Doing so has major implications for public health but moving to a market-linked fuel pricing policy makes more sense.

Should diesel cars be taxed?

Business Standard

This refers to two articles published in your daily last week that talked of the current state of affairs in West Bengal. The first, Bhupesh Bhandari&rsquo;s column &ldquo;White knight: Bashing the businessmen&rdquo; (February 3), mentioned a particular business community by name and stated that it was unhappy with the present chief minister because of the &ldquo;strict&rdquo; action taken against the directors on the AMRI board. The piece had a tinge of communalism that was apparent from the author&rsquo;s statement that &ldquo;their [the community mentioned] indignation is still muted&rdquo; (emphasis added). Somewhere in the middle of the piece, the author ran out of points and facts and, therefore, switched to Mahatma Gandhi and J R D Tata. Hence, it seems that he did not have any conviction in the points he wanted to highlight.

Letters: Where's the bias?

The proliferation of TV news channels and newspapers and their public scrambles to get the first and exclusive interview has become a chronic problem for corporate communications executives. To forestall the usual first-come, first-served brawl, Piramal Healthcare executives came up with an innovative idea: the lucky draw. The names of each channel or newspaper were pooled and their turns were decided on the basis of the draw. This did help establish a semblance of discipline but, naturally, did not make those who came towards the end of the draw very happy.

First on the draw

At a recent conference on vocational education, top corporate executives were offering practical solutions for making this kind of education popular. One novel suggestion came from S Mahalingam, CFO of TCS. He said a friend once told him that the vocational education system in India would be successful only when matrimonial sites start advertising the vocational skills of grooms. So, he added, instead of saying the prospective groom is a qualified graduate, engineer or doctor, the ads should say he is a &ldquo;master wielder&rdquo;.

Married to the job

As growth in Europe and the US slows, the world is looking to China for signals for the future. Will it shore up global growth? What challenges does it face? A director in McKinsey&rsquo;s Shanghai office offers a unique perspective. Among his 10 forecasts for the country in 2012, he predicts that accounting scandals will continue. &ldquo;China&rsquo;s reputation among regulators and investors was tarnished in 2011,&rdquo; writes Gordon Orr in the February edition of the McKinsey Quarterly. He goes on to explain that according to the Financial Times, the total value of Chinese companies delisted from US exchanges &ldquo;exceeded what Chinese companies raised through IPOs in the United States last year&rdquo;.

A China syndrome

I sold my house recently and do not plan to buy a new one.

Taxation: Homi Mistry

Few will be surprised at the headline numbers in the advance estimates of growth in India&rsquo;s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011-12 released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday. GDP growth, according to the CSO, will clock in at just 6.9 per cent this year, down from 8.4 per cent in 2010-11. This is not too far from the recent estimate by the Reserve Bank of India, which was revised downwards to seven per cent. The World Bank has projected 6.8 per cent growth in 2011-12. So these numbers are not likely to shock too many observers &mdash; even though they are two whole percentage points below the estimates for this fiscal year made in the Budget and Economic Survey. Even if there is little shock, however, there should be widespread concern. Not since the year of the financial crisis, after Lehman Brothers fell in 2008 and credit seized up, has growth been this low.

Gloomy numbers

This refers to the report &ldquo;Isro shares part of report indicting Nair&rdquo; (February 6). Over the past one year, we have seen several policy lapses and huge losses caused to the exchequer because of incorrect interpretations of policy and so on. In many cases, political spokespersons have defended wrongs by pointing fingers at those who talked about corruption or unethical practices. In the process, the purpose of audits, probes and reviews is being lost.

Letters: Defending wrongs

It&rsquo;s not only through advertising wars that competing companies take indirect potshots at one another; press conferences provide ample opportunity too. Asked whether Bharti Airtel would gain subscribers after the Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecom licences owned by new entrants, CEO for India and South Asia Sanjay Kapoor said the company has not seen customers lining up to join its network, adding, &ldquo;We have not gone and placed advertisements in any newspaper.&rdquo; He was, of course, referring to ads that rival Vodafone placed in papers the day after the Supreme Court order inviting customers to join a network they could &ldquo;depend on&rdquo;. Kapoor, however, was quick to say that irrespective of developments, the company&rsquo;s sales and marketing reps are already all out there to woo subscribers.

Phoney war

Apropos the edit &ldquo;Downhill with Trinamool&rdquo; (February 6), we are well aware of Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s strengths and weaknesses as an opposition leader in West Bengal politics. Now, it is time for her to prove her mettle as the minister in charge of West Bengal and show that her party is capable of ruling the state. And she can only do this through able statesmanship. Pro-people politics should not mean ignoring the mess in which the state&rsquo;s finances are today. What it requires is good governance and performance. We hope that Banerjee realises this and takes some immediate measures to attract fresh investments in her state.

Letters: Time to show leadership

I plan to invest Rs 80,000 in bonds for listing gains. I don't want to invest for long.

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Two decisions by a Group of Ministers (GoM) on Tuesday demonstrated the government&rsquo;s continuing inability to come to grips with the problems being faced by the aviation sector. Both are wrong-headed, but in different ways. Allowing airlines to directly import aviation turbine fuel (ATF) may sound at first like a reasonable approach, in that it allows them to avoid paying local taxes that are, in some states, among the highest in the world.

