Delhi International Airport Ltd or DIAL, operated by GMR Infrastructure, launched its prestigious T3 terminal in July 2010. A company-mandated study of DIAL by NCAER on the economic benefits of airports brings out how the revenue mix of the airport has changed, moving from aeronautical revenue (airline landing fees and passenger fees) to non-aeronautical services.

Changing face of the Delhi Airport

Business Standard

From raising concern over rising public debt to exposing financial irregularities in government-run schemes, the Comptroller and Auditor General&rsquo;s audit reports on various state governments are gaining much more attention than they ever did.

Under CAG lens

In the spirit of national interest, the government is right to help the energy sector but what about corporate governance?
Richard Rekhy
Head of advisory, KPMG
&ldquo;When the PSU is a near-monopoly, any standard of governance will justify a directive in national interest &mdash; this is not interference but basic governance&rdquo;
We see a vibrant public sector in India today, one that has come out with flying colours during the worst phase of the credit crisis on several fronts ranging

Is the presidential directive to Coal India justified?

In the past year, a tsunami of intellectual property (IP) lawsuits has meant that the battle for market share in the personal technology space has shifted to the courts. Apple and Samsung are perhaps the most high-profile opponents. The two companies are in face-offs across at least 10 national jurisdictions, where they have sued and counter-sued each other for diverse patent violations. At last count, there were over 30 cases involving these two companies.

The era of patent wars

Everybody loves long holidays &mdash; except those who are plugged into the global economy, it appears. In a curious case, All India Association of Industries issued a press release complaining about the series of off-days last week. The association actually issued a statement to stage its protest against what it called &ldquo;a spate of holidays&rdquo;. Its grudge: the holidays have not just caused a cumulative loss and crippled financial transactions, exporters were also unable to meet their delivery schedules. It ended with the dire warning that the government will not be able to meet the $300 billion export target for 2011-12 as a result.

No-so-happy holidays

As far as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is concerned, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports about the Centre are factual, but not so when they refer to states ruled by the party. So, the BJP took the CAG&rsquo;s report on the losses to the central exchequer as a result of telecom spectrum allocation as gospel. But in mineral-rich Chhattisgarh, when a CAG report underlined a serious irregularity and huge financial loss in the allotment of coal mines in Bhatgaon, BJP leaders swung into action to denigrate it. Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation (CMDC) Chairman (which happens to be a political post) Gourishankar Agrawal hurriedly convened a press meet to term the CAG report &ldquo;hypothetical&rdquo; and &ldquo;baseless&rdquo;. Asked why the BJP was pointing fingers at the CAG report in Chhattisgarh when it trusted the government auditor&rsquo;s reports in Delhi.

BJP`s CAG volte-face 

A corruption-wary UPA government is leaving nothing to chance as far as probity in public life is concerned. In a recent notification on export, the government said the existing policy of distribution of export quotas based on a three-year average will be continued for the sake of &ldquo;equity and transparency&rdquo;, discarding a demand for adopting the &ldquo;first come, first serve&rdquo; (FCFS) policy for the allocation of quotas. The no-change policy may be justified, especially given the current stigma attached to FCFS, but the emphasis on &ldquo;equity and transparency&rdquo; has raised some eyebrows.

UPA: Once bitten, very shy

This refers to the column &ldquo;Comptroller &amp; Activist General?&rdquo;(Raisina Hill, April 10). The active role of the CAG can be traced to the recent incumbents, some of whom are &ldquo;activists&rdquo;. Like most government offices, the senior-most officers in the CAG&rsquo;s office become eligible for CAG&rsquo;s post (by virtue of seniority) and so they have the opportunity of becoming important (or controversial) at the fag end of their career. Till 2007, the incumbents donned quite a traditional role and have never been controversial. During the past five years, the incumbents have toed an aggressive line and have, thus, hogged the media limelight. The media, too, took advantage of the exaggerated versions of the CAG&rsquo;s reports. Just one fact is sufficient to confirm this point. The loss incurred by the exchequer due to the 2G spectrum auctions as reported by the CAG has been contested in several circles. And nobody till date knows the actual loss.

Letters: The CAG's remit

This refers to the edit &ldquo;The left marks time&rdquo; (April 9). Sitaram Yechury&rsquo;s &ldquo;sudden&rdquo; loss of faith in parliamentary democracy is surprising. The &ldquo;illusion&rdquo; of parliamentary democracy is what is thriving in many advanced countries like the UK and the US. It is proven not to be 100 per cent foolproof but the least mistake-prone. Not all of us are too happy with parliamentary democracy. Yet, it remains the least bad way of governing a nation, to quote Winston Churchill. After the Left losing in Kerala and West Bengal, it is no wonder that Yechury has &ldquo;lost&rdquo; faith in this system. It would be appropriate if he could spell out what better system he has to suggest as an alternative to parliamentary politics.

Letters: Have faith, comrades

Your edit &ldquo;More power to the tax man&rdquo; (April 10) is timely and rightly asserts that the Budget&rsquo;s move towards excessive discretion is dangerous and must be reversed. It is unfortunate that the government has not learnt its lesson. It was precisely discretionary powers that perpetuated scams and corruption &mdash; two prime reasons for which the government has come under a lot of flak. The amendment to the income tax rules with retrospective effect has given governance a bad name and giving discretionary powers to the tax man will land the government in more trouble. Then there is the confusion on how the General Anti-Avoidance Rules will be applied. At a time when we are facing a crisis on account of increasing fiscal deficit and current account deficit and need FDI, it is unwise to subject domestic and foreign investors to uncertainty.

