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OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT AMUSED
2008-03-10 14:04:00
The oldest and possibly the most accessible entertainment centre for youngsters in the capital, Appu Ghar, down its shutters forever. A brainchild of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Appu Ghar, named after the cherubic mascot of the 1982 Delhi-Asiad, was set up in 1984. The closure was in the offing after the Supreme Court in January ordered the Urban Development Ministry to hand over the land, which the park’s management had taken on lease from the International Trade Promotion Council in 1984, to the apex court and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. - The land lease had expired in 1999. While the footfalls had decreased over the years and prices of tickets were not as attractive as before, Appu Ghar’s closure will mean the end of one of the last surviving open spaces for children in this city of over 14 million people. In fact, much before Mumbai’s Essel World, Kolkata’s Nicco Park and Kerala’s Veega Land were set up, this amusement ...
More About: Children , Culture

CHANGE THE GEAR NOW!
2008-03-10 13:56:00
Globally the automotive industry is a key economic sector and drives the emergence of a strong employment-led manufacturing sector. India is no exception. We are the second largest two-wheeler, the 11th largest passenger car and the fifth largest commercial vehicle producer-in the world. In fact, this sector can enable the government to fulfill its two promises: promoting manufacturing and generating employment. An additional car manufactured generates five jobs, a commercial vehicle 13. The current share of employment in the manufacturing sector is around 12 per cent as against 50 to per cent in Malaysia, 62 per cent in Korea and 31per cent in China. Growth in the automotive sector could significantly change this. The government’s Automotive Mission Plan 2006-2016 (AMP) in aims to make India a global automotive hub, accounting for 10 per cent of the GDP and creating 25 or million additional jobs by 2016. The industry is investing over Rs 75,000 crore, of nearly 50 per cent ...
More About: Travel , Change , Gear

For The Next Government?
2008-03-09 17:28:00
The Economic Survey is, for the most part, a dour defence of the UP A government with occasional flashes of exdting strokeplay, contained in a section cautiously titled ‘policy reform options’. Most of the reform options are likely to enrage the Left and are thus likely to be implemented by a future government. These include-measures intended to bring about a supply-side response such as amending the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act to allow private investment, and privatising old mines.   These also call for transparent and quick award oflicences and faster environmental clearance. Reforms which require legislation, such as raising the FDI limit in insurance to 49% are right now not feasible, many other supply-side measures like selling old oilfields to attract FDI, bundled with advanced oil recovery technologies, can be carried out by the executive. Listing of unlisted PSUs, such as BSNL, should also be possible. The bold proposal for 100% FDI in private banks prepared...
More About: Government , Culture

UGC GIVES NO MARKS FOR INNOVATIONS
2008-03-09 11:13:00
When in doubt, set up a committee to prepare an action plan. This is the way our education establishment works and the University Grants Commission (UGC) is no exception. It has been directed by the HRD Ministry to work out; you guessed it, an action plan on the modalities of establishing 16 new varsities and 370 new colleges in backward blocks. The UGC, it would appear, has suddenly woken up to the fact that universities with 500-600 affiliated colleges are facing difficulties in monitoring quality. Like delimitation, the UGC also wants to carve out smaller universities from existing ones. Nothing wrong with all this; we do need more central universities and colleges. But will this really solve the problems in the higher education sector? Going by past experience, the answer would be no. The 11th Five Year Plan is to increase - outlay in higher and technical education ten times, an amount of Rs 84,743 crore. This is a positive step and could, if utilised effectively...
More About: Culture , Finance , Innovations , Marks

LET SUN NOT SET FOR IT
2008-03-09 11:08:00
Information technology and telecommunications are the key sectors supporting the country’s phenomenal growth. We expect the finance minister to give due importance to the sector while finalising his Budget. One of the top concerns is the expiry of tax concessions available to the IT industry after fiscal 2008-09. The industry gets tax exemptions under the section 10A/10B of the Income-Tax (1- T) Act under the software technology parks of India (STPI) scheme. The scheme, however, would come to an end in 2009 under the sunset clause mentioned therein. The finance ministry should realise that the software sector is one of the largest employers in the service sector and is growing at over 33% year. Employment by the sector is growing at 26 % a year. It is also a major contributor to export earnings. Total export from the sector is expected to touch $40 billion this year and $60 billion by 2010. Also, the sector contributed 5.3% of the country’s GDP in fiscal 2...
More About: Finance

