Time was when educational institutions expected to be located on large tracts of land. The idea may have its roots in India&rsquo;s &ldquo;gurukul&rdquo; tradition when one went far away into the hills and forests for education. The new &ldquo;temples of modern India&rdquo; &mdash; from the IITs and IIMs to central universities &mdash; got themselves sprawling campuses in the name of nation-building. Not to be left behind, and to create a &ldquo;silicon valley&rdquo; ambience in southern India, the likes of Infosys and Wipro also got themselves large plots of subsidised land allocated to build fairytale campuses. It was only natural, therefore, that when a group of business leaders jetted around India in search of land for the Indian School of Business (ISB), the then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh worsted rivals in other states by offering more and cheaper public land for private education.

Everybody wants land

Business Standard

The modified Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill that the Indian Parliament is now expected to pass, with the government securing the help of the main opposition party, was originally not only poorly drafted but was badly sold. Many of the changes now being made could have been incorporated into the original draft if the officials responsible for drafting had done their homework better, and the Congress party had consulted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earlier. The only claim that the government can make is that it drafted a sub-optimal Bill to enable the Opposition to improve upon it and then declare support! In the event, the debate on the draft Bill has certainly helped produce a better Bill and also cement political consensus around it. Predictably, the Left has adopted its ostrich-like posture on facts and waxed eloquent on its self-generated fiction on the issue.

The nuclear assets Bill

NDM-1, short for New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1, popularly dubbed as &ldquo;superbug&rdquo;, has been causing much angst in the medical fraternity, media and government. A British journal, Lancet, published an article titled &ldquo;Emergence of a new antibiotic resistance mechanism in India, Pakistan, and the UK: a molecular, biological, and epidemiological study&rdquo; that documents the emergence of a new gene that can make a range of bacteria highly resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics. The paper &mdash; authored by 31 researchers, 16 of whom appear to be of Indian and South Asian origin working in the UK, India and Pakistan &mdash; finds that the &ldquo;superbug&rdquo; is found in multiple locations across north, west, east and south India, across Pakistan and even in Bangladesh. The paper also finds that in its sample most people affected in the UK had some connection with South Asia.

Bugged by superbugs

The Union government has been widely criticised for letting foodgrain rot in its godowns, while food prices soar and millions remain underfed. In its defence the government has spoken about the fiscal cost of selling these stocks. However, the underlying problem of excessive procurement and overstocking of foodgrain has not received as much attention. The government has claimed that official agencies have been mopping up over 99.5 per cent market arrivals of wheat in key grain-surplus states like Punjab and Haryana, and over 87 per cent at the all-India level in recent years. In the case of paddy, this figure is above 93 per cent. The private trade has virtually been alienated from food transactions in the peak marketing seasons.

An embarrassment of riches

Going by the ongoing discourse on the drafting of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, it would appear that the rights of India&rsquo;s citizens are forever determined by the wording of the nation&rsquo;s laws. One word here protects the citizen from depredation and worse, one word there surrenders sovereignty forever. If laws and rights were edible there would be no hunger in India, and every citizen of this great democracy would have been the most politically, socially and economically empowered person in the world.

Land of laws and rights

By itself the proposal of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to enhance the limit for &ldquo;defining retail individual investors (RIIs)&rdquo; in public issues from 1,00,000 to 2,00,000 cannot be faulted. But the rationale proffered is weak, the objective foggy and the arguments are both a &ldquo;dicto simpliciter&rdquo; as well as a &ldquo;non-sequiter&rdquo;. Without speculating about the reasons that prompted Sebi to issue the discussion paper and treating it on its merits, the proposal seems to stem from an underlying belief stated in the paper that the RIIs have the &ldquo;capacity and appetite&rdquo; to apply for securities worth more than 1,00,000 but the existing limit has been constraining them. The obvious corollary would be that a measure as simple as the enhancement of the limit would allow the investors to maximise the use of their &ldquo;capacity&rdquo; and whet their so-called &ldquo;appetite&rdquo; which was hitherto not satiated.

Redefining the retail investor

It is commonplace to say that not only are there as many views about the economy as there are economists, but, in fact, double that given that most economists hedge their bets with &ldquo;on the hand this, on the other hand that&rdquo;.

