India Inc's Unique Challenges

Plenary session of the International Futures Forum (IFF) headquartered here.

IFF brings together specialists and experts across disciplines, encouraging participants to think laterally and stay open to learning, no matter how high they rank in their vocation. In the process of finding solutions, ‘IFFers' undertake a learning journey, live with the problem and work towards a solution together with all the stakeholders. This approach of collectively working towards solutions, rather than imposing them from outside, is ideal for Indian conditions, marked by complexity and ongoing multiple transitions.

Bottom of the pryamid

Indian business today is in a unique situation that calls for much more than the standard strategic management models. Let me elaborate. First, Indian business, in order to succeed, has to necessarily cater to the bottom of the pyramid where purchasing power is still low but individual aspirations are high and there is a growing demand for globally comparable products. Second, domestic business is increasingly exposed to global competition and yet has to absorb the higher cost of infrastructure and other public goods and services, including security, normally available in other countries at relatively subsidised rates. Third, Indian industry may continue to face serious constraints such as rigid labour markets, higher costs of capital, higher transactions costs and a degree of uncertainty, as distinct from risks, in the investment environment owing to the nature of domestic politics and the relatively autonomous Indian State.

urbanisation to be actively facilitated & comprehensive capacity-building programme for urban governance.

increasing urbanisation, problems relating to slum expansion, shortage of housing and traffic confusion, all make living in India's 5,161 cities and towns difficult.

Our urban population grew from 290 million in 2001 to 340 million in 2008 and is expected to reach 590 million by 2030.

From 35 cities with million-plus population in 2001, the figure is to reach 68 in 2030.

Six of them will be mega cities with a population of 10 million or more.

During the ten-year period from 1991 to 2001, the total number of cities and towns in the country grew from 3,768 to 5,161.

A substantial part — as many as 4,720 of these — are towns with population of a lakh or less, which means they are bound to grow and expand beyond the present limits, and fast.

If 58 per cent of India's GDP came from urban areas in 2008, it will be 70 per cent by the year 2030.

Cities will contribute about 85 per cent of the country's tax revenue.

Waste disposal

If cities have such huge importance in our economic growth scenario, what conditions prevail in our cities?

A fare for the poor

One aspect of the Railway Minister's annual budget that most Indians have got used to over the last six years is the absence of any passenger fare hikes; in the popular imagination a ‘good' railway budget is one that may tax freight but that leaves passenger fares untouched. Yet the Indian rail authorities have to find ways to not just offset the rising cost of ferrying an increasing number of passengers at ‘uneconomic' fares, but also to enhance its rolling stock and services to keep pace with an increasingly competitive environment; road freight is nimbler and quicker with its ‘door-to-door' advantage and the Railways have been losing ground even as they have to cross-subsidise passenger fares with higher freight charges.

This is inevitable in a country such as India, where, as Mr Samar Jha, the Financial Commissioner, Indian Railways, recently told this newspaper, 80 per cent cannot afford even the current fares; the irony is that those fares are unsustainable from the network's point of view. Passenger fares have, over the decades, become a politically sensitive issue and the Railway Ministers have got around this conundrum by introducing luxury, upper-end train services such as the ‘Duronto' trains that they would not feel guilty raising fares on. This hardly helps mitigate passenger service losses that are close to Rs 20,000 crore. Add to this the rising wage bill and the extra payouts to staff, such as that engendered by the Sixth Pay Commission of nearly Rs 900 crore, that left the network with a paltry Rs 75 lakh surplus and it becomes clear that some innovative schemes are necessary to meet both the objectives of increasing access to rail travel for the poor and keeping the railways afloat, as it were.

One way out of the passenger fare tangle would be to target subsidies that can enable the Railways to offer very low fares for the poor, most of whom cannot even afford current fares. The problem with targeting is identifying the right beneficiary; ration cards have not worked. Now help seems to be at hand by way of the UID project. As Mr Jha hopes, the UID will help identify segments just above and below the poverty line that could be eligible for subsidised train travel. This would free the railways from its current bind regarding passenger fares and facilitate the formulation of a tariff structure for the rest of the travellers based on economic calculations. The Indian Railways, therefore, might just be among the early movers to leverage the power of numbers

What Does Nano Want

"Human beings could begin as free men, be turned into slaves and then rise in politics to become advisors to kings or great charismatic leaders. And Marcel Duchamp showed us that today's urinal can become tomorrow's found object, in the right artistic hands, " he added.