RIGHT CODE FOR NRI?s
2008-03-09 11:05:00
There are real life encounters which defy legislative solutions. The huge Indian diaspora in 130 countries abroad, today exports from their foreign homes unique family law problems in the Indian domain which do not find ready answers in existing Indian matrimonial legislation. Hence, judicial innovation to carve out individual relief in distinct NRI family disputes is necessitated on a case-to-case basis. But these are not consistent statutory remedies. In a unique recent decision of the Delhi High Court, the order of the matrimonial court in the wife’s divorce petition in India, granting her monthly maintenance of Rs 11 lakh besides awarding her Rs 1lakh in litigation expenses to be paid by the NRI husband living in the US, was set aside on two grounds. Firstly; the husband was denied opportunity to contest proceedings in India and secondly; because the matrimonial court had treated the income of the husband in USA as the measure to grant monthly maintenance ...
More About: Culture , Code

LET BYGONES BE BYGONES
2008-03-08 16:00:00
The visit to Wagah border was supposed to make me feel good as an Indian. ‘The pomp and pageantry of the Beating Retreat and the Change of Guard within handshaking distance of the Indian and Pakistani forces at the Wagah border make a charming spectacle: says the official website of Amritsar. I’d heard a lot about how the soldiers of the Border Security Force march so erect, how they raise their legs so high it’s a marvel they manage to stay on their feet without losing their balance etc, so was looking forward to Wagah as one of the high points of my visit to Amritsar last week. Then why did I come away strangely disturbed, with mixed feelings, on balance more of sorrow than of pride or joy? Was it because of the sheer bedlam that preceded the actual ceremony? The indisciplined manner in which the mass of humanity at the barricade some 50 yards ahead of the venue surged forward when it was lowered, causing a virtual stampede? Was it the chaotic clo...
More About: Indian History

CAN WE HAVE A DURABLE RALLY?
2008-03-08 15:57:00
Market Sentiment has been on the mend this week. After that initial dip towards 5000, the Nifty rallied to 5350 before encountering some resistance there. The big question is whether this is the beginning of a durable recovery or a brief flash that fizzles out around 5500, like last time. The two obvious reasons for this week’s strength are global market stability and some pre budget sentiment, in that order. The key to the sustainability of this market rally lies in these two outcomes too. Investor expectations are low this time so it is entirely possible that if the budget doesn’t have anything specifically bad for capital markets we could see the March series opening up well. A sensex move to 19,000 cannot be ruled out then. Global market stability is more important though. There too, a contrarian move could be shaping up against the wall of pessimism that abounds. That, more than anything, could be the most important driver of any global equity rally o...
More About: Finance , Rally , Durable

CAN CRICKET FOLLOW FOOTBALL?
2008-03-08 15:53:00
Since the dawn of international cricket, the game has essentially been played between countries. All the glamour has been associated with international contests like England playing Australia for the Ashes or India taking on Pakistan in either the five-day Test matches or one day internationals (ODIs). International football is, however, essentially either a quadrennial (once in four years) event when the World Cup takes place between nations across the globe or biennial when countries within a continent compete in tournaments like Euro 2008. If Manchester United has fans throughout the world, it is because of the popularity of club football in the English Premier League. It is the football clubs which hire the best players in the universe every year and release them to play for the national teams. The success of the game is based on the annual turnover of clubs like Manchester United which made a whooping 245 million pound-sterling in 2007. It is the clubs which dev...
More About: Cricket , Sports , Football

DO NOT TAKE ANY RISK
2008-03-07 16:38:00
Fateh Lal Bapu is dead. His baithak near the Shreenathji temple in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, has also wound up. The younger generation, be it devotees or residents, have no clue of the bloody scenes this temple town witnessed in 1987. It all began when Ganesh Lal Mali, a former MP, escorted Keyur Bhusan of the Akhil Bharatiya Harijan Sevak Sangh for Darshan at the Vaishnav temple. Later, as they sat and sipped tea at Bapu’s baithak, a crowd swelled and demanded that Bhusan be handed over. His sin: being a lower caste, his entry had polluted the house of the Vaishnav Lord. Bapu swore to protect his ‘guest’ with his life. While threatening to set his baithak on fire, a mob tore Mali’s clothes and nearly killed Bhusan. Bhagwati Prasad Deopura is among the few who witnessed the bloody caste battle. He rewinds 20 years and he spits venom, blaming ‘outsiders‘ for ‘disturbing the peace’ in Nathdwara. In other words, for making Dalits aware of th...
More About: Culture , Risk

