The initial optimism in the fertiliser sector soon after the Union Cabinet approved the new investment policy for urea had led to an increase in prices of fertiliser stocks over the last week. The positive mood, however, is finally beginning to give way to some searching questions. The new policy, awaited ever since its 2008 version failed to attract any response, aims to fix problems that have led to the urea sector going without any real capacity addition since 1999. Certainly, the new policy seems more able to woo investment for greenfield urea production projects or even expansion of existing units. It may possibly allow the revival, too, of some of the eight closed units of public-sector fertiliser producers such as the Fertiliser Corporation of India (FCI) and the Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation (HFCL).

Fertile hopes

Business Standard

Sachin Tendulkar has an assured place in the cricketing pantheon. He may be the greatest batsman of all time; unquestionably, he is among the very best. His career is unmatched in many ways &mdash; and certainly, in recent times, for longevity. When he first played for India, there was a Soviet Union, and Manmohan Singh had never delivered a Budget speech. It is possible, though, that he has not chosen his timing when it comes to retirement with the same perfection that he did for his cover drives.

The art of leaving 

Across India&rsquo;s towns, protesters demanding greater safety and justice have gathered, their original core consisting of young professionals and college students. Notably, unlike previous such movements, they do not demand special treatment from the government, but the undeniable right to live safely &mdash; a core duty of the state. Nor is the protest against any single political party or organ of the state or, for that matter, any specific act of the state. They collected, at first spontaneously, in Narendra Modi&rsquo;s Ahmedabad as they collected in Sheila Dikshit&rsquo;s Delhi; and they collected in J Jayalalithaa&rsquo;s Chennai, and O Ibobi Singh&rsquo;s Imphal.

The children of reforms 

Even as the government prepares to try and pass a food security law in Parliament&rsquo;s next session, it has been criticised from a fresh perspective &mdash; suggesting it may, after all, need another re-examination. A discussion paper put together by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has debunked the draft Bill on several counts, some of which are well founded. Disputing its long-term feasibility, the CACP paper maintains that it would inflate food subsidies to an unsustainable level, hamper the functioning of the foodgrain markets and deal a formidable blow to Indian agriculture as a whole by skewing the cropping pattern.

Future insecurity

Although India now buys its defence hardware from a range of countries in addition to Russia, the Indo-Russian defence relationship remains stronger than ever. Instead of fighter aircraft, tanks and air defence guns, Russia is now India&rsquo;s prime source for &ldquo;sub-strategic&rdquo; systems that incorporate closely guarded technologies. These include the nuclear-propelled submarine INS Chakra, which Russia has provided on a 10-year lease; the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya; and potential access to the precision code of Russia&rsquo;s Global Navigation Satellite System. After jointly developing the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, the two countries are joining hands to develop next-generation systems for both their militaries, like the Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft and the Multirole Transport Aircraft. Russia has also helped India develop its own nuclear-propelled ballistic missile submarine.

The Russian connection 

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has done great damage to its credibility &ndash; and, by extension, to the reputation of India internationally &ndash; by consistently being over-optimistic in its public forecasts and pronouncements. Governments should not be pessimistic. Nor should they appear to be detached from reality, especially if the economic situation is as grave as the one facing India today. Unfortunately, going by the numbers, it sometimes appears as if UPA-II is capable of ignoring not just reality but also simple arithmetic. The concern about the target for growth in the 12th Five-Year Plan, due to be discussed by the Centre and state chief ministers at the meeting of the National Development Council on Thursday, is a classic example of this problem.

Number juggling

The clause in the Companies Bill passed by the Lok Sabha earlier this month mandating that companies of a certain category (yet to be defined) have at least one woman director on their boards is unlikely to further the cause of gender diversity in the workplace. There are two linked aspects to the issue: one practical, the other social.

Directing women

Think back to 1991. The 87-year-old J R D Tata had been Tata chairman for more than half a century. With the group&rsquo;s leading companies managed by similarly ageing satraps, the last thing the Tata name stood for was vibrancy and energy; the more usual adjectives were staid and unenterprising.