Still delaying take-off

In the last five weeks, Indian stock markets have seen a spectacular recovery. The indices have swung up over 15 per cent. This rise has been driven by a shift in the attitudes of foreign institutional investors (FIIs), who have, since January 1, 2012, bought a net $3.4 billion of Indian stocks (and put a slightly larger amount into rupee debt). In contrast, domestic institutional investors have been net sellers. The forex inflow has also pushed the rupee up by eight or nine per cent against most hard currencies. There has been little apparent change in geopolitical dynamics or global economic indicators to justify this turnaround. The Greek debt crisis remains a big question mark; worries persist about contagion and larger euro zone nations have seen downgrades. Tensions persist in West Asia and Iran, causing upward pressure on energy prices.

Spring on Dalal Street

The pricing formula for gas produced by Reliance Industries from the D6 basin off the Andhra coast may have been at the centre of many controversies and condemnation till recently, but an unlikely adjective for it came from Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia at a book launch on Tuesday. Ahluwalia, an economist by training, not only rattled off the complicated formula from memory, he described it as &ldquo;cute&rdquo; and without rationale. &ldquo;We need to demolish such things,&rdquo; he went on to add.

Memory plus

A K Bhattacharya in his column &ldquo;Get the diagnosis right&rdquo; (Delhi diary, February 8) unearthed the mismanagement of fiscal planning and control contributing to the rising fiscal deficit. In fact, so alarming is the wide gap between projections and actuals in all parameters of receipts and expenditure that, in retrospect, the budgeted figures appear to be the result of deliberate padding rather than miscalculations &mdash; total receipts (minus borrowings) in the three quarters of the year falling short by 16 per cent over the estimated growth of four per cent and total expenditure escalating by 14 per cent against the planned 3.4 per cent. The increase in the latter with plan expenditure going down and non-plan expenditure going up betrays fiscal indiscipline and lack of control. And then the finance ministry takes refuge behind the &ldquo;myth&rdquo; (as the author has pointed out) of correlating the slowdown in growth with fiscal deficit.

Letters: Deliberate padding?

This refers to the debate &ldquo;Should diesel cars be taxed&rdquo; (February 8). If the recent automobile sales data are to be believed, then it is certain that there has been a significant increase in the sale of diesel cars compared to petrol cars. This is why automobile companies are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that diesel cars are not slapped with additional taxes and it seems that they will go to any lengths to convince the government on the issue; under recovery losses is not even a cause of anxiety for them. Also, why should the trends in Europe be of any concern to us? We need to address public health issues in our own country and should not delay doing do. If Brazil, Denmark and Sri Lanka can impose some kind of restriction to discourage people from buying diesel cars, I am sure with a little planning and thinking, we can also implement something similar.

Letters: Tax diesel cars

Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor K C Chakrabarty is known for his plain speaking and humour but bankers do not always appreciate his remarks. At a function in Mumbai organised by a small and medium enterprises (SMEs) chamber to felicitate bankers for their support to the sector, Chakrabarty said data showed that over 90 per cent of SME entrepreneurs are either self-financed or not financed. &ldquo;For what are we giving these awards then?&rdquo; he asked bluntly, going on to suggest ways banks could increase credit flows to the sector. Approached for his reaction to the deputy governor's remarks, a senior banker said with some heavy irony, &ldquo;Once in a while you need entertainment.

Sharp shots

The overall agenda of IITs is to 'make' quality engineers and not to 'produce' replicated models. The IIT students are industry drivers with their capability to think out of the box and to provide end-to-end solutions nurturing the bottom line.

Student&#8217s corner

Apropos the edit &ldquo;Off the tracks&rdquo; (February 7), cost-cutting by curtailment of &ldquo;populist&rdquo; projects will definitely help the Indian Railways (IR) tide over the short-term funding gap, but sustainable revenue streams require ideation, discovery and implementation of new projects for the long haul. IR would do well to shift attention from the already clogged Indo-Gangetic belt to developing high-speed train services that directly compete with increasingly expensive air transportation.

Letters: Railways` need for speed

Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress are so implacably opposed to the Left Front that was ousted from decades in power that she and her party functionaries spare no opportunity to it them for every ill in the state. A couple of months ago, a Trinamool MLA blamed the Left Front government for &ldquo;injustice to stray dogs&rdquo;. Now, faced with infant deaths in hospitals under her rule, Banerjee blames her rivals for those too.

TMC's look Left policy

The crop output estimates for 2011-12 put out by Krishi Bhawan last week &ndash; even while projecting a record foodgrain output that would cross the 250 million-tonne mark for the first time &ndash; reveal some worrisome inter-commodity imbalances as well. The harvests of wheat and rice &ndash; both of which are facing the prospect of a glut with the official grain coffers brimming over &ndash; are projected to swell further. But those of pulses and oilseeds, which are scarce and need to be imported, are forecast to shrink by five or six per cent, further constraining their supplies. The output of coarse cereals, too, is forecast to decline; they have witnessed a rapid spurt in demand, for food, feed and industrial uses like manufacture of starch and malt. Although the agriculture ministry is attributing the drop in the output of these commodities to uneven monsoon rains and lack of winter showers, the real problem lies elsewhere.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 937 - Business Standard

Should diesel cars be taxed?

Letters: Where's the bias?

First on the draw

Married to the job

A China syndrome

Taxation: Homi Mistry

Gloomy numbers

Letters: Defending wrongs

Phoney war

Letters: Time to show leadership

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Still delaying take-off

Spring on Dalal Street

Memory plus

Letters: Deliberate padding?

Letters: Tax diesel cars

Sharp shots

Student’s corner

Letters: Railways` need for speed

TMC's look Left policy