The infighting in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that came out in the open during its national executive meet in Mumbai recently did not give much time to senior leaders to get together and celebrate their attempts to corner the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre. So much so that while trying to defend the BJP, General Secretary and Chief Spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was facing a barrage of questions, did not find time to eat his favourite sweet dish, shrikhand. &ldquo;I was so busy this time when I went to Mumbai that I could not eat shrikhand. I really enjoy the sweet dish and I make sure I eat it whenever I go to Mumbai, Nagpur and Ahmedabad. Shrikhand in Delhi is not as good as it is at these three places,&rdquo; Prasad said after returning to New Delhi from Mumbai.

No sweet little time!

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Industrial growth generally moves in sync with the index of eight core industries, which have almost 38% weight in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP). The core sector grew at the rate of a muted 2.2 % in April 2012-13. However, IIP numbers will have the advantage of a low base of April 2011-12 (at 166 points), which has already been surpassed in March 2011-12 (186 points). Over the past few years, a sharp drop has been seen in core sector and IIP growth in April, compared to March.

IIP outlook

This refers to Sunita Narain&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Stained steel&rsquo;&rsquo; (Down To Earth, June 11). Indeed, it is important to measure the environmental impact of industry. I live in a block in Burdwan district, the rice bowl of West Bengal. Over the years, a number of rice mills have mushroomed in the area, but few of these follow environmental guidelines. These rice mills cause extensive damage to the environment. They pollute the Damodar Valley Corporation canals that are a lifeline for the people living here. Unfortunately, the local administration and the pollution control board have done nothing to curb this problem.

Letters: Toxic rice mills

India&rsquo;s external weakness has become a cause of some concern. As Table 1 shows, the current account balance has declined since March 2009, when it was in surplus. And, as Table 2 shows, the trade balance has been particularly problematic in the past year, declining sharply. It is also evident through that graph that the rupee has become correspondingly cheaper over the same time interval.

StatsGuru-11-June-12

Apropos the edit &ldquo;Win-win, not &lsquo;go, no-go&rsquo;&rdquo; (June 8), it is crucial to find a strategic solution to global warming. The four emerging economies of Brazil, South Africa, India and China &ndash; also known as Basic countries &ndash; have already prepared a draft. The draft sets out the shared vision of achieving the long-term and ultimate objective of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that does not increase global warming. To achieve this goal, developed countries should help developing countries in terms of adequate financing and technology transfer. Global warming is now a real threat and all nations must unite to fight it.

Letters: 'Basic' steps 

Mihir S Sharma&rsquo;s article on austerity (&ldquo;Austerity abuse&rdquo;, June 9) makes a factually incorrect statement when it criticises the Planning Commission for being late in presenting the 12th Plan, when the first year of the Plan has commenced. Since this view has been expressed by some others also, I would like to present the correct picture.

Letters: The complete picture

Reliance Industries&rsquo; profits are under pressure and it is sitting on a pile of cash it doesn&rsquo;t seem to know what to do with. But what are shareholders of India&rsquo;s largest listed company by market capitalisation really interested in? The promoter&rsquo;s private life! At Reliance&rsquo;s recent annual general meeting (AGM) some shareholders wanted to know the meaning of Antilla, the name of Chairman Mukesh Ambani&rsquo;s lavish home in south Mumbai and another asked how it should be pronounced. Another sought permission for himself and his granddaughter to tour the 27-storey residence. Still others asked whether Ambani shopped at Reliance Fresh, and added that the quality of vegetables and milk at these outlets was not fresh. Unsurprisingly, Ambani did not respond to these miscellaneous queries.

Private, unlimited 

Given this extreme interest in Mukesh Ambani&rsquo;s personal life, his wife Nita Ambani, who was conspicuous by her presence at the AGM, also attracted shareholder comment. One asked her why she didn&rsquo;t set up her own dancing schools. &ldquo;Thanks to the Indian Premier League Nita Ambani has become a household name and considering her passion for dancing, we think she should set up her own dancing schools pan-India just as Shiamak Davar has done,&rdquo; he said. This drew a smile from Ambani but no comment.

Dance number

At the Global Investors&rsquo; Meet 2012 in Bangalore, S R Jindal, chairman and managing director of Jindal Aluminium, which has a business in Karnataka for several years, was strongly critical of the state government, especially its single-window clearing mechanism for investors. He described it as &ldquo;a window with many doors and ventilators&rdquo;, clearly indicating that he is having trouble untangling the red tape in the state.

Window-pain

The United States defence secretary, Leon Panetta, made some interesting pronouncements on the New Delhi leg of his Asian tour last week, including the offer of much closer defence cooperation (as in joint development of weapons, which India already does with Russia and Israel). His statements suggested an American embrace that goes beyond all previous offers, and tied in with the &ldquo;re-balancing&rdquo; of US forces in Asia: putting 60 per cent of US naval assets in the Asia-Pacific region (as against 50 per cent now). According to some observers, the US now sees India as having the potential to become its most important partner in a developing Asian security scenario that looks increasingly like a China containment policy.

An American embrace

The government&rsquo;s aim of increasing the manufacturing sector&rsquo;s share to 25 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) will likely remain just a dream. That&rsquo;s because, even as the government sets up multiple entities charged with helping the manufacturing sector, it is itself creating a high-cost economy through policy, rules and regulations, and its own salaries. Achieving manufacturing growth will require first putting its own house in order by giving salaries that are in sync with the low productivity levels of its staff.

Salary spiral

Apropos &ldquo;Auto companies lobby against tax on diesel cars&rdquo; (June 7), the auto industry&rsquo;s response to the move of increasing taxes on diesel cars clearly demonstrates lack of leadership and responsibility. Higher excise duty on diesel cars is unlikely to hurt overall growth of car sales &mdash; it will only decrease the sales of diesel vehicles. This may result in short-term losses for manufacturers who have invested in diesel engine plants.