"I believe that the Nano, once it is in widespread use, as it surely will be, will speak for itself, but it will also speak for the approximately 20 percent  of the Indian population," he continued, "who can imagine themselves as owning a car, or as owning a car in the near or middle-term."

"India is not a land which thrives on bigness, in the proverbial American, or Texan manner," he continued.

"It is a SOCIETY AND A CULTURE WHICH THRIVES ON DENSITY, INTRICACY AND MANOEUVRABILITY. Nor, like Japan, is it a culture which makes a cult out of miniaturization, of smallness for its own sake, of sheer shrinkage or reduction or subtraction as an aesthetic."

"Indians are not maximalists, but they are not minimalists either. In India, small is better not because of a hidden Bauhaus sensibility, and less in India is not really more. India is ABOUT MAKING AS MANY ACCOMMODATIONS TO DENSITY, INTRICACY AND SMALLNESS AS A PARTICULAR SCALE WILL ALLOW."

"INDIANS LIKE THE IDEA OF MORE IN LESS."

In a remark which was received with many understanding nods and good amount of laughter, he said: "Any American who has asked for any private space or time in an Indian household which he or she is visiting, knows the look of puzzlement and slight hurt that crosses his host's face when this suggestion is made. INDIANS ARE ACCUSTOMED TO SOCIALITY ON THE ROCKS, UNCUT BY SILENCES, BODILY DISTANCE, OR PRIVATE SPACES."

"What they demand is that this sociality be well designed, obedient to the needs of ritual, the rhythms of the calendar and the needs and roles of kinsmen and friends. The Nano has the potential to spark the Indian taste for packing more into less, not because all Indians are ascetics, or Bauhasians or green philosophers, but because they like the intricacy and the intensity of sociality."

"Take the average second-class sleeper train compartment for the Indian middle-classes," Appadurai said. "What are its features? It is small, it is crowded, it is well-designed, it is cheap and it is taking you somewhere with your companions on your journey, some of whom are family or kinsmen, while others are strangers at the outset."

"Or take any religious procession in any Indian city or village. What are these processions? They are festive self-organising modules of celebration, sociality and density. Or we can strip down this example and think of queues in Indian society, which are ubiquitous. Indian queues are a great lens into the subtlety of non-linear and self-organising social processes, chaotic but not lacking in purpose, norms and outcomes, even while they are irritating, noisy and sometimes fractious."

"Indians know how to get somewhere in the company of others and they appreciate any technology which PUTS SIZE AND PRICE ABOVE SIZE AND SMOOTHNESS."

No case for delaying Companies Bill

Laws of work say that 90 per cent of a project takes 10 per cent of the time. The remaining 10 per cent takes 90 per cent of the timeIn the case of the Companies Bill — drafted in 2009, the remaining 10 per cent is taking forever.

It is reported that the Bill, conceived to cleanse and condense a complicated Companies Act, 1956, may not be tabled before Parliament this session. This is ironical considering the fact that close on the heels of announcing 35 Converged Indian Accounting Standards, a new Schedule VI has been drafted.

Revised Schedule VI

For a corporate entity, Schedule VI is the equivalent of the Accounting Constitution. Initial reports suggested that the revised Schedule would apply to all entities, but a detailed look at the Schedule seems to suggest that it could only apply to entities that need to follow the Converged Indian Accounting Standards.

This could immediately spring a question whether one could have two Schedules under the same Act. When one can have multiple accounting standards, why not two Schedules? The stand-out feature in the Revised Schedule is the requirement to segregate both assets and liabilities into Current and Non-Current- a requirement that IFRS swears by.

Business Line : OTHERS / ACCOUNTANCY : No case for delaying Companies Bill

The Garden of Your Mind

If you think of your mind as a garden, what have you planted? You know what's planted there by what's growing!

If seeds of doubt are planted, life may seem uncertain. The harvest may include questions such as 'Do I deserve to get what I want in life?', or 'Can I succeed?' or 'Will I ever be good enough?' These seeds can be planted very early in life without our consent however, once you find them they must be made into compost! If you find these weeds popping up, dig down to extricate the roots completely. Even after doing this, you may find tiny shoots still. They are hardy plants. Weed often. As you remove each weed, remind yourself that you deserve a beautiful, productive, well-balanced garden.