No threat of double dip

The message that emerges loud and clear from yesterday&rsquo;s annual review of the Foreign Trade Policy is that the government continues to be justifiably wary of the country&rsquo;s performance on the exports front.

A policy of extensions

The Union commerce ministry has reportedly initiated an exercise to determine if checks need to be placed on foreign investment in Indian drug firms (currently 100 per cent investment is allowed through the automatic route) in view of several acquisitions that have taken place in the last few years. These include the takeover of Ranbaxy by Daiichi Sankyo and Piramal Healthcare by Abbott Laboratories.

Foreign in pharma

Compensation to farmers for land acquired for non-farm purposes has once again come to the fore, now in Uttar Pradesh on the Noida-Agra expressway. Investors who have already sunk funds into both the road project and subsidiary projects are nervously awaiting the outcome of the stand-off between the state government and farmers, and opposition political parties, including the Congress party, are farming in troubled fields, so to speak! The violent events in Singur and Lalgarh, both in the reputedly farmer-friendly state of West Bengal, have raised the awareness of farmers in the entire country. The landowners in Singur stopped the transfer of land through violent protests. In Lalgarh, the protests stopped the acquisition. After the agitations and the so-called victory for the farmers, Singur farmers were left with no land and Lalgarh farmers were monetarily no better off.

Land rights and wrongs

Marking the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping&rsquo;s clarion call for economic reform and modernisation, China&rsquo;s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao came forward last week with his own call for political reform, declaring that it is important for China to &ldquo;guarantee the people&rsquo;s democratic rights and their legitimate rights and interests&rdquo;. In a speech that has been widely reported across the world, Mr Wen said that China must resolve the problem of excessive concentration of power, create conditions that allow people to criticise and supervise the government and firmly punish corruption. This is not as revolutionary as the late Mao Zedong&rsquo;s call to party cadres to &ldquo;bombard the headquarters&rdquo;. Indeed, it may not even be as historic as the 18th August 1980 speech of Comrade Deng that Mr Wen was honouring with his own call for reform.

Mr Wen's call for reform

The philosophy (vedanta being the closest Sanskrit word for it) behind the Union government&rsquo;s decision not to permit bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills region of Orissa by the mining company Vedanta Resources is impeccable. The company has been found to flout the laws of the land, so to speak, and must, therefore, be punished. The company did not adhere to the letter and spirit of the Forest Rights Act. The company has also been issued a show-cause notice regarding its alleged non-adherence to the Environment Protection Act in the case of the Lanjigarh refinery. The government has done well to insist that even the biggest of businesses must adhere to the law of the land. No one is above law. It would, of course, be helpful, from the viewpoint of upholding law, that the government also identify all such officials and agencies of its own that have erred and enabled the company to function with impunity till now.

Vedanta behind Vedanta

Catastrophes like unprecedented floods in Pakistan and China and cloudburst in a desert region like Leh in Jammu and Kashmir are no longer rarities. With climate change being a reality, freakish weather-induced calamities are bound to become more frequent all over the world; India being no exception. Mechanisms, therefore, need to be put in place to minimise, if not wholly eliminate, the damage due to such events. Unusual floods in southern India last year, due to unexpectedly heavy downpours towards the fag end of the monsoon season in late September, and the deluge of the desert track of Rajasthan in the beginning of the monsoon season a few years earlier could be examples of climate change-related perils. This year again, relentless rains for over a week in most parts of the country has caused many rivers to swell and submerge surrounding areas, exposing the under-preparedness of the authorities to confront such contingencies.

Managing the monsoons

A positive fallout from the trans-Atlantic financial crisis is that central banks across the world have become more transparent. Gone are the days of deliberate obfuscation and arcane mumbo-jumbo championed by the former chairman of the US Fed, Alan Greenspan, that passed off as centralbankspeak. Monetary authorities are doing their bit of plain-speaking these days, and the Reserve Bank of India&rsquo;s (RBI&rsquo;s) annual report released this Tuesday is yet another example of this. The macroeconomic assessment in the report, somewhat predictably, identifies inflation management as the key policy challenge and reiterates its commitment to this objective. However, it also mentions a set of riders that is likely to influence policy action. For one, it clearly states that the exact source of inflation is important in determining the efficacy of monetary policy &mdash; inflationary pressures predominantly driven by supply shocks are less amenable to monetary intervention.