An illustrious career

Just after 2 am IST on Saturday morning, the 23-year old woman who had been brutally raped in a moving bus in South Delhi two weeks ago died in a Singapore hospital. According to most reports, she had been on life support through most of that time, and had undergone at least three major operations, including one to remove her small intestine, which had become gangrenous due to her wounds. In response, an outpouring of grief and anger has spilled out on to the streets of India's capital and many of its other towns and cities. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a statement, has said: &ldquo;It would be a true homage to her memory if we are able to channel these emotions and energies into a constructive course of action. The need of the hour is a dispassionate debate and inquiry into the critical changes that are required in societal attitudes.

Directing the anger

The draft of the 12th Five-Year Plan approved by the National Development Council last week is well written and forward-looking. It is also forthright about failures to implement various aspects of the 11th Plan and openly nuances various claims the government has made recently &mdash; for example, about the likelihood that investment in agricultural cold chains is sufficiently win-win and that it would be a magic bullet for agricultural marketing. The prime minister, in his speech at the NDC, recognised that the &ldquo;aspirational&rdquo; Plan target of eight per cent required a steep increase in growth in the last three years of the Plan period. This is asking for a great deal. As the Plan points out, India will have to return to 2007-08&rsquo;s gross fixed capital formation rate of 35 per cent of gross domestic product from the current 32 per cent.

An ambitious Plan 

A little over five years ago, India&rsquo;s moribund and sometimes distant relations with Japan got a dramatic boost when that country&rsquo;s visiting prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told India&rsquo;s Parliament that he looked forward to a &ldquo;confluence of the two seas&rdquo; (the Indian and Pacific oceans), and a &ldquo;broader Asia&rdquo; that would create &ldquo;an arc of freedom and prosperity&rdquo;. Mr Abe declared that Japan had &ldquo;rediscovered India as a partner that shares the same values and interests&rdquo;. His strategic vision included Australia and the United States, with which India and Japan launched what was called a &ldquo;Quadrilateral initiative&rdquo; that included joint military exercises. The exclusion of China from this &ldquo;concert of powers&rdquo; was self-evident, and Beijing protested strongly against the birth of what it called an &ldquo;Asian Nato&rdquo;.

The significance of Mr Abe

One of the positive consequences of the recent focus on the dealings between companies owned by Robert Vadra and the real estate giant DLF is that the unregulated nature of the Haryana land market has become a topic of discussion. Mr Vadra&rsquo;s companies&rsquo; purchases of additional land and apartments were funded from the windfall gains that accrued after a 3.5 acre plot of land in Manesar received a conversion of land use notification from the Haryana government, which greatly increased its market value. It was evident immediately &ndash; and even more so after the civil servant Ashok Khemka was transferred from his position as director general for consolidation of holdings in Haryana&rsquo;s revenue department &ndash; that the windfall gain Mr Vadra received following the change of land use notification was not unique.

The piecemeal city 

The decision to refarm spectrum in the 900 MHz wavelength has huge implications for the telecom industry, and it further complicates the forthcoming 2G auctions in the 1800 MHz band. The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) will have to consider the modalities and logistics carefully, since several issues are yet to be clarified. The physical logic for refarming appears to be strong: signals on low-frequency bands like 900 MHz propagate longer distances and penetrate obstacles better. Hence, 900 MHz is better suited to high-end data services, such as 3G. The existing 900 MHz licences for 2G GSM services expire from November 2014 to 2016. Operators will need to buy spectrum as licences expire, and it will clearly cost a lot more than a decade ago.

Spectrum refarming muddle 

Homes in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata that had analogue cable television went blank last night. The Madras High Court has given the residents of Chennai, where only 62 per cent of connections have been digitised, time till November 5 to switch over to the digital system or face a similar blackout. The latest reports suggest that digitisation has been near universal in Mumbai and 95 per cent in Delhi.

