Pointing towards muted demand, residential property prices grew in just 5 of the 15 major cities in the January to March quarter sequentially, while the rest showed a decline in prices, according to the National Housing Bank's Residex. Jaipur topped the list, showing a rise in prices by 25 per cent, followed by Hyderabad and Chennai showing a rise by 8.8 per cent and 2.7 per cent, respectively. Kochi, Bangalore and Patna witnessed significant corrections.

Mixed growth for realty

Business Standard

Rrishi Raote&rsquo;s piece &ldquo;Long story short&rdquo; (Eye Culture, May 19) was an interesting read. Being a book reviewer myself, I liked the author&rsquo;s erudite enquiry into what the ideal length for a book review should be. I&rsquo;d like to add the point here that when reading most of the standard book reviews in newspapers, one often gets the sense that the reviewer has written it without going through the book completely and thoroughly.

Letters: Review without a read

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has asked life insurers to follow a standard format for application forms, also known as proposal form. The intent is to curb misselling of products and make buyers aware of what they are buying. Once these changes are rolled out, buyers will be required to give more information about their lifestyle and needs. The regulator has asked insurers to include two categories &mdash; customer needs and recommendations .

Another step to curb misselling of insurance, albeit with lacunae

Should the government reduce taxes on petroleum products?

The government&rsquo;s approach to controlling India&rsquo;s black money economy, as outlined in the White Paper on the issue tabled in Parliament on Monday, is misguided. Central to the suggestions that are immediately operable is a scheme similar to past voluntary disclosures of income, which the White Paper says can be a &ldquo;one-time option&rdquo; to encourage Indians to bring back illicit money stashed abroad. Of course, as the Paper itself mentions while introducing the possibility, such schemes have often been tried before &mdash; meaning that it is not to be viewed as credibly being a &ldquo;one-time&rdquo; option. This actually sets up perverse incentives for tax evaders. It might help the government manage India&rsquo;s troubled external balances, but it is not a genuine solution to the problem. A related error in judgement is visible in the proposal that tax immunity be extended towards those with gold holdings, if they come forward to make deposits.

Black into white

The second UPA government is observing its third anniversary. The second of those three years saw rampant and large-scale corruption emerge as a hot-button issue. The third and latest year has been disastrous for the economy. So the two principal attributes credited to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh &ndash; as a man of probity and as the author of economic reforms &ndash; have ceased to be political assets for the Congress party and the government. Those favourably inclined to the prime minister have been advising him for the past many months to get down to business. Despite the occasional promises made about action being forthcoming, what has been in evidence is more drift. And so the government gives every impression of being rudderless, limp and without energy or ideas, at a time when the Congress faces severe challenges in retaining popular support in key states across the country. The economy meanwhile is in danger of slipping from distress into crisis.

Time for change

I hold shares of Infosys. But, given the guidance this time, I am losing hope.

Investing: Paras Adenwala

The Indian rupee sank to a new all-time low, and may continue its free fall in the coming days. However, the factors responsible for the fall in the rupee are mostly exogenous. Key among these is the increased demand for dollars against most major currencies owing to the euro-zone crisis. Though the Indian economy opened its doors to the global market in 1991, we have failed to include some vital precautionary measures in our policy.

Letters: Saving the rupee

Senior investment bankers have long cultivated an impression that they&rsquo;re always on the move, and thus hard to get hold of. One of the biggest signs of the policy slowdown and general bearish sentiment, however, seems to be a change in that attitude. With no big M&amp;As or significant IPOs anywhere on the horizon, one such banker was recently overheard saying that &ldquo;busy&rdquo; is the last word that could be associated with him, or his fraternity at this point. UPA-II&rsquo;s policy holiday seems to mean that a lot of people are taking extended vacations.

I-banker holidays

Book stores, both brick &amp; mortar and online, clearly don&rsquo;t want to get drawn into the latest cartoon controversy. The response from some of the leading chains, on whether the sale of Shankar&rsquo;s books had been affected by the recent furore over his Nehru and Ambedkar cartoons drawn in 1949, was a combination of &ldquo;no comment&rdquo;, &ldquo;no enquiry&rdquo; and &ldquo;no stock&rdquo;. The usually co-operative online book retailer, Flipkart, refused to share any data or even indicative information on the matter. Another leading nationwide book chain, Landmark, which operates both online and offline stores, said it had not noticed any surge in demand or enquiry for Shankar&rsquo;s books after the recent controversy.

Invisible Shankar

AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi was in Chhattisgarh on a day-long visit on Friday. And, as is considered customary on such occasions in the Congress, the party&rsquo;s local leaders swung into action, papering the route planned for Mr Gandhi&rsquo;s convoy with banners and posters that featured their photographs prominently, along, of course, with that of the Congress&rsquo; heir-apparent. So much so that the party&rsquo;s senior leaders apparently left no room anywhere for those associated with the Youth Congress &mdash; taking over every hoarding and wall on the way. Naturally, the Youth Congress&rsquo; leaders &ndash; who are, after all, Mr Gandhi&rsquo;s special province &ndash; couldn&rsquo;t pass up the chance to bring their faces to his attention. They were left with no alternative but to affix posters with their photographs to sewer pipes lying near the main stadium. The pipes had been left there by the municipal corporation, waiting to be used in some project.

