India&rsquo;s defence unpreparedness has been the topic of the past week. Is India spending enough on security? Table 1, which shows the sustained increase in spending over the past decade, would tend to suggest that the amount being Budgeted is not the problem.

StatsGuru-02-April-12

Business Standard

I have an investible surplus of Rs 80,000. I need advice on choosing tax-saving instruments. I won&rsquo;t be needing these funds for at least three years, as I am taking a break to pursue higher studies abroad. Also, I don&rsquo;t have any immediate requirements.

Financial Planning: Malhar Majumder

The recent appointment of the new member-secretary of the Planning Commission has become a minor talking point. It's nothing to do with the new incumbent per se but a curious coincidence. Sindhushree Khullar happens to be the wife of Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar. After Sudha Pillai, she will be the second commerce secretary spouse appointed member- secretary of the Planning Commission. The outgoing member-secretary, Sudha Pillai, was the wife of G K Pillai, who was secretary in the ministry of commerce before moving to home.

Non-planned coincidence

Do economists matter in policy-making? Tax expert and member of the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Economic Advisory Council M Govinda Rao thinks not. At an event at which economists were discussing the Union Budget, he said economists do not really matter since the opinion makers are usually not economists. He insisted, however, that economist still have a job to do &mdash; of highlighting what is wrong in the system.

Dismal scientists?

Oil marketing companies have been trying to raise petrol prices for many months but the government, wary of political pressures from its allies, has not been allowing them to do so. Maybe that is why the BPCL-owned fuel outlet on Race Course Road, opposite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official residence, has put up a message advising customers to fill their tanks since prices are set to go up. The intention is to boost sales, of course &mdash; but perhaps also to send signals across the road to Singh.

Pumping up the message 

This refers to the report &ldquo;Pranab&rsquo;s balm on P-notes soothes market nerves&rdquo; (March 30). It is unfortunate that the finance minister has succumbed to the pressure put by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The proposal in the Budget to levy short-term capital gain tax would have helped retail investors. It is unfortunate that on the one hand, genuine retail investors have to meet know-your-customer norms, among others, and pay tax on short-term gains, and on the other participatory notes holders speculate and destabilise our stock markets and are allowed to get away with untaxed money.

Letters: Succumbing to FIIs

This refers to the report &ldquo;Mamata bans all English dailies in state libraries&rdquo; (March 28). The state government&rsquo;s move to restrict newspapers subscribed by libraries is definitely an infringement on democratic rights. One of the reasons provided by the government for this order is lack of funds. If that was the case, it should have put restrictions on the number of papers and not the &ldquo;type&rdquo; of papers. Moreover, it is absurd to issue an order on grounds of a fund crunch since the finances required to run 3,000-odd libraries won&rsquo;t be much even if these buy 20 newspapers a day. In any case, it will certainly be less that what is required for the so-called &ldquo;beautification&rdquo; of the city.

Letters: Mamata's diktat

Kanika Datta&rsquo;s column &ldquo;What&rsquo;s in a name?&rdquo; (Swot, March 29) made some keen observations on how people expect to be addressed formally in an era where even a new entrant in a private organisation is encouraged to call the CEO by his or her first name. The author, however, did not touch on the tradition prevailing in public sector organisations like banks in which there is greater conservatism, formality and hierarchical expectations. It is unthinkable to call one&rsquo;s immediate superior even at a junior level by his or her first name in these institutions that have a strong British legacy of addressing one&rsquo;s boss as &ldquo;sahib&rdquo; or &ldquo;saab&rdquo;.

Letters: Public sector etiquettes

This refers to Mihir S Sharma&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Our shameful kowtow&rdquo; (Ticker, March 31). Is India truly a counterbalance to rising China in Asia? The recent events during the BRICS summit, in fact, show how unbalanced India is. It followed every request made by the &ldquo;emperor&rdquo; as the piece illustrates. India has put all the democratic countries of the world to shame by such acquiesce. No democratic country, let alone a co-equal power like India, should ever kowtow to undemocratic China under any circumstances.

Letters: Bowing to China

The last fiscal ending March 31, 2011 was not an easy year for Indian markets. After moving in a range-bound manner for almost 10 months, the markets broke the upper-end of the range to scale a new high on November 5, 2010 propping up investor sentiment during the festival season of Diwali. The BSE Sensex made a new high of 21,108.64, while NSE&rsquo;s S&amp;P Nifty scaled to its all-time at 6,338.50 on that day.