RAILWAYS IN BIND OVER PRIVATISATION
2008-03-07 14:19:00
Riding high on the turnaround story of the country’s once-ailing train system, Railways Minister Lalu Prasad finds himself in a bind days before he presents his fourth budget. Should he further privatise the Railways and compromise his commitment to social justice or provide more jobs to those who belong to the lowest strata of the society? The mammoth Indian Railways, which runs the world’s second-biggest network, employed 17 lakh people five years ago when it ran 11,000 trains. The train count has risen to about 15,000, but the number of employees has fallen to about 14 lakh since Lalu took over, said Shiv Gopal Mishra of the All India Railway Men Association (AIRF). He said the trend towards privatization threatened to destroy the system of accountability built up over decades. An estimated 1.8 lakh positions, including 22,000 reserved category jobs, are vacant in the railway. The ministry has surrendered hundreds of other jobs. “When there are n...
More About: Culture , Finance , Privatisation

SAY NO TO NEXT NANDIGRAM
2008-03-07 14:16:00
Two important Bills pending in Parliament seek to amend the Land Acquisition (LA) Act, and to give statutory authority for the first time to the rehabilitation and resettlement (RR) policy, itself revised on the basis of experience since the first RR policy of 2004. Will these twin Bills succeed in staving off further Nandigram s by securing greater justice for farmers and other displaced persons, while expediting at the same time the land acquisition of land for development projects? The two Bills contain several far-reaching improvements. They broaden the definition of persons whose rights must be considered when land is being acquired, to include tenants, formal and informal, and to tribals with traditional rights over forest land. They require social impact assessments to be carried out according to procedures laid down in the new RR Act, which provides for consultation with the project affected families themselves, leading to the preparation of a transparent, pu...
More About: Culture

POLITICAL PARTIES MUST PRICE TO THE OCCASION
2008-03-07 14:13:00
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s job is not exactly easy - and it shows in the way he has to resist all sorts of pressures while he strives to achieve what could be termed as the nearly impossible trinity of fiscal control, reasonable inflation and high economic growth. The government’s decision this week to increase the retail prices of petrol and diesel by Rs 2 and Re 1 per litre respectively is expected to reduce the revenue loss of public sector petroleum marketing companies by Rs 840 crore in the remaining six weeks of the current fiscal year. That is minuscule compared with the overall figure for the year, estimated at Rs 71,800 crore. The government has been time and again issuing bonds to these companies in its I-owe-you mode to effectively subsidise petroleum prices. Though originally intended to keep kerosene prices affordable for the poor, the wholesale subsidisation of petrol and diesel has made the whole thing a freebie even for affluent secti...
More About: Finance , Political , Parties , Price , Political Parties

THIS IS WHAT THE ICONS EXPECT
2008-03-06 16:18:00
Milkha Singh, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa and P.T Usha know what it takes to make an Olympics memorable. All three have experienced the ecstasy of reaching the finals and the agony of narrowly missing a coveted Olympic medal.     ‘Flying Sikh’ Milkha Singh missed the bronze in the 400m sprint in the 1960 Rome Olympics, losing by one-tenth of a second. Four years later Randhawa reached the finals of the 110m hurdles. In 1984, at the Los Angeles Games, Usha lost the bronze medal in 400m hurdles by 1/100th of a second. As India prepares for the Beijing Olympics, these legends analyze the performance of the current lot. All three have modest expectations. G.S. Randhawa said, ?I don’t expect any medals from the Indians considering their recent performances but I think some of them would reach the finals if they manage to improve their current best performances. Long jumper Anju Bobby George has recently crossed 6.60m but I don’t think anything below 7m would do....
More About: Culture , Icons , Expect

DO THEY HAVE A CAUSE?
2008-03-05 17:32:00
In the world of petty politics that involves seeking out grievances where there are none, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has touched a new low. Members of this agit-prop brigade went about ransacking and damaging Delhi University’s Department of History. All this, in the presence of police personnel and media persons. And what was the cause of their incredible outrage? The inclusion of an essay by the late Padmashri scholar, A.K. Ramanujan, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation’, in the recommended reading list for second year History BA Honors students. Ramahujan’s essay is part of a unit called ‘The Ramayana and Mahabharata: Stories, Characters, Versions’ - that includes supplementary readings like the detailed and scholarly introduction by Robert P. Goldman to the Valmiki Ramayana. All this still doesn’t explain why the ABVP goons went on a rampage in one of the country’s most pre...
More About: Culture