Publicity shunt

This refers to the report &ldquo;300% jump in gold export industry questions data&rdquo; (May 13). What is more disturbing than the possible discrepancy in the export figures for gold is our continual need to import gold despite a handsome domestic stock of over 18,000 tonnes. This is a direct draft on our precious forex funds. It is unfortunate that the government has made no perceivable effort to discourage the accumulation of &ldquo;ornament gold&rdquo; in households, which is partly responsible for financial loss in middle-class families and, to some extent, dowry and security problems.

Letters: Fool's gold

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s debt-ridden government&rsquo;s advertising spree is just the start of its publicity efforts on its first anniversary. The chief minister has also granted several interviews. While her walkout from CNN-IBN&rsquo;s question-and-answer session was widely noticed, some of her statements to foreign newspapers have raised eyebrows, too. She told The Washington Post, for example, that the CPM was plotting with the Maoists and Pakistan&rsquo;s ISI to discredit and kill her &mdash; financed by bankrupt North Korea, Venezuela and, most puzzlingly of all, Hungary. Some people were also startled when she said recently that she had started working on Bengal&rsquo;s development plans two years before the Assembly elections in which the Trinamool Congress routed the Left Front. Of course, that might explain why the government advertisements took credit for many investments lined up in the years she took power.

Mamata and Hungary

In April 2010, the government notified a scheme of free education for all children up to 14, but critics say the proposal does not address the issue of education quality.

The UPA's performance record

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power for the second time on 22 May 2009. It was a sharper, stronger UPA, with 61 more MPs than before, minus the crutches of the Left parties that had caused the government so much grief in its first term. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister for the second time, put together his 78-member team of young and some old faces, in one week, suggesting the UPA would hit the ground running.

Past imperfect, future uncertain

The HRD minister&rsquo;s craven acquiescence to politicians who, as usual, indulged in caste politics by whipping up emotions over a 60-year-old cartoon was surprising (&ldquo;Open to ridicule,&rdquo; May 13). It was even more disturbing to see parliamentarians across party lines take umbrage at the cartoon. Why should B R Ambedkar, who celebrated the &ldquo;Day of Deliverance&rdquo; alongside Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1939, be handled with kid gloves by political commentators and cartoonists when even Mahatma Gandhi doesn&rsquo;t enjoy such immunity? The fact is that Ambedkar&rsquo;s role in writing our Constitution has been exaggerated over the years. If at all the cartoon should be removed from textbooks, it should be for erroneously depicting Ambedkar as the driving force behind the drafting of our Constitution.

Letters: Comic farce

Most commentary on the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon has focused on how Indian society in general and our policymakers in particular are becoming more intolerant. Freedom of expression is undoubtedly a cherished ideal bequeathed to us by the framers of the Constitution, but that freedom cannot exist in a vacuum. Shankar wanted to portray Jawaharlal Nehru&rsquo;s frustration at the slow pace of the Constituent Assembly proceedings. But his portrayal of Nehru wielding a whip on B R Ambedkar was in extremely bad taste. It is not about our inability to spot humour in the cartoon strip. If Nehru and Ambedkar were politicians of the same stripe, the cartoon would have merely been amusing. But the fact that Nehru was an upper-caste man and Ambedkar a Dalit cannot be overlooked. The oppression of Dalits has historically assumed a violent form in our country and, even today, in spite of the rise of a fierce Dalit identity, biases against Dalits continue.

Letters: ...and drawing the line

The continuing speculation that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is the frontrunner in the race for Rashtrapati Bhavan seeped into the atmosphere of Parliament, as it eagerly awaited his reply to the debate on the Finance Bill, 2012, in both Houses. Not for a long time has a finance minister&rsquo;s reply been so keenly watched. More than one observer says that the senior politician excelled himself in his reply, holding the House enthralled and even his critics charmed with his wit, sense of history and pragmatism; the Finance Bill was passed without a demur. Afterwards, politicians cutting across party lines made a beeline for the treasury benches to congratulate him. As one senior leader put it, &ldquo;It seemed more like a farewell speech, possibly the last Budget he steered, before he makes the much-talked about move into Rashtrapati Bhavan, and everyone present wanted to shake his hand.

Farewell Budget?

In the next few weeks, the central government&rsquo;s entire food and agriculture machinery will be headed by new incumbents. It appears to be a straightforward coincidence, but officials in the ministry said that it has seldom happened that all the three main officers in the major ministry retire in such short span of time. These three are Agriculture Secretary P K Basu, Food Secretary B C Gupta, and Animal Husbandry Secretary Surya Gangadharan. While Messrs Basu and Gupta will retire at the end of May, Mr Gangadharan will leave office next month. Mr Gupta&rsquo;s tenure as food secretary was dominated by the debates over the UPA&rsquo;s controversial Food Security Bill. Mr Basu in agriculture is generally assigned a great deal of the credit for the extension of the productivity gains of the Green Revolution to eastern India.

A new crop

This refers to your edit &ldquo;Freedom to advertise&rdquo; (May 17). Your opposition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) capping the duration of advertisements in television channels is disappointing, since it ignores the viewer&rsquo;s woes. Just as you find Trai&rsquo;s restrictions on TV ads intolerable, viewers find the constant bombardment of commercials during programmes insufferable. A 30-minute news bulletin or entertainment serial has at least four ad-breaks of two to three minutes each. These inordinately long breaks cause so much irritation that, indeed, one is forced to switch off the television. Trai&rsquo;s restrictions, thus, come as a welcome relief for most viewers. It must not be forgotten that viewers pay for content and not for advertisements.

Business Standard

Business Standard

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