IFRS: More time will benefit all

Finally the Ministry of Corporate Affairs notified 35 Indian IFRS standards (Ind-AS), without announcing the implementation date. Therefore there is no guarantee that the April 1implementation date as indicated in the road map will be achieved. Standards on insurance, leasing, service concession arrangements, mineral resources, agriculture and rate regulation have not been issued. Accounting for real estate, financial instruments, fixed assets, foreign exchange accounting and first-time adoption have been changed significantly. Optional accounting treatment allowed under IFRS have been eliminated, for example, the option to account for investment property at fair value or preparing profit and loss account using a functional classification in IFRS is not available

The implementation of Ind-AS is also subject to successful enactment of the Companies Amendment Bill, as numerous sections such as 391, 394, 100, 78, Schedule VI and Schedule XIV conflict with the requirements of IFRS.

The tax situation is equally compelling. Typically IFRS accounts are meant for investors. Taxation has a different purpose and hence will have a different perspective compared to an investor. For example, an investor in an investment property company would evaluate the company based on the fair value of the investment properties. Tax, on the other hand, will focus more on rental income and realised profits on sale of the investment properties. Given that the objective of investors and tax authorities will remain different, it is an inevitable consequence that two sets of standards would be required. Taxation authorities cannot indefinitely continue to fill the gap by using court rulings as that would make the entire environment uncertain and litigious.

Business Line : OTHERS / ACCOUNTANCY : IFRS: More time will benefit all

After 2G, it could be coal

An estimated 40,000 MW of private power capacity is coming up over the next six years on coal linkages and blocks handed out to them for absolutely zilch by the Government, based almost entirely on a discretionary, point-based screening system.

What's ironical is that despite getting fuel linkages for free, nearly all of these projects will be selling the electricity generated by them in the market at commercial rates, thereby ensuring that the end-consumers do not stand to gain in terms of cheaper tariffs on account of the Government's largesse in terms of free coal.

Business Line : Today's Paper / OPINION : After 2G, it could be coal

When hard economic realities drive choice

Fear of judgement is also not what largely determines the choice of monetary activity by women in the fringes of society. Most often, it is spurred by economic compulsions. Both films, though so different, seem to converge on this reality.

The second film was closer home – about India. While India's role in medical tourism and providing surrogacy services to the West are known, the film, ‘Made in India' documents the story of an American couple and a Mumbai slumdweller who chooses to be the surrogate mother to their offspring.

Extremely absorbing, the film deals head on with the reproductive tourism business valued at over $450 million. Infertile couples who have to cough up a whopping $100,000 in the US for such services prefer to come here where their dream can be fulfilled for roughly $25,000, including clinic charges, lawyer's bills, travel and lodging, and the surrogate's fee. While the surrogacy trade is growing in India, it operates in a complete legal vacuum with no laws – only suggested guidelines.

The couple does not believe it is exploiting

Business Line : Today's Paper / OPINION : When hard economic realities drive choice

Private firms corner AP coast, little left for Centre

HYDERABAD: Alarm bells are ringing in the Union ministry of shipping after the discovery that huge tracts of the waterfront on the Andhra Pradesh coast has been farmed out to private parties. This aggregates to a total of 348 km of the total 975 km or over one-thirds of the coastline of AP. The extent of the waterfront - a scarce national resource - given out is so large that nothing is left for related activities by the GoI.

The matter came to the fore two months ago when a meeting was convened by the Union shipping secretary to consider a proposal for establishing an integrated port-cum-shipbuilding centre on the coast of AP jointly by the Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT), Shipping Corporation of India and Cochin Shipyard along with equity from the GoI.

Though the representative of the AP government - the principal secretary (infrastructure and investments) breezily told the meeting that finding land - 5,000 acres - would not be a problem, the chairman of VPT pointed out that the private players responsible for operating the ports of Krishnapatnam and Machilipatnam had been given exclusive rights for operations on a huge tract on the coast of south Andhra Pradesh. On this, the representative of the state government offered Nakkapalli for location of the proposed venture. However, the Union secretary himself pointed that this place was in Visakhapatnam district and therefore concentration of ports in the same area would be a matter of concern.

Both the Visakhapatnam and Gangavaram ports are located here. After the meeting the shipping ministry collated data and found that a staggering 348 kms of waterfront had been given to the Krishnapatnam, Machilipatnam and VANPIC ports in the last few years.

