Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) poured $8.12 billion into Indian shares between January 16 and March 15. Financial stocks got 41.20 per cent of these inflows, followed by IT (12.4 per cent) and oil, gas &amp; petrochemicals (8.6 per cent). Defensive stocks received only modest flows during that period. However, things have changed since then. FIIs have net-bought just $141.15 million between March 16 and April 30 and investors have again turned to defensive counters.

Tracking FII flows

Business Standard

Yoga guru Ramdev is well known for his crusade against multinationals, which even prompted his firm Patanjali Ayurved Ltd to come up with cheap offerings that are pitched against multinational products. At a recent promotional event for the company in Kolkata, his close aide Acharya Balkrishna also professed the virtues of being &ldquo;anti-multinational,&rdquo; urging followers to embrace swadeshi products. When someone asked him why he was batting for swadeshi when he owned a Jaguar Land Rover, Balkrishna said, &ldquo;You may not know. For your kind information, Jaguar is owned by Tata, a swadeshi firm. It&rsquo;s an acquired swadeshi.

Jaguar, acquired swadeshi

Ownership of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in India&rsquo;s top 75 companies rose to 20.4 per cent in the quarter ended March 31 2012 from 19.5 per cent in the quarter ended December 31, 2011, according to Morgan Stanley. During the same period, promoters&rsquo; stake in these firms fell to 53.1 per cent from 54 per cent.

FIIs buy, promoters sell 

Consider these unsavoury facts. Nearly half of all deaths due to measles occur in India. While overall mortality due to this scourge fell between 2000 and 2010 by 74 per cent worldwide, the decline in India was a mere 26 per cent. While, globally, 85 per cent children received protection against measles through routine vaccination, in India this coverage has been far lower, at less than 75 per cent. Overall, India&rsquo;s record in measles control is poorer than Africa&rsquo;s. Given that these are the findings of a research study carried out by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in collaboration with a couple of health-related think tanks and published in the foremost medical journal,&nbsp;The Lancet, they merit serious attention. On the whole, this is a sad expos&eacute; of the state of India&rsquo;s public health services, especially the Universal Immunisation Programme.

Delaying vaccination

In April, the S&amp;P 500, a capitalisation-weighted index of the largest companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on Nasdaq, registered its first monthly decline this year. This comes after it posted a four-year high earlier that month, at the height of optimism that the global economy was recovering. Since then, observers and investors have been battered by bad news and gloomy data. The US government released data that personal spending rose only 0.3 per cent in March, lower than expected; another widely scrutinised index, of manufacturing activity in the Midwest, fell in April from the previous month. All eyes are on Friday&rsquo;s report on the number of new US jobs created last month; March saw a significant slowdown from the high numbers posted between December and February.

The North Atlantic crisis

Under attack from the Opposition on various issues, the Congress is going all out to ensure that Cabinet ministers from the party are present in Parliament to defend its policies. So much so that the parliamentary affairs ministry has prepared a roster of Congress ministers who have to attend both Houses for two-hour blocks, to ensure that at least two party ministers are present at any given time during the session. It does not end there; Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal also checks whether the roster was followed or not.

Attendance register

Hindustan Unilever, the country&rsquo;s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, has reported 20.4 per cent growth in its consolidated sales for the quarter ended March 31. Of this, 9.6 per cent came from volume growth, and the rest from price increases. For Dabur, which gets 70 per cent of its business from India and the rest from exports, consolidated sales for the quarter were up 23 per cent; more than half of that, 12.4 per cent, came from higher volumes.

They're still spending

For more than 40 years, ever since he took over The Sun, Australian-American businessman Rupert Murdoch&rsquo;s media empire has expanded almost unchecked. To all appearances, he is the quintessential modern media mogul, who can make and break governments, set the public agenda, and buy storied newspapers almost at a whim.

The setting Sun

In my view established B-schools should focus on their own performance to maintain their standards. Already we have bulk of colleges, but only a few are good. Colleges should make their own efforts to excel in the fields.

Student's corner

The allure for gold will always remain, considering continuing global uncertainties. Hence, allocating a small part of your portfolio to bullion is advisable.

Investing: Paras Adenwala

Global markets continue to be unsettled and challenged in terms of economic growth, particularly in Europe and, to some extent, in the United States. In the developed part of the world, we are seeing a lot of stress. The UK, for instance, has gone into recession. So has Spain. There are challenges. In the developing part of the world, there is still growth.