Limits to monetary policy

After successfully contesting a patent dispute with China earlier this year &mdash; regarding formulations based on &ldquo;pudina&rdquo; (mint) and &ldquo;kalamegha&rdquo; (Andrographis) &mdash; India last week won another legal battle in Malaysia against the use of &ldquo;ponni&rdquo; rice as trademark. Like basmati, ponni is also a speciality rice grown exclusively in southern states and has a niche market abroad. These and other victories concerning patenting of products like neem (Azadirachta indica) and haldi (turmeric) may be significant in their own right, but the trend of going through protracted and costly litigation abroad for such matters is worrisome. India, being not only rich in native biodiversity but also home to well-developed indigenous systems for gainful utilisation of these biological resources, is a heaven for bio-pirates. In fact, much of its biological wealth has already been pilfered.

What is Indian is India's

Much righteous shock and horror has been expressed at the issue of paid editorial content but no one should be surprised at the media&rsquo;s disinclination to address the issue. That&rsquo;s because doing so would entail radically altering the dynamics of the business as it has developed over the past two decades. The media business has always been unique in that it serves two sets of customers: readers and advertisers.

Broking news

We have come a long way from the &ldquo;Great Panic of 2008&rdquo;, but there&rsquo;s a long road ahead to robust growth, confident consumer spending and lower unemployment. That was the essence of US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke&rsquo;s speech at this year&rsquo;s Jackson Hole conference last week. It was a rather subdued Mr Bernanke who sought to reassure his audience, by all accounts.

Return of double-dip fears

China is once again in the news. Having overtaken Japan as the world&rsquo;s second-largest economy, it is flexing muscles. It chose to deny entry to an Indian army officer scheduled to participate in a bilateral dialogue because of his posting in Jammu and Kashmir, has reportedly taken control of parts of the state from Pakistan, and has seized maps of India from the Indian Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo because they show Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. There is method in China&rsquo;s madness. Keeping India off balance is an old Chinese game. Playing with India&rsquo;s highly emotional media and political class with its &ldquo;blow hot, blow cold&rdquo; tease is another. Winning friends in India&rsquo;s neighbourhood is a third. But to place China&rsquo;s latest acts of &ldquo;assertiveness&rdquo; in perspective, one must also draw attention to internal divisions within China as to how it should deal with the world, with Asia and with India.

The China syndrome

The Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India can look back to the 50 years whose completion it has just celebrated with a good degree of satisfaction, and project with some authority its vision for the future. It has emerged as the bronze medalist among the country&rsquo;s most globally competitive sectors, after software and pharmaceuticals, and projected an ambitious trajectory for the next 10 years to 2020. Its turnover should reach $110 billion by then from the current (2009-10) $22 billion. As this implies a compound annual growth rate of 17.5 per cent, compared to the 21 per cent achieved in the last five years (2005-10), the goal is well within reach. The aim also is to take exports to $29 billion from the current $3.8 billion, which assumes a compound annual growth rate of 22.5 per cent &mdash; about the same as achieved in the past five years.

A driver of growth

From the novelty point of view, the latest match-fixing scandal involving some Pakistani cricketers should surprise no one. For one, it merely confirms what everybody&rsquo;s been suspecting for years. For another, Pakistani cricketers have been indicted before &mdash; Shoaib Malik and Saleem Malik are two names that come to mind. Let&rsquo;s face it, cricket stopped being the &ldquo;gentleman&rsquo;s game&rdquo; at least two decades ago and the money that now pours into the sport has inevitably created the kind of cycle of corruption that has afflicted other, more popular sports worldwide (basketball and Formula 1 being two prominent recent examples). The sub-continent in general and India in particular now dominate the administration of the sport globally. It is also this region that has proved the hub of betting scandals in the past &mdash; l&rsquo;affaire Cronje, the incident that first exposed the shadowy world of betting to public view, had its epicentre in India.

Cricket on a sticky wicket

This month, banks move to a new, more transparent regime of loan pricing. They will jettison the Benchmark Prime Lending Rate (BPLR) and price loans off a &ldquo;base rate&rdquo;.

Base rate and after

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 539 - Editorial Comment