Letters: Auto industry must own up

The presence of the Samajwadi Party (SP) leader in the Rajya Sabha, Ram Gopal Yadav, at cricketer Sachin Tendulkar&rsquo;s brief oath-taking in the chamber of Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari set tongues wagging in the political corridors. While apart from the two Ministers of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Harish Rawat and Rajeev Shukla, the only other political party representative present there was Yadav, who is also SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav&rsquo;s brother. With the growing bonhomie between the Congress and the SP (the latest being the Congress Party&rsquo;s decision to not contest in Kannauj bypolls), many senior politicians wondered whether Yadav being accorded this privilege had anything to do with this growing friendship. After all, any politician would pay an arm and a leg to be present at the cricketing legend Tendulkar&rsquo;s oath-taking ceremony.

Bonding under oath

A recent report highlights a broad trend of which businesses are already aware: the mobile internet, or &ldquo;m-net&rdquo;, is growing much quicker than fixed internet, presenting a new set of challenges and opportunities for businesses, surfers and regulators. Mary Meeker, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield &amp; Byers, is an iconic analyst of online trends. Her latest report presents startling numbers. Over 10 per cent of May 2012 global internet traffic was mobile, up from one per cent in December 2009. M-net revenues have risen at a cumulative annual growth rate of over 150 per cent between 2008 and 2011. The revenue mix is very different. Apps or application software contribute 71 per cent of m-net revenue, while 29 per cent is from advertising. In contrast, advertisements contribute over 90 per cent of fixed internet revenue. Hardware manufacturers like Intel and Cisco are moving to the m-net by developing new chips and routers.

India's mobile future

What sets the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, headed by Professor Madhav Gadgil, apart from most other reports delivered by such government-appointed committees is that it does not view environmental factors in isolation from development imperatives. Nevertheless, its recommendations pay careful attention to the need for protection and preservation of the biological wealth of one of the world&rsquo;s hot spots for biodiversity: the Western Ghats. This mountainous belt, measuring around 1,600 kilometres, spreads across six states &mdash; Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Its biodiversity is extraordinary: over 5,000 species of plants, 450 birds, 140 mammals and 260 reptiles, a large number of which are unique to the range. Besides these, the Ghats have more secrets in store &mdash; for example, several new species of frogs have been found in the past decade.

Win-win, not 'go, no-go'

In closing the meeting on Wednesday at which he hoped to give a big push to infrastructure, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a speech in which he mentioned the word &ldquo;bottleneck&rdquo; three times. It is the persistent tragedy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government&rsquo;s leadership that it knows what the problem is and yet seems unable to do much about it. The inter-ministerial meeting that Dr Singh chaired is, at least, an important visible attempt to do something.

Infra target practice 

MP and former Commonwealth Games Organising Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi invited some journalists to his residence on Wednesday. Since this was the first press meet since his release on bail following his arrest in a Games-linked financial scandal, at least 15 TV cameras, including a live OB van, and a large number of print journalists arrived at his Kamraj Lane residence hoping for some juicy quotes. All they got were patties and samosas instead. Kalmadi felicitated some Pune mountaineers who had scaled Everest last month but refused to talk on any other matter. That was so unlike the loquacious Kalmadi of the earlier days, said people who&rsquo;ve tracked him for years.

No comment

The results of the Neyyattinkara by-poll in Kerala, to be declared on June 15, will be crucial for both the Opposition Left Democratic Front and the ruling United Democratic Front, which has 72 seats in the 140-seat Assembly. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy might well be having sleepless nights, if Governor H R Bhardwaj&rsquo;s comments at a recent function in Bangalore are anything to go by. According to Bhardwaj (who is also the governor of Karnataka), Chandy had told him, &ldquo;Please help me, I have a majority of one.&rdquo; Bhardwaj had to do a Pontius Pilate and say he couldn&rsquo;t do anything and Chandy would have to help himself.

The power of one

The Centre may have issued directives to its departments to avoid holding government events at five-star hotels, but the Karnataka government couldn&rsquo;t have cared less about such austerity measures. The state government was busy splurging on lunches and dinners that were being organised for the media at the city&rsquo;s best five-star hotels before the Global Investors&rsquo; Meet, 2012. However, none of these events yielded any news worth reporting. With the global economy in the doldrums and the possibility of investors staying away from the meet, perhaps the state government felt it could avoid bad publicity by keeping the media in good humour.

Food for hype 

This refers to your front-page report &ldquo;PM sets infra ball rolling&rdquo; (June 7). The PM&rsquo;s infrastructure meet perked up market sentiment, but the Sensex&rsquo;s quick reaction is not anything to go by. It is common knowledge that the stock market barometer has the tendency to jump or fall in response to even smaller events. The PM needs to be reminded that 2012 is not 1991. The nation is facing a different crisis of different dimensions.

Letters: Infra meet is not enough

This refers to the edit &ldquo;From policy to farce&rdquo; (June 5). Our finance minister has reassured the nation that India&rsquo;s economic situation is not as bad as it was in 1991. Our two main political parties are least concerned about the faltering GDP, the falling rupee or the inflationary impact of sub-normal monsoons. Our country&rsquo;s curse is an abysmal lack of political will to implement reforms. This along with the habit of deriving electoral gains from every political development is the biggest reason for the country&rsquo;s problems. This state of affairs is a big worry for all informed citizens. Citizens&rsquo; expect business leaders, bureaucrats and politicians to discuss, debate and engage in a meaningful dialogue to seek solutions to our economic problems.

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