A confidential note prepared by the ministry noted that the waterfront had been allotted not only for port development but also under the 'garb of port exclusive zone'. The note pointed out that after allocation the entire stretch had been cornered by one single group . "It is inconceivable that one such group has the requisite financial and technical resources to exploit such a vast stretch of waterfront on their own...the obvious conclusion is that individuals and business houses have aggressively cornered the waterfront with the objective of leveraging a scarce national resource for trading and achieving windfall projects. Perhaps a similar trend is also taking place in other coastal states such as Gujarat, Odisha and Tamil Nadu which would be required to be verified", the note added.

Even as one-third of the coastline of AP has been given away to private parties, older ports in the east coast of the country have hardly any land. Visakhapatnam port holds 15.3 km of waterfront. Chennai 10.6 km, Paradip 25.8 km and Tuticorin 19.75 km. Even the new private sector Gangavaram port has barely 39 km of coastline under its control. However, there was no illegality in the state government allocating such a huge portion of the national waterfront to these ports. The subject is under the concurrent list meaning that both the state and central governments have powers to allocate the waterfront.

The note says that the draft Indian Ports Act which seeks to provide a new legislative framework does provide a consultative process for the purpose of allocating the national waterfront, but apprehends that by the time this
legislation is enacted the entire waterfront along the coast would have been allocated to private
parties.

But analysts like Lok Satta president Jayaprakash Narayan think that the whole matter smacks of a huge scam that needs to be unravelled in all its dimension.

"This is much bigger than the 2G scam. It is the same coastline where the defence ministry had to shell out Rs 1000 crore for the expansion of Vizag naval base. We have to go to the bottom of

Tata Interactive enters school segment with cloud-based solution

E-learning and simulations company Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), a part of Tata Industries, announced its entry into the school segment in India with integrated learning solution CLASSEDGE.

The domestic schools market, with over 10 lakh government schools and over 2.25 lakh private schools presents a supplemental education market of $15 billion (Rs 67,800 crore), according to Mr Sanjaya Sharma, CEO, TIS.

“With integrated IT and telecom capabilities and attractive and quality content generated over 20 years of experience in the space, we will be able to deliver CLASSEDGE to students and teachers at a very reasonable cost, and quickly,” added Mr Sharma.

TIS' Indian education division was launched in 2010. In each school that signs up for CLASSEDGE, TIS will invest around Rs 1 lakh in infrastructure a classroom initially, and connect the school server to a centralised CLASSEDGE server. Each school will pay TIS a monthly fee for the content it accesses through the tool.

Business Line : Today's Paper / INFO-TECH : Tata Interactive enters school segment with cloud-based solution

Innovation- One of mans most distinct characteristics

Innovation- One of mans most distinct characteristics

: ‘Customise HR for young India or lose talent'

With an increasingly young work force driving corporate India, especially people-centric service industries which account for half of the country's GDP, HR practices will have to be re-engineered to meet the aspirations of individual employees, noted speakers at ‘Metamorphosis', an HR Summit hosted at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Speaking on people challenges in start ups and scaling enterprises, Mr Pankaj Bhargav, CEO, HRMantra Software, underlined the need to keep every employee aligned to the vision. “The younger lot is not ready to accept existing HR systems to evaluate and reward performance. The days of grades and salaries are gone. Whether it is salary expectations or perks, they have their own set of expectations. We need to personalise the HR policy to address individual aspirations,” he said.

Mr Wahid Ansari, President - Operations at security services company TOPSGRUP, said, “The communication aspect internally has to be looked at not just by HR, but by every manager in the system. Organisations need to communicate to the last person in the line, and appeal to individual talents in each employee. Established organisations tend to be rigid with silos and systems. That doesn't work with the younger work force which demands instant gratification.”

Lending perspective to the discussion was Prof. Satyajit Majumdar, Ph.D., from TISS. He noted, “Smaller organisations and start ups are better at adapting. When you have no rigid rules, you can create your own rules.” He added, “This is probably the time to think of competency building at the organisational level. Such competency is lesser mobile than people. The ill effects of people movement can be countered by systems.”

On the need to recognise individual talent, Ms Kalpana Bansal, President, TalentPro, explained the need to explore what is equitable, not ‘total equality'. Mr Ansari said: “Putting a value on the individual employee has become important. It's very difficult to do using existing performance metrics.”