EXTERNAL BORROWING TO BE RELAXED FOR PRIVATE PLAYERS
2008-03-04 18:39:00
The government is trying to work out various innovative funding options, including relaxing commercial borrowing (ECB) norms, to fund infrastructure projects. Sources indicated that with domestic interest rates remaining on the higher side, the government might relax ECB norms to make infrastructure projects more attractive to the private developer. Funds can be raised through the ECB route from various sources including from overseas commercial banks, multilateral financial institutions as well as export credit agencies.   Liberalizing the end use of ECB will help construction companies raise cheaper finances. India would need an estimated $500 billion over the 5 years for the infrastructure sector. The government feels that lack of credible and bankable infrastructure projects along with absence of long-term financing instruments as the major weaknesses affecting the growth of the infrastructure sector in the country. “ECB scores over FDI in the above regard, as Indian...
More About: Culture , Players , Private , External , Borrowing

FAITH FORWARD
2008-03-04 18:29:00
For decades now, moderate Islamists have spared no effort to convince the world that Islam and violence are incompatible. But so far, they have been preaching to the converted. After 9/11, Islam has come to be viewed with greater hostility than ever before, in great measure helped by acts of terrorism across the world in the name of the great religion. So it has come as a breath of much-needed fresh air that the influential Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband, long known for its hard line stand, has come out in no uncertain terms against the outrages being committed in the name of Islam. Its rector Maulana Marghoobur Rahman has said, “Killing of innocents is not compatible with Islam. It is anti-Islamic.” This is the first time that a religious institution has so strongly condemned violence in the name of Islam.   Hopefully, the seminary’s statements will reverse the trend of equating Islam with the misguided actions of fanatics. Coming as it does from scholars a...
More About: Faith , Religions , Forward

Will infra sharing lower telecom tariff?
2008-03-04 14:34:00
The Indian telecom sector, consistently adding more than seven million monthly subscribers, is well on its way to reaching the 500-million subscriber mark by the end of the decade. To maintain the pace of this booming growth, operators need to invest towards network expansion and improved coverage in an effort to acquire newer subscribers. According to the Indian regulator, the country in order to reach its targets would need over 300,000 telecom towers, which is almost twice as many as those that exist today. However, such proportions of network roll-outs translate into huge expenditures on part of the operators, who have come together to realise that the biggest way of reducing costs is by way of sharing passive infrastructure components. This not only immediately brings down capital and operating expenditures but also positively impacts their margins. The effects of sharing can be further highlighted by the fact that roughly two-thirds of the incremental subscriber acquisition c...
More About: Finance , Telecom , Lower , Sharing

IS TAX RATE RISING FOR INDIA INC?
2008-03-03 18:22:00
Around 3.5 lakh companies in the country hope to lower their tax burden in the next financial year. The prevailing corporate tax rate is 33.99% and the companies expect the government to scrap the surcharge or lower the basic rate of 30%. The buoyancy in corporate tax revenues may bolster their case for a rate cut. But what is the effective tax paid by India Inc? Effective tax is taken as the ratio of tax amount disclosed by a firm in its financial statement to profit before tax. Factoring in all the exemptions, a large number of companies have paid around Rs 24 as tax on a profit of Rs 100 till December 2007. This is based on an analysis of 3,070 listed companies from ETIG database. What this means is the effective tax liability of India Inc is 24%. The catch, however, is that it has gone up in two years ago. The analysis shows the effective tax rate on income earned in 200506 was 22.5%, which this rose to 23.66% in 2006-07. That is a significant increase when consid...
More About: Finance , Rate

NOW TRAVEL ON e-TICKETS
2008-03-03 17:42:00
‘Passenger is the king’, seems to have been driving mantra of union Railways Minister Lalu Prasad as he unveiled a basket of goodies to make train travel more comfortable and greener. Forget the long queues to book your tickets. You could do it through your mobile phone, if the announcements made in the Railway Budget 2008-09 are anything to go by. Harping on use of IT, the Railways is all set to make ticketing a child’s play. Automated vending machines issuing tickets would be increased from 250 to 6,000 while unreserved ticketing system windows would increase to 15,000. E-booking could now be done for a waitlisted ticket as well. All coaches on trains would have an online display board giving train arrival and departure information, reservation information. This facility would be available to passengers by March 2009. The initiative not only makes travel easier for passengers but could also spell a huge business opportunity for IT companies. The high quality dis...
More About: Travel , Finance , Tickets