Picking the winners

The focus of functional marketing is very different from that of business-market strategy. Functional marketing is about implementing a chosen business direction in the market. Functional marketing managers need to translate that business direction into a concrete product-price-distribution-communication consumer experience in the marketplace. Therefore, their approach to consumer insight is through the prism of the brand and/or the category, or even the product.

Customer insight for business strategy

Actor and convenor of FICCI Frames, eastern region, Prosenjit Chatterjee, has been witness to some of the biggest changes that have taken place in the film industry of Bengal in recent years.

I expect the industry to grow at 70-80 per cent annually: Prosenjit Chatterjee

The New Delhi Declaration adopted at the end of the fourth BRICS summit last week has brought out quite eloquently how the global economic order has remained virtually unreformed since the organisation&rsquo;s first meeting in 2009, and how the economic challenges before its member countries &ndash; Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa &ndash; have become even more daunting.

Losing relevance

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee made a pragmatic call in exempting participatory notes (P-notes) from taxes, after fears arose that the introduction of anti-avoidance rules would cause foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to go into sell mode. At a time when external accounts are stressed, the government would rather not cope with a large foreign exchange outflow. This is not the first compromise on P-notes. In 2007, when phasing them out was proposed, the government ultimately caved in &mdash; again under threat of a mass FII exodus. However, dealing with P-notes should be about more than expediency. At least two P-note-related issues are central to notions of sovereignty. The first is, of course, a country&rsquo;s right to impose taxes. This right need not, of course, be always exercised.

One more loophole

Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Derek O&rsquo;Brien &mdash; more famous as a quizmaster than a politician &mdash; is one of the few from the Anglo-Indian community in Parliament. When he made his maiden speech in Parliament regarding the Railway Budget, many MPs, including the chair, were mispronouncing his name. However, when S S Ahluwalia from the Bharatiya Janata Party addressed him as &ldquo;Derek O&rsquo;Brain&rdquo;, it was a little too much for former Sports Minister M S Gill. Gill sprung up and in chaste Punjabi told Ahluwalia that it was not O&rsquo;Brain, but O&rsquo;Brien, and Derek should be addressed properly. After all, the Anglo- Indians have done much for the country, he added. Gill has studied from a convent school where he was taught by Anglo-Indian teachers. The chair&rsquo;s pleas to Gill to sit down went unheeded.

Pronunciation error

India has had many foreign guests from multilateral institutions last week. A top minister who is always dressed to the nines hosted a dinner, where he held forth about himself and his achievements. His foreign guest was seated to his left.

Narcissism at its worst

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman came within a whisker of being nominated to the Rajya Sabha. However, a top BJP leader said cryptically that she could not get the nomination because &ldquo;women are themselves the worst enemies of other women&rdquo;.

Antagonists at play

How much junk is there in junk food, exactly? At first sight, this may be an unreasonable question to ask. After all, when people eat a big bag of potato crisps, or stock up on salted, buttered popcorn at a movie, or finish an entire bowl of crisp bhujia at teatime, they know that what they&rsquo;re eating isn&rsquo;t exactly good for them. However, as behavioural economists have discovered, knowing exactly how bad for you something really is can impact your decision-making process very differently from knowing vaguely that it isn&rsquo;t really the healthy choice. The Centre for Science and Environment&rsquo;s recent two-month survey of packaged snack foods makes claims, thus, that should be of concern to Indian consumers. One of those claims is that companies are getting around labelling laws by printing nutritional information pertaining to serving sizes that are unrealistically small.

The junk in junk food 

It is called &ldquo;shoulder-surfing&rdquo;, and it is getting increasingly common. Applicants at job interviews are being asked, at some point in the proceedings, to either hand over their passwords to social networking sites like Facebook so that the interviewers can have a quick look, or log in there and then so the interview panel can, quite literally, look over their shoulders.

Your password, please

Europe leads the ranking with 13 of the world&rsquo;s greenest banks.

Banking on clean energy

The existing limit of my credit card is Rs 25,000. I am planning to travel next month and want to get this limit increased for my travel period.

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