Definitely digital

At one level, the ongoing tussle between the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and the Anil Ambani-controlled Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL) may confirm the misgivings of those who think public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a risky way of bridging the infrastructure gap. At another level, it could hold valuable lessons for government agencies in how not to implement PPP projects. The airport metro link collaboration was something of a showcase.

Lessons in failure

As Indians increase in aspiration and wealth, it is inevitably reflected in their diet. Eggs, of course, and milk products. But the increase in demand is perhaps most visible for protein-rich foods like meat and poultry. While the supply response to the increase in demand for meat and poultry hasn&rsquo;t been enough to control a steep rise in their prices, at least a ramp-up in supply capability can be imagined and planned. When it comes to seafood, however, little of the same vision comes into play. After all, is not India surrounded by sea, rich in rivers? Will not the ocean provide? Alas, no. The output from marine fisheries is undergoing a prolonged stagnation. The total availability of seafood has remained static at around 3 million tonnes since the 1990s &mdash; though, thankfully, fish supplies from inland waters have maintained a steady uptrend. Clearly, a sizeable proportion of the sustainable fish production potential of India&rsquo;s fisheries sector remains untapped.

Broadening the nets 

Following the government&rsquo;s decision to increase the price of diesel and introduce a cap on the number of subsidised gas cylinders available for household use in September, there was a reasonable amount of hope that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had learned some lessons. First, that it was essential to reduce the fuel subsidy bill, the most obvious component of the ballooning central fiscal deficit.

Dithering on all cylinders

What happened at the Haldia dock complex in West Bengal last week is likely to be compared with Tata Motors&rsquo; decision four years ago to abandon its Nano car project in Singur, less than 40 kilometres north of the state&rsquo;s capital city of Kolkata. In October 2008, Tata Motors decided to pull out of the small-car project as the state government, then led by the Left Front, failed to provide adequate safety to its employees who were being threatened by a protest movement spearheaded by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee.

Haldia's Singur moment

As voters in the US go to the polls, they will know that the contest between the Democrat incumbent and his Republican challenger is expected to be close. According to the Pew Research Centre&rsquo;s election weekend survey, Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by just three percentage points when the probable decisions of undecided voters are accounted for. Mr Obama has received a slight last-minute surge thanks to his competent handling of the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Not only did 46 per cent of Mr Romney&rsquo;s supporters indicate their approval &ndash; including, famously, New Jersey&rsquo;s colourful Republican governor Chris Christie &ndash; 63 per cent of swing voters did, too. All eyes, therefore, are on the nine battleground states in which both candidates are frantically campaigning.

Light under a bushel

The Congress party&rsquo;s rally in New Delhi on Sunday cannot quite be dismissed as business as usual. True, there were the usual highlights: frequent mention of the &ldquo;aam aadmi&rdquo;, a hearkening back to the party&rsquo;s history. But the symbolic value of the occasion should not be understated. The party&rsquo;s president, Sonia Gandhi, and its possible next leader, Rahul Gandhi, both spoke of their firm support for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his reform programme &mdash; even though it is no secret that many in the Congress prefer the government to go easy on fiscal restraint, reduction in subsidies and investment enhancement efforts. Such unequivocal public support from the party&rsquo;s leadership for the government&rsquo;s economic vision is rare.

Not business as usual 

The investigation ordered by the Lok Ayukta court in Karnataka into the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) project, which has the mandate to build the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC), consisting of an expressway and five townships, is significant for two reasons. One, despite being headless for some time, the Karnataka Lok Ayukta is not a toothless organisation; it played a key role in B S Yeddyurappa losing his chief ministership. The full investigation now ordered is based on the preliminary investigation initiated by the assertive Santosh Hegde. Two, among those to be investigated are three former chief ministers of Karnataka of different parties: H D Deve Gowda, S M Krishna and B S Yeddyurappa. This is likely to be a long-drawn-out affair, and the final denouement cannot be anticipated.

The expressway mire

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 606 - Editorial Comment