Business Line : Today's Paper / ECONOMY : ‘Customise HR for young India or lose talent'

Wrong approach to food security

Coupons would work better than PDS as a food security mechanism. It is not surprising that the largest support for PDS comes from regions where pilferage is maximum

Business Line : Today's Paper / OPINION : Wrong approach to food security

PE Investment in Schools

“Education and Housing are core needs of India’s emerging consumers. This partnership between two sector leaders will leverage complementary strengths to help address the huge and immediate unmet  demand for K12 education from India’s quality seeking consumers," said Gopal Jain, Managing Partner of Gaja Capital.
There have been several investments in the school managements business since last year. Reliance Equity Advisors, the PE arm of Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital, invested Rs 100 crore in Pathways World School in its debut deal last year. New Silk Route invested up to $25 million in Hyderabad-based Sri Chaitanya Educational Group, one of the largest network of private schools and junior colleges.
India's K-12 segment is a $20-billion market growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14%, said a report by education-focused PE firm Kaizen Management Advisors. Factors like large and growing population, inefficient public system and preferences for private schools and colleges is driving this sector.
Education sector has seen investments of $190 million across 23 deals in the calendar year 2010, according to VCCEdge. This compared to 10 deals worth $128 million in the entire calendar year 2009.

REIT - Real Estate Investment trust

A real estate investment trust or REIT (pronounced /ˈriːt/ rhymes with street) is a tax designation for a corporate entity investing in real estate that reduces or eliminates corporate income taxes. In return, REITs are required to distribute 90% of their income, which may be taxable, into the hands of the investors. The REIT structure was designed to provide a similar structure for investment in real estate as mutual funds provide for investment in stocks.^[1]

Like other corporations, REITs can be publicly or privately held. Public REITs may be listed on public stock exchanges like shares of common stock in other firms.

REITs can be classified as equity, mortgage, or hybrid.

The key statistics to look at in a REIT are its net asset value (NAV), adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) and cash available for distribution (CAD).

What Does Real Estate Investment Trust - REIT Mean?
A security that sells like a stock on the major exchanges and invests in real estate directly, either through properties or mortgages.

REITs receive special tax considerations and typically offer investors high yields, as well as a highly liquid method of investing in real estate.

Equity REITs: Equity REITs invest in and own properties (thus responsible for the equity or value of their real estate assets). Their revenues come principally from their properties' rents.

Mortgage REITs: Mortgage REITs deal in investment and ownership of property mortgages. These REITs loan money for mortgages to owners of real estate, or purchase existing mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. Their revenues are generated primarily by the interest that they earn on the mortgage loans.

Hybrid REITs: Hybrid REITs combine the investment strategies of equity REITs and mortgage REITs by investing in both properties and mortgages.

Sustaining cost advantage

 He points out that having a demographic advantage and the youngest population in which a large number is not educated enough – and even if educated, lacks in employable skills – would not only deprive the corporate sector of manpower but also create conditions for skill shortage, high attrition rate, and exorbitant salaries thereby undermining the low-cost advantage of Indian corporates.

What anguishes Verma is that investments by the government on roads, ports, power, healthcare and education and so on with the potential to catalyse development could come to nought ‘because of the scale of corruption where 80 per cent of investments goes into wrong hands' and because there is no compliance and consequence management, and bureaucracy has a maze of rules and regulations that are enough to drive away the most passionate entrepreneur!

 Be perpetually prepared, be flexible, be innovative, build capacity, manage change, and manage partner ecosystem.
 ability to rebalance and reconfigure. In a classic repudiation of the strategic positioning principles, firms must have the capability to switch segments and operate in a plug-and-play mode to respond to opportunities which typically have
Airtel for its leveraging a network of relationships to bring in the necessary skills, technology, and architecture, making a choice of what it was good at and outsourcing the rest to its partners. “The resounding success of Airtel is a tribute to its capability in transforming its partners to become co-creators
 HR deliverables are therefore business deliverables, he calls for measurable value for HR investments; and demands that performance appraisals be not shorn of the understanding of financial dimensions of people performance such as EVA (economic value added), and CVA (customer value added).

Business Line : OTHERS / ACCOUNTANCY : Sustaining cost advantage

Opinion : IFRS and fair value

Business Line : Opinion : IFRS and fair value

‘A personal brand makes up your reputation, image'

“A brand is more than a logo. A personal brand is the sum of your behaviour, attitudes, action and personal style. It's what you are known for and makes up your reputation and image,”

but it is actually the process of building a better perception of yourself among others. So you need to care about other's perception of you as a brand. Most people also think personal branding is difficult. But if you believe in your skills and ability, it becomes easier to sell your brand,” she said.

“In a nutshell, a personal brand is nothing but who you are and so it becomes important for you to create your persona. To separate yourself from the rest of the crowd, create your own identity that enhances your visibility and preserves your reputation,” she said.