There's less growth, but more inflation: Harish Manwani

Even as Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar's name is doing the rounds as a possible candidate for chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), some other names have also come up as prominent contenders for the post in the past few days. Indu Liberhan, who retired as Secretary (Defence Finance) two years ago, is one such name. The current Trai chief J S Sarma's term is slated to end in the middle of this month, in the middle of significant developments in the telecom sector. Liberhan, who has held senior positions in many ministries including finance, was also a principal advisor at Trai. She was among the long list of bureaucrats and industry veterans interviewed by a selection committee in early April. The committee comprised Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, Principal Secretary at PMO Pulok Chatterji, Advisor to Prime Minister Sam Pitroda, Secretary at Department of Personnel and Training PK Misra and Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar.

Trai trail

Apropos the edit &ldquo;Milking progress&rdquo; (April 25), the allocation of Rs 17,300 crore for the National Dairy Plan will certainly boost milk production. The decrease in milk production vis-&agrave;-vis the increase in demand is a serious cause for concern. Recently, most milk supplying companies like Mother Dairy, Amul, Vita, Param, Verka, Parag and so on raised milk prices. But this increase has neither benefited producers nor consumers. Suppliers buy milk at Rs 18 to Rs 24 a litre from producers and sell it at Rs 40 a litre after due processing. On the other hand, milk producers &ndash; who bear the brunt of the rising cost of fodder and maintaining cattle &ndash; hardly make profits. Moreover, it is the milk suppliers who gain with every price revision. India definitely needs another white revolution and that can only be achieved by enhancing research and development and helping milk producers.

Letters: Another white revolution

The government and Vodafone may disagree on the British telecom company&rsquo;s liability to pay tax in India, but the two sides recently showed how they think alike on some issues. After a meeting between Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday, both sides remained resolutely tightlipped on what exactly transpired there. Everyone from Colao to Mukherjee to Finance Secretary R S Gujral and other officials in the ministry gave a verbatim quote: &ldquo;Vodafone presented its case.

Close up

This refers to the report &ldquo;Prez polls: Pranab&rsquo;s name doing the rounds&rdquo; (May 1). The president of India should not be elected on narrow considerations of caste, community, region, religion and gender. Neither should he or she be elected on the basis of any affiliation to a political party. The presidential nominee should have a vision for the nation&rsquo;s future and the ability to maintain the impartiality and dignity of the august office. Besides being a top scientist, A P J Abdul Kalam is a humanitarian and an educationist who is capable of inspiring the nation. The Congress had earlier denied Kalam a second stint as the president; perhaps it should correct its past mistake by supporting his candidature this time.

Letters: Kalam's the right choice

This refers to the Chinese Whisper item on Kaushik Basu getting his &ldquo;freedom of expression&rdquo; back once he returns to Cornell after his tenure at the finance ministry (&ldquo;Talkie after talk,&rdquo; May 1). It seems to me that economists in India already enjoy enough freedom of expression. We hear almost every economist make predictions about the GDP growth rate and inflation and the time period within which it would ease. We often hear them say there&rsquo;s a need to cut deficit and that a high subsidy bill is the biggest challenge and so on. Indeed, our economists also have complete freedom of expression when it comes to estimating the number of poor in our country &mdash; some say 77 per cent are poor, others say 55 per cent and yet others make estimations ranging from 41 per cent to 27 per cent. They also seem to be fond of writing joint letters to the prime minister, expressing their views on various issues.

Letters: Too much freedom

President Pratibha Patil has drawn media flak for having taken her two grandchildren on a nine-day official tour of Seychelles and South Africa. The news comes on the heels of recent media reports that Patil had outdone her predecessors by runing up a travel bill of Rs 205 crore.

Is the media being unfair on President Pratibha Patil's foreign trips?

The government&rsquo;s flip-flops on cotton exports have turned full circle, but have not yet, perhaps, fully ceased. In a span of a few weeks, the government has switched positions from a total ban on cotton exports, to a partial easing of the curbs allowing the shipment of cotton already registered for export, to suspension of fresh registrations, and finally to revoking the bar on exports as well as on fresh export registrations.

Flip-flops on cotton 

What Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the inauguration of the nine-million-tonne Guru Gobind Singh Refinery at Bathinda last week provides further proof, if any were needed, that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government continues to suffer from policy paralysis.

Get real on reforms

Finance ministry officials are puzzled. Before the Budget was tabled in Parliament on March 16, the government was under attack from the Opposition for not being tough enough when it came to tackling black money. In the Budget, the finance ministry proposed several measures to do just that but it still came under attack, though from a different quarter &mdash; industry and investors. Finance ministry officials can understand this but were unable to figure out why the same journalists who were criticising the government for not doing enough were now critical of the stringent actions prescribed in the Budget.

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