Letters: When will we learn?

It is heartening to see reports of the income tax (I-T) department simplifying the procedure for filing I-T returns electronically (&ldquo;E-filing taxpayers won&rsquo;t have to acquire a digital signature,&rdquo; April 10). But many of the assessees who e-filed I-T returns have been heard complaining that tax refunds due have not been paid. Instead the assessees are informed that the refund is adjusted and no details of this are furnished. This may be owing to some programming error that requires to be corrected immediately or else the central processing system may fail.

Letters: No returns

Ajai Shukla provides an objective assessment of the fallout of the movement of two units of the army to the National Capital Region on January 16. It is the real, as against the stated, intentions of the army chief and the defence ministry that are still in the realm of speculation. Since the interpretation of intentions behind actions is influenced by the degree of trust between the affected parties, the incident highlighted the trust deficit between the two most important organs of the state. In a climate of mutual faith such a move of the army, even if it was not &ldquo;pre-notified&rdquo;, would have, at most, caused minor annoyance. Catapulting it to the height of a threat or a coup was the result of a complete malfunctioning of the two defence establishments.

Letters: Will the PM step in?

The road map for direct transfer of fertiliser subsidy to farmers that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee outlined in the Budget has come under a cloud even before it is rolled out. Most in the fertiliser sector &ndash; including, notably, the fertiliser ministry and fertiliser dealers &ndash; are wary of trying it out, for fear that it might create more problems than those caused by the current system that it seeks to replace.

Waiting for Aadhaar

This newspaper reported on Tuesday that the rural development ministry approached the food ministry suggesting that work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) be paid for using foodgrain. The impetus for the rural development ministry&rsquo;s action is perhaps understandable.

Foodgrain-for-work

Kolkata will see India&rsquo;s leap to the fourth generation (4G) of telecom technology today, as the country&rsquo;s largest service provider Bharti Airtel launches the service, giving a data download speed of 100 Mbps, compared to 21 Mbps in 3G. Bharti is the first to launch 4G since BWA spectrum was auctioned in June 2010. It has spectrum in four circles &mdash; Kolkata, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab.

A Giant Leap?

A group in the Planning Commission has proposed that cities be allowed to build upwards so as to bring down high real estate prices. Indian cities are among the least built-up in the world, and real-estate prices are unaffordably high. Low-priced housing is largely unavailable, and India is becoming subject to urban sprawl that is economically unviable, stresses transport systems and increases travel costs inefficiently. Cities offer the best return on investment in their infrastructure when they allow for dense living. If a pipeline supplying water is shared by more families, then the per capita cost of laying that pipeline drops. Among the restrictions that have caused this inefficiency is the artificial restraint on floor-space indices, or FSI. The Commission has proposed that these restrictions be lifted, albeit in a &ldquo;granular&rdquo; manner, and with carefully worked-out pricing systems in place.

You have the floor 

The 2012-13 Budget cannot be said to have been greeted with great joy by anyone. If there is one exception to this rule, surely it is the Centre&rsquo;s revenue officers. In its desperate attempt to scrape up enough tax revenue to plug the fiscal gap created by unbridled expenditure, the government has expanded the powers of discretion available to assessment officers in a manner that is both foolhardy and short-sighted. In doing so, it has lost sight of how taxes should in fact be reformed. Tax laws cannot be simultaneously complicated, rigidly and discretionarily applied, and administered by a corrupt system. The government has correctly moved to plug some loopholes in the tax system. Yet, unless accompanied by a decrease in discretion and wholesale reform of revenue administration, these moves will be self-defeating.

More power to the taxman 

Ajai Shukla&rsquo;s article &ldquo;The threat within?&rdquo; (Weekend, April 7) appears to be the most comprehensive and credible analysis of the events that started with the army troop movement towards the outskirts of Delhi on January 16. The publication of the report in a national daily on April 4 (more than two and a half months after the event) has sparked a feverish debate in which most commentators agreed that a military coup in the Indian context is unthinkable, and words like &ldquo;baseless&rdquo;, &ldquo;alarmist&rdquo; and &ldquo;stupid&rdquo; have been freely used to denounce such fears. However, one thing that cannot be gainsaid is that the government was jolted by the development, even as opinions may be divided on whether that was indeed the underlying intention of the army chief, whose confrontation with the government has been out in the open for the last few months.

Letters: Time to be a political force

It&rsquo;s not just the rats that famously devour India&rsquo;s foodgrain stored in government warehouses; it seems, cattle, too, are unwitting beneficiaries of India&rsquo;s generous farm procurement policies. Given the serial bumper harvests and chronic shortage of warehousing facilities, some proportion of foodgrain is stored in the open under plastic sheeting. Although the mandated duration for such storage is six months, some grain is stored thus for two years at a stretch. Obviously, this grain becomes even more unfit for human consumption. What happens to it? Apparently, it is sold at a discount to poultry and dairy units as animal feed &mdash; and the profits don&rsquo;t necessarily go to the exchequer.

Grainful employment

Some politicians, it seems, are extra-wary of journalists these days. This became evident when a couple of chief ministers invited to attend an event at an industry chamber asked the media department for a briefing on &ldquo;Frequently Asked Questions&rdquo; that journalists could ask, so that they can come prepared. Even a rehearsal won&rsquo;t work, people hearing this said, since journalists are a curious lot.

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