‘Personal branding is about identifying and articulating your unique value position.'

Business Line : OTHERS / STATES : ‘A personal brand makes up your reputation, image'

Indian Accounting Standards (Ind ASs) finalised by the Council of the ICAI

These are the near final Indian Accounting Standards (Ind ASs) finalised by the Council of the ICAI and sent to the National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards (NACAS). These are subject to any changes, which may be made by the Government before their notification. Any changes in the Ind AS vis. a vis. corresponding IAS/IFRS are given in Appendix 1 appearing at the end of each Ind AS
Ind AS.

An impact study of IFRS

Conventional accounting measures profit on the income statement as an indicator of a company's performance while simultaneously excluding future profits by matching realised revenues against accrued cost. In contrast, Fair Value Accounting (FVA) defines profit on the Balance Sheet as an increase in net assets over a period. The discomforting factor for many is when the fair value of assets is measured by estimated future cash flows; it could include unrealised future profit. The fundamental accounting principle of conservatism would get the short shrift.

FVA can often be driven by different models and estimates which officially have to be determined by the management.

That leads us to a fundamental question — how will the fair value of assets and liabilities be “negotiated” between management and auditors? We may end up with a long chain of professional referencing where professional valuers, management and auditors flourish in an environment where no one is held accountable by the system, while the increased costs are borne by investors.

All this explains why the top honchos in the ICAI are rooting for IFRS but it is indeed inexplicable why Corporate India, especially those who have no need for foreign capital, have not raised their voice on these lines. Similarly, investor forums too have been silent.

Business Line : Opinion : An impact study of IFRS

Faltering steps of toddlers

The 2011 Census is likely to reveal — for the first time — a decline in the country's toddler numbers, mirroring a general drop in fertility rates. Indications of it are there in the United Nations' latest World Population Prospects, which projects a 1.4 million reduction in India's population below four years between 2000 and 2010, and even sharper falls thereafter

With toddler numbers coming down and exerting downward pressure on succeeding age cohorts as well, the ratio of dependents to the working-age population is expected to fall to 56 per cent in 2010 and to below 50 per cent by 2020 — where it will remain for the next three decades .

Business Line : Today's Paper / ECONOMY : Faltering steps of toddlers

A missed opportunity on IFRS

The Indian IFRS are referred to as Ind-AS, and is a substantially diluted version of the IFRS issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. IFRS and Ind-AS differences are caused not only because the standards are diluted
key differences are with regards to accounting of real estate sales, foreign exchange losses, agriculture accounting, investment property, first-time adoption requirements and financial instruments


Business Line : Today's Paper / OPINION : A missed opportunity on IFRS

Where are our inventor-businessmen?

In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. With its advent, a worker, who was earlier able to remove the seeds from only one pound of cotton daily, could generate over 50 pounds of cleaned fibre. The gin transformed the US, so much so that ‘King Cotton', till the 1861 Civil War, was contributing more than half of its exports.
Whitney was an inventor who was also a businessman. So were Cyrus McCormick — whose mechanical reaper in 1831 revolutionised wheat farming — and John Deere, who, with his cast-steel plough six years later, made it possible to work the heavy, yet fertile, prairie soils of the Mid-West.

Articles published in Taxmann

Articles published in Taxmann

Infatuated with big money

What the excision of those reportedly corrupt hides is more troubling: A value code spreading through the interstices of society as the dominant discourse, a world outlook by which an increasing number of Indians are beginning to live, and which threatens (by its very exclusiveness) to divide civil society even more, if not unravel it.
That value code rests on the belief in markets and capital as the defining lights of growth, itself narrowly contained in the idea of volumes where quantity matters more than quality, where the urgency to increase the size of the pie focuses attention, and not just of policymakers, on a set of indicators.
That faith in numbers — manifest in the attention articulate Indians have begun to invest on the GDP, the Sensex, automobiles, the demographic dividend and the growing club of Indian billionaires — flows from a slow but steady acceptance, now increasingly accelerated, of a faith in money as the agent of inversion.

Myth called Indian middle class Ashok Upadhyay

Three years ago when India's GDP growth was astonishing the world, a study by the McKinsey Global Institute predicted that in two decades its consumers would be a force to reckon with. This is how Eric Beinhocker, Diana Farrell and Adil S. Zainulbhai gushed in The McKinsey Quarterly of August 2007: “The same energy that has lifted hundreds of millions of Indians out of desperate poverty is creating a massive middle class centred in the cities.”