Assume for a moment that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did not have to come forward with any press release on monetary policy this coming Thursday. After all, there was a time when the central bank took a view on monetary policy only twice a year and it was not long ago that it yielded to the market&rsquo;s Q-culture. RBI Governor Duvvuri Subbarao, a half marathon runner himself, chose to become more quick footed in his responses and decided to come forward with a mid-quarter statement. While he did say in a recent speech that &ldquo;Notwithstanding the scheduled quarterly and mid-quarterly reviews, we (RBI) reserve the right to alter our policy stance at any time to respond to the evolving macro-economic situation,&rdquo; the fact is that once a date for making a statement gets fixed, the RBI comes under pressure, from public expectations, to say something or the other.

Subbarao's date

Business Standard

It may be too early to say that Europe is completely out of the woods as far as economic growth and stability are concerned, but there seems no doubt that the Euro has risen like Phoenix from the ashes of the region&rsquo;s sovereign debt crisis. In June last year, when Greece was on the verge of defaulting on its sovereign obligations, it was trading at 1.19 to the dollar. Most analysts had predicted that it would remain stuck there and perhaps drift lower. The doomsayers predicted a collapse of the currency claiming that the interests of the relatively stable &lsquo;core&rsquo; including Germany and France conflicted with the fiscally overstretched periphery, particularly the PIIGs (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). However, the currency bounced back as Greece was bailed out. Some of these anxieties resurfaced during Ireland&rsquo;s sovereign debt crisis in November but could not push the Euro below 1.29 to the greenback.

The Euro redux

As the only nation to be devastated by the consequences of a nuclear attack, the people of Japan can be expected to be particularly anxious about the fallout from a nuclear meltdown in the Fukushima-Daiichi complex in northern Japan. The two reactors owned and operated by the Tokyo Electric Company, Asia&rsquo;s largest utility, are among the largest in the world and have been built to meet stringent safety standards.

Fukushima's fallout

The recently concluded 15th Indian National Census is an exercise of staggering magnitude &mdash; by any standard. For perspective: the decennial Census covered an area of 3.27 million sq. kms, that included 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and over 600 villages. Primary data on 1.2 billion people would be collected by over 2 million enumerators, specially trained for the purpose. The total cost of the exercise is conservatively estimated at Rs 2,200 crore, while the subsequent National Public Register project would cost an additional Rs 3,500 crore. The sheer magnitude aside, the latest census includes some novel features as well. The houselisting and housing Census, carried out in the first phase, was designed to provide comprehensive data on the condition of human settlements and housing shortages to assist in the formulation of appropriate housing policies.

Estimating India

The hare-brained provision in the proposed Mines and Minerals (Development &amp; Regulation) Bill, 2010, binding companies to share 26 per cent of net profit with the local population, is only one of the many serious problems with the proposed bill. The idea of such profit sharing is inherently uncertain, unfair, and cannot be easily monitored by the community. There are many other ways through which a community of stakeholders can be benefited that would be easier to implement and would be fairer too. The principle problem with the proposal is that there are many ways by which companies can fudge net profits. These methods are not necessarily illegal. Two, profitability is impacted by many factors, product prices, changing technologies, efficiency of management being some well-known ones; and beneficiaries from the local community could be adversely impacted by these factors.

A stake for stakeholders

An expert group constituted by the Planning Commission is reportedly devising a roadmap for universal cashless health coverage. The key idea seems to be to move away from the discredited US model of private insurance based healthcare, and focus more on publicly-funded preventive, primary and secondary healthcare. For this, public expenditure on healthcare has to go up from the present 1.1 per cent of GDP to 3.4 per cent by 2017. The trend of tertiary healthcare getting more and more of public funding &mdash; it now stands at 50 per cent &mdash; has to be reversed and 70-75 per cent has to go to preventive care and diagnosis and treatment of common ailments of people. And a key component of this &mdash; expenditure on medicines, which accounts for 70 per cent of out-of-pocket expenditure &mdash; has to follow the Tamil Nadu way &mdash; procurement by the state government (this will beat down costs) and free distribution through primary health centres.

Healthy healthcare

Make defence procurement process transparent

Dealing with defence deals

The end of regulatory forbearance on CDRs

The RBI tightens up

Learning from a landmark mercury control deal

Lessons for climate change

What the industrial output decline says about Budget needs

No turnaround yet

Taxing transfer pricing isn't as simple as some make out

Watch your price

History has caught up with the pro-democracy protests

Arab storms

Expand market reach via better surveillance and innovation

The third stock exchange

Afzal Guru's execution should cause India to introspect

After a hanging

Apple struggles to deal with price-sensitive markets

Pricing dilemma

That the government is finally moving forward on the goods and services tax, or GST, is important and welcome news. It has been reported that the Centre has chosen to try and meet some of the statesâ€™ crucial demands on their fiscal independence and diluted the GST proposals accordingly. It is possible that the watered down version of the GST will be implemented soon after the 2014 general elections.

Green signal for GST

India's farm trade policy must strike a balance

Knee-jerk reactions won't do

The UPA's mismanagement of the economy laid bare

Down to five

The year-end holiday spirit will certainly be missing this year at the Reserve Bank of Indiaâ€™s (RBIâ€™s) headquarters on Mint Road. For Finance Minister P Chidambaram has just taken away the RBIâ€™s last reason to delay the final guidelines for new banking licences.

The banking win-win

Spectrum sharing should be the next stepBharti Airtel, the countryâ€™s largest telecom services company, has decided to buy out Alcatel-Lucentâ€™s 74 per cent stake in Alcatel Lucent Managed Network Services India, the company that manages its all-India broadband and fixed-line network. After the buyout, Bharti Airtel has said, it would share this network with other companies. These companies could also pick up a stake in this network. To what extent others might be interested is not clear. Reliance Communications recently signed a network outsourcing deal with Alcatel. Vodafone and Idea Cellular have a limited presence in broadband and fixed-line telephony and, therefore, may not be too enthusiastic about joining in. And state-owned BSNL and MTNL may shy away from participating in the equity of such a venture.Still, this is a clear indication of the shape of things to come in a sector that is struggling with falling profits and rising costs. Tariffs in India ar

Telcos share infra

<B>It seems the grand idea of cross-subsidisation is going to die a slow death</B> 



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