Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has used the market fall as an opportunity to increase holding in his portfolio companies. He raised his stake in four of his portfolio companies this month. At a recent public outing, he said, &ldquo;This is a good time to invest as the market is depressed.

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The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), a leading consultancy, released a report on spending trend at duty-free stores at Indian airports, surveying 7,000 passengers across 12 airports. CAPA estimates airport-based duty free sales in India in 2010/11 at $215 million, in comparison to Dubai duty-free, which reported sales of $1.46 billion, while revenue across all Chinese airports combined was $1.9 billion (source: The Moodie Report).

Airport retail

Fee waivers would not only bring a sigh of relief for many deserving students but also a ray of hope and motivation for many. But the challenge for the B-schools is to clearly and correctly identify the criteria of for the waiver, because of the immense variation in the fee structure across the nation. This makes the economic inability of a student a relative concept. If this challenge is subjugated, fee waiver would be welcomed by all management aspirants.

Student&#8217s corner

Your leader &ldquo;Time for change&rdquo; (May 22) was very forcefully and cogently argued. What I found most impressive was the argument that backed up your conclusion. It was very convincing. The government must be shaken &mdash; and deservedly so.

Letters: A good jolt

When is the Delhi Budget? Three days before it was to be presented, the Delhi secretariat took two hours to provide the answer. Some officials said it would be tabled on May 28, others said after that and the rest had no clue about the Budget altogether. There was more confusion. Who will present this Budget? Chief Minister Sheila Dixit holds the finance portfolio. But her office said finance is handled by the revenue minister. The media relations officer was far from interested in providing straight answers on almost anything. Though he confirmed that the Budget is, in fact, on May 28, he could not say anything about media passes to cover the event. In reply to the query, he said airily, &ldquo;Pass, pass, everyone will pass, no one will fail.

Delhi Budget door ast?

The government&rsquo;s austerity measures have come at the wrong time for bureaucrats from the ministry of labour and employment. These bureaucrats were getting ready to fly out of the hot, dusty capital to the cooler climes of Geneva to attend an International Labour Organisation conference together with their spouses. But they have run into opposition from the finance ministry. That&rsquo;s because with the pilots of government-owned airline Air India on strike, these officials have to fly on other airlines. Under the rules, spouses can accompany senior officials, but only on Air India and the finance ministry has taken exception to spouses accompanying officials on other airlines. With Air India&rsquo;s problems evading resolution, the bureaucrats have little option but to keep their fingers crossed.

Accompanied baggage

Vice-chairman of Essar Group Ravi Ruia was expected to travel to Myanmar as part of a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) delegation of industrialists, scheduled along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&rsquo;s first visit to that country from Monday. The government, however, has rejected his name and he has not been able to travel to Myanmar as part of the CII delegation.

2G fallout

Last week saw the United Progressive Alliance government issue a &ldquo;report card&rdquo; that concealed as much as it claimed. The second instalment of the UPA has consistently failed to deliver on basic reform. However, the week also saw the national executive meeting of the largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The occasion revealed precisely why the BJP has been unable to capitalise on the disarray in the government and continues to struggle to project itself as a credible alternative. What could have been an opportunity to hold the government to account and present a clear set of alternative policies turned instead into a lengthy clash of personalities. Attention was focused on how and why the party&rsquo;s president, Nitin Gadkari, got an unprecedented second three-year term that would ensure he is in charge until after the next general elections.

No alternative

The leaked contents of a draft report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the public-private partnership between the ministry of civil aviation and GMR for the Indira Gandhi International Airport, and the development and management of its Terminal 3, are likely to make life even more difficult for the United Progressive Alliance government. If, that is, what has been reported is correct; and if the final report bears out what is contained in the draft report.

Undue benefits in aviation

On March 29, the Madras High Court issued a &ldquo;John Doe&rdquo; order &mdash; a comprehensive set of protections against unknown potential offenders &mdash; in response to a suit from Chennai-based Copyright Labs. The order named 15 major internet service providers in India, and directed that access be cut off to pirated versions of two recent South Indian movies &mdash; the Tamil-language 3, from RK Productions, and the Telegu-language Dammu.

Torrents of trouble

The National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party expresses grave concern over the ever-deteriorating state of the Indian economy. The Congress has once again put the nation in peril. Sadly, those who do not learn lessons from history are condemned to repeat it. The country has been plunged into a deep economic crisis that reminds of the grim days of 1991. The economic free fall represents the total paralysis of governance that has become the defining hallmark of the Congress-led UPA government. A few days ago, the UPA presented its report card to the nation that glossed over the harsh realities and made hollow claims to camouflage the actual state of affairs.

'UPA government lurching from crisis to crisis'

As Army Chief V K Singh prepares to retire in accordance with his officially recorded birth date on May 31, he could draw comfort from the fact that he has a distinguished predecessor in the age-altering business. A new biography of Dwight Eisenhower by Jean Edward Smith reveals that the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II and former US President did the same thing when he applied to the United States Naval Academy and the military academy at West Point in 1910. The naval academy required candidates to be 19 years old or less and Eisenhower would have been 20 when he joined, so he fudged his age. This was, his biographer says, common practice at a time when birth certificates were not required.

