Shortage of homes The shortage of dwellings in urban India is estimated to be 26.5 million units, says the 11th five-year Plan which covers the 2007-12 period. The poor form 90% of this shortage.One in every four Indians living in cities lives in a slum, say data from the ministry of housing and poverty alleviation and the UN.

A roof over every head

Business Standard

Total value of foreign institutional investor (FII) investment in 1,502 Indian companies stood at Rs 9,30,184 crore as of quarter ended March 30, 2012, data compiled by BS Research Bureau showed. This accounted for 14.89 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all the companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

FII share in total market cap rising

This refers to your edit &ldquo;Beginning the clean-up&rdquo; (May 8). The postponement of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) for a year and the removal of TDS on property sales underline the fact that the Budget was drafted without careful consideration. So, Pranab Mukherjee has done well to announce the rollback of some of the contentious proposals in the Budget and this will go a long way in boosting market sentiment.

Letters: FM saves the day

The rollbacks are retrograde and based on unsound financial principles. The government is merely capitulating to the jewellers&rsquo; lobby and is trying to please foreign institutional investors (FIIs) &mdash; both of which thrive on &ldquo;unaccounted&rdquo; money and speculative practices. The stock market index does not reflect overall economic growth. FIIs are free to bring in and take out money and as such do not add to real growth. Though domestic corporations and individuals are flush with investible funds, the Budget has done little to attract local investors. It may not be a sheer coincidence that the announcement of the rollbacks coincided with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton&rsquo;s official visit.

Letters: ...but bows to market

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is vocal about being a party with a difference, is currently facing considerable internal rifts within its senior ranks, whether in Karnataka, Maharashtra or Rajasthan. So much so that one former Maharashtra legislator, an RSS-turned BJP leader, contemptuously described the party as an &ldquo;SMS party&rdquo; for senior leaders&rsquo; inability to provide coherent leadership or strategy. The analogy was simple: SMSes are deleted or overlooked by the recipient, she said, and that is what will happen to the party if senior leaders, including former Union and state ministers, did not change their style of functioning.

India's 'SMS' party

When the finance ministry had first sought an exemption for banks from the ambit of the Competition Act, 2002 from the ministry of corporate affairs in September 2009, the proposal was opposed by then Corporate Affairs Secretary D K Mittal. Now that Mittal is the Financial Services Secretary, he is rooting for the exemption. As the saying goes, &ldquo;one stands where one sits&rdquo;.

Inside out 

Results this weekend from electoral contests in Europe are likely to reshape the European Union&rsquo;s approach to the crisis in which it finds itself. In France, 17 years of rightist domination ended; Fran&ccedil;ois Hollande will be the first Socialist occupant of the Elysee Palace since Francois Mitterand. And, Greece&rsquo;s austerity-hit electorate handed out a confused and angry mandate. Greece&rsquo;s mainstream parties, which had agreed on a sensible set of proposals, had their share of votes reduced by two-thirds; extremists of the left and the right have benefited on the back of ugly anti-German and anti-immigrant rhetoric. It looks more likely than ever that Greece will be forced to leave the single currency, even though an overwhelming majority of Greeks want to stay in it.

Rebalancing strategy

Manmohan Singh&rsquo;s name has not figured yet in all the discussions on the presidential election. Electing him to the highest post in the land will provide him with a logical and smooth transition to occupy the post of a rubber-stamp president. Since Pranab Mukherjee cannot be spared from the government, it would be appropriate to make him prime minister. As a matter of strategy, Rahul Gandhi should wait till the next election to occupy the post. If he becomes the prime minister now and the Congress loses, then his appeal to the masses will be questioned. Otherwise, the party cadres may be blamed for not following up the good work of Gandhi to ensure victory. On the other hand, if the party wins he can take the credit. However, the ideal arrangement in the interest of the nation would be to have Abdul Kalam as president and Meira Kumar as vice-president.

Letters: PM as president?

Ever since she returned to India, actor Madhuri Dixit has been in demand for ad campaigns and brand ambassadorships, the latest being Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC). State-run MTDC has launched an ambitious plan to position Maharashtra as a leading global tourist attraction. Dikshit was considered a good fit for the campaign, being a Marathi mulgi (Maharashtrian lady) and one of Bollywood&rsquo;s most popular stars. But the effort failed, one reason being her steep Rs 10-crore fee, the other stringent provisions in the agreement to be signed with MTDC. A reportedly heartbroken state tourism minister and MTDC Chairman Chhagan Bhujbal, thus, was forced to drop the idea.

Cast out

The government&rsquo;s notice sent last week to Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), disallowing it cost recovery of about $1 billion (Rs 5,300 crore) for the company&rsquo;s investment in the KG-D6 offshore gas field it operates, will in all probability set off a prolonged legal dispute. The government&rsquo;s argument is that RIL should not be allowed to recover a part of its investment from its overall revenue as it has not drilled the committed number of wells, resulting in a decline in the gas field&rsquo;s output. Both the government and the Comptroller and Auditor General see this as a violation of RIL&rsquo;s contractual obligations, especially given gas production from the field is falling. The government has also gone strictly by the production sharing contract (PSC) in conjunction with the field development plan. RIL has disputed this argument. Even as early as November 2011, it anticipated the government move and filed an arbitration notice.