DAY TRIPPING IS HARD NOW
2008-03-01 13:28:00
Finance Minister P. CHIDAMBARAM may not have changed rates for securities transaction tax (SIT), but his proposal to treat SIT as deductible expenditure has not gone down well with the trading community. Day traders fear that it will put further pressure on their already wafer-thin margins. However, some feel that the new tax treatment may reduce short-term trading and encourage people to take long calls. According to tax professionals, the current practice adopted by big operators and day traders is to add the SIT amount to the total income, induding income from trading activity and other income, and subsequently, work out the payable tax. Under Section 88E, they are entitled to get tax rebate and can pay only the surplus of total tax over SIT at the end of the year. However, this benefit of setting off income tax against SIT would not be available once the new proposal comes into effect. What will be the SIT impact? Say, if a day trader earns a profit of Rs 300 on a total income ...
More About: Finance , Hard

India?s Fiscal Situation
2008-02-28 15:32:00
As another budget looms, here is the goodnews: India ’s fiscal situation has improved beyond the expectations of most people. Further, the improving trend is set to continue. It doesn’t matter that subsidies are on the rise and the Sixth Pay Commission’s impact will have to be factored in. The sea-change in our fiscal fortunes calls for a rethink of long-held attitudes towards government spending. Many find it difficult to digest the improvement in the first place. There is plenty of quibbling about the correct fiscal numbers. The most commonly heard whine is that the Centre’s budgetary numbers understate the fiscal deficit because some of the oil, fertiliser and food subsidies are being met through the issue of bonds. This sort of quibbling misses the point. The key figures to focus on are, one, the combined deficit of the Centre and the states; and, two, the total liabilities of the Centre and the states. In respect of these two key figures, we are pretty m...
More About: Finance , Fiscal , Situation

LET?S HAVE A LOOK ON THE INTEREST RATES
2008-02-27 12:46:00
Interest rates have started coming down. Large public sector banks like SBI and Canara bank have slashed key lending rates twice in the last one month and home and consumer loan rates have been cut across the board. And all this without the RBI signaling any rate easing in its last monetary policy. While the RBI did urge banks to consider changing rates without any direct cue from itself and the Finance minister has been requesting bank chiefs to lower rates, there could be a couple of other important reasons why banks have started cutting rates proactively.  One, growth is slowing down. In early 2007, the furious pace of credit growth was a problem. Now that the central bank has effectively cooled this tear away credit growth with higher interest rates, we have come to the other end of the spectrum because growth could be lower than desired: The economy is slowing, many sectors are witnessing lower off-take and banks do not want to be in a situation where their bread and butter is...
More About: Culture , Interest Rates , Interest , Rates

VICTIMS HAVE VANISHED
2008-02-26 13:15:00
From an obscure house in Gurgaon to a remote jungle resort in Chitwan, Nepal, where he has been finally nabbed, we have been through a horrific roller coaster ride with the man who is allegedly one of India’s leading kidney dealers. With almost vicarious fascination, we learn day after day of his enormous wealth, he was carrying hundreds of thousands of rupees as loose change when caught, and his palatial homes both in India and abroad. Of his fascination with luxury cars and failed beauty queens. Of his extensive contacts across the world where he found recipients for his gruesome racket. While this ghastly drama was unfolding, reports surfaced of the organised trade in blood right outside premier hospitals in the capital. As each scandal surfaces, we see the nefarious collusion between sections of the medical community and organ traffickers like kidney kingpin Amit Kumar. But that apart, the one piece in the macabre jigsaw that we rarely bother about is that of the victims...
More About: Culture , Victims

IS THE NUCLEAR DEAL SKIDDING?
2008-02-26 12:07:00
So it is official now: time is running out for the India-US civilian nuclear deal. A three-man team of US senators led by Joseph Biden, who heads the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, disclosed this at a press conference in Delhi. Much water has flown down the Yamuna and the Potomac since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush inked the deal in July 2005. It focuses on developing India’s civilian nuclear power programmes in exchange for placing its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. But controversy has dogged it from the word go, with detractors - chiefly the Left partners of the government - deriding it as a potential ’sellout’ of India’s interests.    The truth, of course, is that the Bush administration staked an unprecedented amount of political energy on this agreement, which represents a big change in US policy. Apart from revising domestic law, the US would have to con...
More About: Finance , Nuclear , Deal