Age-old issue

Given the controversies over Pratibha Patil&rsquo;s post-retirement home in Pune, the current incumbent of Rashtrapati Bhavan would have done well to emulate one of her distinguished predecessors, the Indian republic&rsquo;s first President Rajendra Prasad. Dr Prasad spent the longest time of all independent India&rsquo;s presidents in the sumptuous luxury of the former vice-regal palace on Raisina Hill. But after his 12-year stint as head of state, there was no luxurious government-provided retirement villa for him. Instead, when he retired in 1962, he opted to live in a small house on the campus of Bihar Vidyapeeth in Patna. Originally an old house with a thatched roof, Jayprakash Narayan raised some funds through volunteers to build a more permanent but equally modest structure near the Vidyapeeth&rsquo;s mango grove. This is where Dr Prasad lived till his death in 1963. True, once it became clear that her retirement home would have deprived war widows, Ms Patil did forego the land.

Home run

Not more than a year and half ago, it was common to hear Partha Chatterjee (pictured), then leader of the Opposition led by the Trinamool Congress, wax eloquent about how the Tata Nano Singur deal with the Left Front government was being kept secret from the public as a ruse to cover-up corruption. The public had a right to know the details of the deal, he argued. So, it came as something of a surprise when a smiling Chatterjee, now in power as commerce &amp; industry and information technology minister, told reporters that business is secret, and it was impossible to make everything public. He said this is in reply to a question on what concessions the state government would give Wipro and Infosys for their campuses. Parivartan, it seems, has come to Trinamool Congress a lot more than it has to West Bengal.

Trinamool's secret service

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives in Myanmar on May 28, it will be the first visit by a head of India&rsquo;s government to its neighbour in a quarter of a century. This long gap was an important part of the international effort to exert pressure on the military junta, which has ruled Myanmar for decades, to end its stranglehold over the country&rsquo;s polity and society &mdash; a dominance that, while not over, appears to have slackened in recent years.

Myanmar's moment

I am 27 and run my own travel agency. I am out of India most of the time and frequent five to six countries almost every month.

Life Insurance: V Philip

The prices of petroleum products have a capacity to spark a political firestorm that is matched only by those of onions. Indira Gandhi raised fuel prices sharply in the wake of the first oil shock in 1973 and ignited an agitation that blossomed into the JP movement &mdash; which eventually grew enough to challenge the government. Rajiv Gandhi had a honeymoon first year in office, in 1985; but as soon as he raised fuel prices in January 1986, there were howls of protest &mdash; and, made of less stern stuff than his mother, he quickly rolled back prices. This history has been repeated several times since: when oil prices went up at the time of the first Gulf war, V P Singh as prime minister kept dithering over a price hike till the country was on the brink of a foreign exchange crisis.

Right call, wrong handling

Apropos the edit &ldquo;SBI turns around&rdquo; (May 31), the bank&rsquo;s performance smacks of the industry practice of window dressing accounts. You state in the edit that provisioning was made not only in terms of regulatory requirements, but also to save on income tax. What was the need to make provisions higher than the stipulated requirements? Unfortunately, the accounting norms in the banking industry allow participants to play with data to suit the top management&rsquo;s convenience without attracting penal provisions either from the banking or accounting regulator. This is perhaps the only industry that allows the processing of data in favour of the management.

Letters: Window dressing again?

The brutal increase in petrol price by Rs 7.50 per litre will badly affect all companies that pay petrol or diesel allowances to its employees. A majority of the employees who get petrol or diesel allowances submit bogus bills. Moreover, this allowance is not taxed. To curb the malpractice of claiming bogus fuel expenses, this allowance should be included in the income of the employee. This will increase the tax revenue and also bring down fuel consumption.

Letters: ...but not for companies

The sharp increase in petrol prices comes as a blessing in disguise. Indian cities have seen an alarming increase in vehicular traffic that has resulted in traffic jams, parking woes and so on. A car is no more a luxury and has become a need for most people. But our roads cannot take on the increase in the number of cars. So, the government&rsquo;s policy to tackle this problem should be to go on increasing petrol and diesel prices till it makes more economic sense for people to use public transport. This would also put pressure on the government to improve the public transport system.

Letters: Fuel price hike is a blessing

Apropos the article &ldquo;What is India&rsquo;s real growth potential?&rdquo; (May 23), Arvind Subramanian, while acknowledging that he and Dani Rodrik had grossly underestimated India&rsquo;s growth potential in 2004, goes on to repeat the same mistake. Far from skilled labour being in short supply in India, its availability is increasing and skill levels are improving every day &mdash; a trend that will continue for many decades. Governance has always been very poor in post-Independence India, but it is now beginning to improve slowly. The fact that the poor are eating more presents an immense opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs to boost supply and rake in profits. This will lead to faster growth despite inflation. Subramanian acknowledges that India (unlike China) has not reversed the fundamental course of market-based reforms.

Business Standard

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Page 886 - Business Standard

Buy mode

Airport retail

Student’s corner

Letters: A good jolt

Delhi Budget door ast?

Accompanied baggage

2G fallout

No alternative

Undue benefits in aviation

Torrents of trouble

'UPA government lurching from crisis to crisis'

Age-old issue

Home run

Trinamool's secret service

Myanmar's moment

Life Insurance: V Philip

Right call, wrong handling

Letters: Window dressing again?

Letters: ...but not for companies

Letters: Fuel price hike is a blessing