Interpreting the law

A hopeful start to 2012 has been belied. The West is slipping back into recession, as Table 1 shows. The US and Germany remain strong, but many other powerhouses &mdash; even the UK &mdash; have begun to contract. And, as Table 2 makes clear, there is little hope for a recovery soon. The Purchasing Managers&rsquo; Index (PMI) for the euro zone, for example, are solidly below 50 for both manufacturing and services &mdash; even for German manufacturing.

StatsGuru: 05-May-2012

In a future India, urban neighbourhoods might well be racked by internecine battles over water. The main reason to fear this dystopia is the astonishing rates at which groundwater is being sucked up from below the earth in this country. Groundwater finds a home in natural aquifers, layers of rock, clay and sand far underground. For thousands of years, Indians have harvested these reservoirs and replenished them. That has now stopped, and with tragic consequences. Satellite images provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration a few years ago showed how bad the problem was: Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana showed a-foot-a-year decline between 2002 and 2008, double the capacity of India&rsquo;s largest surface water reservoir. The World Bank has said that 60 per cent of the country&rsquo;s aquifers will be in &ldquo;critical&rdquo; condition by 2025; 29 per cent are already &ldquo;semi-critical&rdquo;.

India's vanishing aquifers

The Budget announcement that overseas acquisitions involving assets in India would be taxed retrospectively was by no means a unanimous one within government. The buzz on Raisina Hill is that the issue was discussed at a pre-Budget meeting among ministers in the prime minister&rsquo;s office at which it was suggested that Vodafone should perhaps be outside the ambit of the amendment since the Supreme Court had ruled in its favour. At this, the finance minister reportedly closed the file and said, &ldquo;I have thought it through.&rdquo; The Budget announcement that followed indicated where his mind lay.

Call drop

At the launch of an English newspaper in Chhattisgarh&rsquo;s capital city, BJP Leader Lal Krishna Advani used the occasion to vent his ire on the Congress. Naturally, BJP acolytes in the audience enjoyed this but Advani&rsquo;s speech created many awkward moments for Ajit Jogi, the sole Congress representative present. When Advani talked about the media, Jogi often clapped in appreciation. But when he said the country&rsquo;s bright future depended only on the BJP, Jogi looked the other way even as saffron-brigade leaders present in the hall were loudly appreciative. And when Advani talked about the 1975 Emergency and castigated Congress leaders for what he called suppressing the freedom of the press, Jogi conspicuously feigned disinterest. Interested or uninterested, however, Jogi had to hear out what Advani had to say since he was a guest at the event.

Jogi's dilemma

The government may be taking all sorts of ineffectual decisions to counter accusations of policy paralysis, but the bureaucrats who are responsible for the files know better. Given the atmosphere of distrust that has developed between politicians and bureaucrats, especially after the 2G licensing scam, one government secretary quipped, &ldquo;Civil servants are watching their backs, not the files.

Backspace

It has become clear that many things were wrong with the taxation proposals made in the 2012-13 Budget. In attempting to fix the fiscal deficit, the government decided it was necessary to increase the tax base. However, it made the elementary mistake of assigning excessive discretion to tax assessment authorities across the board; it seemed the Budget had not been drafted with any opinions but those of tax bureaucrats in mind.

Beginning the clean-up

It was refreshing to read Sunanda K Datta-Ray&rsquo;s column &ldquo;The changing face of bureaucracy&rdquo; (Where Money Talks, May 5) in these times of babu-bashing. An increasing number of civil servants, like Alex Paul, are working hard to develop the troubled and backward regions of India. While I was working in a large state-owned financial institution in the Telengana region in the early eighties, I was pleasantly surprised to meet one such young civil servant who was so interested in development work that he wanted our field force &ndash; which works at the grassroots &ndash; to bring to his notice the facilities people needed. The prime minister did well to address officials on Civil Services Day, urging them to carry forward with their tasks without fear of penalties.

Letters: In praise of bureaucrats

This refers to the interview with Yogesh Agarwal &ldquo;PFRDA is addressing marketing and distribution issues&rdquo; (May 6). The New Pension System (NPS) has some structural and technical flaws that are responsible for its tardy progress and equating these to &ldquo;marketing and distribution&rdquo; issues would be over-simplifying the real problem. There&rsquo;s a need to take some timely corrective measures to make the product &ldquo;user-friendly&rdquo; and bring it on a par with other financial products in the market.

Letters: Making NPS work

This refers to Nilanjana S Roy&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Return of Mein Kampf&rdquo; (Speaking Volumes, April 30). Human behaviour is complex and not always easy to comprehend. So, responses to acts of violence may differ from one individual to the other and the continuing fascination with Hitler, his life and his autobiography is just a testament to this fact. In societies across the world, there are people, even well-educated people, who justify violence. That is why we come across many people who admire Hitler and the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. An ideology that condones acts of individual or mob violence is a threat to any civil and democratic society.

Letters: Justifying violence

My son works abroad. He sends me Rs 30,000 every month.

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