DON?T LET THE FEEL GOOD FADE
2008-02-25 13:52:00
Amidst so much talk and analysis of what is going wrong in the economic world today, the one thing that has not been stressed enough is what impact it may be having on the “feel-good” factor for stewards of the Indian economy. The one strong underpinning of this multi-year bull market has been how confident businessmen and investors have felt about the future. This is not as tangible or quantifiable as other economic metrics but every bit as important. After all, businesses and markets are run by human beings. When they feel less confident, they go into a shell, which often compounds the problems which made them less confident to begin with.  Put yourself in the shoes of the CEO of an Indian company and ask what he must be feeling today. Just one quarter back he had unlimited access to capital, the economy was cruising at 9 per cent and the global economy was expected to deal with a US slowdown and come out of it relatively unscathed. Now, it appears the US is probably ...
More About: Finance , Fade , Good , Feel , Feel Good

DOES HE KNOW SOMETHING?
2008-02-25 13:05:00
Dr. Manmohan Singh was worried. No, not worried, but concerned. No, not concerned, but agitated. Yes. When curiosity starts biting viciously, the mind cannot but get agitated. He was, of course, curious. And there seemed to be no way of quenching that curiosity. The media were agog with rumours about an impending cabinet reshuffle. If it had been an official announcement, the PM would not have bothered. He knew that a formal denial would follow. This was a rumour featured in all gossip columns. The greatest gossip of them all, the visual media, were also forecasting a cabinet reshuffle. One can ignore news, but the man who disregards a rumour, does so at his own peril. So the cultured Doctor was sure that there was going to be a reshuffle. But who was going to barge in and who was going to be kicked out? Will the portfolios of the ministers be changed? Who will get what? The PM was anxious to know. Of course, being only the PM and not Sonia Gandhi, he had no right to expect to know ...
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THE LEGEND OF A BIG FALL
2008-02-25 13:01:00
What a shame. The stock that was supposed to double on listing actually lost a fifth of its market value on Day One. One sincerely hopes this ends the mindless flipping game that has dogged the IPO market through this Bull Run. When Anil Ambani and his investment bankers proudly spoke about how $190 billion had come in by way of subscription money; creating history; I had a sinking feeling this was coming. Now the truth is out. Yesterday, all of $2.5 billion of Reliance Power stock got traded, cash and derivatives put together, and even that stock could not be absorbed. Where were those billions that had rushed in to subscribe it? If indeed that had come in to buy the great growth story in Indian power, has it all changed in barely a month? I said it then and I will say it again; these institutional bidders are a bunch of flippers with no regard for the paper they are buying. So, the next time you get all excited about a foreign cited about a foreign fund buying a stock at a lofty p...
More About: Finance , Legend , Fall , The Legend

THE BURIAL OF EMBEDDED VALUE
2008-02-25 12:56:00
When a momentum party ends in the stock market, the biggest hangover is always felt by the “themes” that emerged as most popular during the heady days of bullishness. One theme that gained a lot of currency in late 2007 was “embedded value” or sum of parts (SOTP) valuations. Stock prices that could never be justified by current earnings were easily explained by ascribing value to future business streams of the company. Promoters were only too happy to play along: they merrily announced value “unlocking” strategies from diverse businesses and plans to raise humongous amounts of money in these subsidiaries using the then prevalent market euphoria. So analysts and promoters played this game of make believe to the hilt and investors made money for a while, till the music stopped. One look at the screen today will reveal the carcasses of those great SOTP stories.   Power was the area that promoters wanted to exploit the most. Their eyes must have...
More About: Finance , Embedded

REASON OF AGE
2008-02-24 12:53:00
When does childhood end and adulthood begin? The International Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as any human being below the age of 18. But in India, a signatory to the Convention, there has always been a great deal of confusion on the age below which one is considered a child. For example, the legal age of marriage for a girl is 18 but the age of sexual consent is 15. So, in effect, the law accepts that it is possible for a girl to be married by 15, even though that is in violation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. The Child Labour Prohibition Act defines those below 14 as children and those between the ages of 14 to 18 are permitted to work in hazardous industries. It is with a view to clear this muddle that the Law Commission has sought to make the marriage age a uniform 18 for both boys and girls and the age of sexual consent 16. Of course, this still leaves much to be desired but is a welcome first step. . The bewildering cornucopia of laws ...
More About: Culture , Reason , Indian History