Hygiene doesn’t make it too often to the media. However, as anyone who’s spent more than 24 hrs in India knows, the lack of adequate toilets is a huge, huge issue.

Two links on that subject: Bloomberg – India Failing to Control Open Defecation Blunts Nation’s Growth and a more rigorous analysis from Nimai Mehta -The Preference Bias in Sanitation: Explaining Failures in Public Provision

Here is the full text of Satyam CEO Ramalinga Raju’s resignation letter

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I invite readers to take a journey with me into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who by addressing the opportunities I see today, will perhaps shape the future of India.

It is a novel effort from Sramana. Wouldn’t it be great to engage more Indian entrepreneurs’ imagination around this series?

Other segments of the running series can be accessed at MIT India, Urja, Lucid, Darjeeling, Renaissance, Gangotri, Maya Ray, Elixar, Bioscope, Thakur, AdiShakti, Framed Ivory, Oishi,  Doctor At Hand, Doctor On Wire, and NCTV.

Though I have never invested in the shares of Reliance Industries, my recently gleaned understanding of the world petroleum scenario has made me respect the company’s vision in its refining projects. As I mentioned once earlier, RIL’s existing refinery, and the one nearing construction, reportedly have unparalleled flexibility to process heavy, high-sulphur (so-called sour) crude, especially that emanating from Iran. This crude sells at a huge discount to other crudes; once it is refined into diesel, though, RIL is able to sell the resultant distillates, especially diesel, into a world market which is thirsty for such products.

Most mature consumers, the US especially, have made no investment in refining capacity over the last 2 decades, and strategic thinkers in the petroleum industry go so far as to say that RIL’s investments are changing the pattern of world flows in petroleum and petroleum products.

For this reason, I have recently turned from a bear on RIL to a mildly positive neutral. Until last week, that is. With Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh all but in the ruling coalition, suddenly life has become difficult for Mukesh Ambani. The first salvo across his bows was a minor irritant, namely the questioning of concessional import duty paid on two private jets.

More significantly, there are now calls for a ‘windfall tax’ on profits RIL is making on its refining operations. Nothing could more arbitrary than such a tax; windfall taxes have been discussed in the US, on the extra profits oil companies make when commodity prices suddenly ramp up – the implicit logic being that the companies have done nothing to earn this extra profit. I disagree with such taxes, in any case, since anyone who invests in an industry, resource-based or otherwise, runs the risk of prices being lower than he anticipated – in which case he is not compensated by the exchequer.

But in the proposal that RIL be taxed, all one sees is the vindictiveness of those opposed to him. If RIL is making higher profits than other refineries, this is due to its far-sightedness in investing in a more complex and sophisticated refinery. The profits accruing from such an operation are far from a ‘windfall’, a term normally used to describe a lottery win, for example.
If this nonsensical suggestion is accepted by the government, it will send out a signal that Indian governance is of the banana republic variety.

Mohit Satyanand is consulting editor at Outlook Money

This article talks about a program for Jains to donate money to help teach Jain students for free. It seems like a nice idea. Perhaps other groups (Patels, Jats, Chettiars) can follow their example. However, it may be a bad idea if you think that such charity should be open to all, not confined to one group. The latter is more equitable but it may not generate the level of donations that a more focussed program might generate. Perhaps this is something your blog should debate?

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That’s one of the proposals Sushant Singh puts forward in his article on moving towards an endgame in Jammu & Kashmir:

…unemployment among the youth of the valley remains to be adequately addressed. Handing out of doles and packages to the state government and public sector institutions is not the solution. An alternative would be to incent the private sector, perhaps even outside the state, with an offset to employ a certain percentage of people from Jammu & Kashmir.

The idea of converting the entire state into a virtual special economic zone (SEZ) has been mooted. The state has a special status under the Indian Constitution. So do SEZs. What is required is the repositioning the state to one that leverages its special status to achieve socio-economic development.

It would also require a rebalancing the distribution of fiscal transfers from the central government between the public and private sectors.

This will undermine the separatists’ main economic grouse—step-motherly treatment by the Centre and no attempts at development in the state. [Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review]

There is no truth to his claim that Gujarat’s poverty reduction figures are the result of it shifting the goalposts. He presents insufficient evidence to prove his claim about the public health system’s failings. In contrast, the reduction in the infant mortality rate—the barometer of a public health system—suggests that public health delivery is likely to have improved. His argument on the widening rural-urban divide falls flat for want of evidence. He makes wrong associations to imply causal links between low agricultural productivity and a decline in the state’s production of foodgrains, while falling into the illiberal trap of denying farmers a way out of agriculture. He offers incomplete facts to mischaracterise Gujarat’s power sector, which happens to be among the best in the country. And he dismisses the state’s investment and employment record without bothering about such inanities as facts. We saw that the UPA government’s inability to reform India’s restrictive labour laws is hurting Gujarat’s ability to translate the investments it is attracting into more jobs for its people.

Shivam is on firmer ground on the Sardar Sarovar project: according to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report, the state’s water authorities diverted water designated for “drought prone areas” to the urban areas of Gandhinagar. It is good to see Tehelka—whom one would usually associate with the anti-dam agitation—making these arguments. Similarly, Shivam might have a point when he talks about people displaced by development, underscoring the need for India to make its property rights regime more robust.

Where does this leave us? Well, that apart from some clever juggling of facts, Tehelka doesn’t really offer enough evidence to support its conclusion that Gujarat is ‘just another socio-economically vulnerable state’. The Congress party in Gujarat, Shivam writes, “wants ‘development’ to be the key issue in the elections”. More power to it. The interests of Gujarat’s electorate will be best served if it can present robust and well-supported arguments to argue where and how the state could have done better. Now that would cause some tehelka, wouldn’t it?

I was at the New York aquarium last week, which was somewhat unusual, given that the only fish I like are the ones that come with chips. Even more unusual: I stood in line for thirty minutes to transform myself for six minutes, into a deep-sea diver and experience the depths of the ocean, all via a 3-D show.

That’s why this Times Online article struck a chord, about people in India queuing up to experience a flight that doesn’t really take them anywhere. Only, this is not a 3-D effect, it’s a proper plane. Sans one wing and half the tail, but a plane nevertheless. There are stewardesses (if you can call them that) who move up and down the aisles offering drinks. And even a fake pilot with announcements about the turbulence in the sky! I asked myself if any of the “passengers” experienced air sickness? That might be pushing it though — after all, how much can one expect for just Rs 160 (USD 4)?

“I see planes passing all day long over my roof,” Selim, a 40-year-old tyre mechanic was quoted as saying. “I had to try out the experience.” [link]

This raises a question: how is Second Life doing in India?