight extension of two years or leaving the post vacant till a final decision on the incumbent is taken could have avoided the speculations that are bound to follow now.

Letters: Situations vacant

There is nothing so unseemly as an ex-president almost politicking to have another shot at the job. I am not suggesting this because Mr Kalam was in the run in 2012 (as he was in 2007, after completing his first term). It is also because several ex-presidents, including the great S Radhakrishnan, had indicated their desire for a second term and had been denied it.

Letters: One term is enough

State-owned Doordarshan seems to have finally acquired a mind of its own. Last Friday, when national attention was focused on Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee being nominated the UPA candidate for President, the pubcaster chose to screen I am Kalam on DD1, a national channel. The 2011 film, which was showcased in many international festivals, is about a Rajasthani boy called Chhotu who is inspired by the life of A P J Abdul Kalam, former president of India. DD&rsquo;s selection was interesting given that Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee had just gone against her UPA allies to name Kalam her top presidential choice.

Focus on Kalam

Perhaps only Ms Banerjee thought the UPA&rsquo;s presidential nomination was not a foregone conclusion. Certainly, Pranab Mukherjee appeared to harbour no doubts. Even though the official announcement of his nomination was made at around 5 p m, the finance minister was seen graciously accepting congratulations from various TV editors and journalists as early as lunchtime on Friday. In fact, when he returned from the meeting at 7 Race Course Road, he had a prepared statement at the ready.

FM`s hunch

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, it has now been undoubtedly proved (after the Presidential election drama), is very clear about being the only voice that must be heard from her party. Othe members of the TMC make no mistake about that. Last week when Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra was in the capital to plead for a financial package for the state; he persistently refused to field questions from the media. When hounded by a journalist, an exasperated Mitra shot back, &ldquo;There is an essential difference between being the Secretary General of Ficci [his former post] and being the finance minister of West Bengal; You do not speak!&rdquo; That would, hopefully, explain Mitra being tongue-tied this past one year.

Speaking silence

The combination of novelty, a (usually) low price and an industry that has no shortage of innovation means we have opportunities to get new apps almost daily. The end result is app overload. Too much clutter. Memory wasted on apps that were cool on Christmas morning, but now lie at the back of the closet, unused and unloved. This is not what one wants.

Six steps to declutter your app-loaded smartphone

The fight in recent years has primarily been between Canon and Nikon. Consequently, they remain the safest bet for any amateur photographer to begin with, more so since the lens that you&rsquo;ll pick up will work across each brand&rsquo;s range of camera bodies.

Making it click with amateurs

Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy has proposed an additional excise duty of Rs 1.7 lakh on small diesel cars and Rs 2.55 lakh on bigger diesel cars. Diesel costs almost Rs 30 a litre less than petrol.

Tinkering with dual pricing

Any relief over the Congress having stood up to bullying by its ally, the Trinamool Congress, over the choice of its presidential nominee will necessarily be transitory. The Congress was essentially left with no choice when Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee snubbed her party&rsquo;s ally and its president &ndash; as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh &ndash; by rejecting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee&rsquo;s candidature and proposing Dr Singh&rsquo;s name instead. That the Congress finally got its act together, firmed up lines of communication with Ms Banerjee&rsquo;s putative ally, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, and ensured that the United Progressive Alliance&rsquo;s (UPA&rsquo;s) other constituents lined up behind Mr Mukherjee shows the party is still capable of manoeuvring when it wishes to.

Short-lived euphoria

A series of leaks from the White House about the United States&rsquo; war against al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan have, over the past month, caused even greater attention to focus on its tactics. Much attention has been fixed on the report that President Barack Obama personally scrutinises each proposed target of a strike by an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, through meetings at which &ldquo;kill lists&rdquo; are discussed. In Pakistan, in particular, the US&rsquo; use of drones to target suspected militants in that country&rsquo;s lawless northwestern frontier (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA) has become something of a cause celebre for an alliance of the country&rsquo;s Islamist right and its extensive anti-American liberal elite. Indeed, the tactics, policies and methods of control that the US is developing for its attacks inside Pakistan need to be carefully studied, for it is increasingly likely that they are the future of war.

Game of drones 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quite upset at his name being on Mamata Banerjee and Mulayam Singh Yadav&rsquo;s slate of candidates for president. He insisted the Congress issues a clarification before he embarked on a tour of Mexico and Brazil. His fear was no one at the G20 meeting would take him seriously, if he went there while his party was considering sending him up the ladder. He said if there was no clarification, he would not go. The party had to then issue an unambiguous statement that it &ldquo;could not spare Dr Manmohan Singh from the government till 2014&rdquo;. It was like an extension of a bureaucrat&rsquo;s term, which is usually couched as &ldquo;he will continue in his post till further orders&rdquo;.

Steer clear

There is yet another book on senior BJP leader L K Advani written by his family friend, Mira Govind Advani. Most BJP top leaders attended the book release, including senior leader Jaswant Singh. When it was Singh&rsquo;s turn to address the audience, the former external affairs minister quipped, &ldquo;Book likhna saral nahi hai (It is not easy to write a book).&rdquo; His opening comment made all the BJP leaders present, including Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Ram Lal and Giriraj Kishore, laugh uncontrollably. The leader seemed to have forgotten he was thrown out of the party after he wrote the controversial book, Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, on Pakistan&rsquo;s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

A legacy of books

Recently, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Murli Manohar Joshi was annoyed with his name appearing in a section of media as a possible candidate for the post of vice-president. Fed up with repeated telephone calls from journalists at his residence, Joshi called up the BJP&rsquo;s media wing and asked its members to clarify to journalists that his name should not be floated as a possible candidate.

What all is in a name?

Bombay is the hub of everything. From seminars on Jaddu Krishnamurthy to offbeat film festivals, it is for nothing that people don&rsquo;t want to shift places once they have lived here. At the third edition of Kashish, the queer film festival, I chanced upon Weekend, a rewarding gay romance that I have been wanting to watch since its release last year, but which has shunned all efforts at discovery in any metro. Only in Bombay you get to watch Tom Cullen&rsquo;s smouldering intensity on 70 mm with other enthusiasts.

CAT among the crammers

The ruling United Progressive Alliance has never looked as disunited as it does now. The leader of the UPA&rsquo;s second-largest constituent, Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has teamed up with Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party to completely derail the Congress.

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