Arrest the fall...soon

A falling rupee pushes hopes of economic recovery further beyond

Several pundits have projected that the Indian economy will be back on track in 2013. However, almost half of the year has gone by but there are hardly any indications of recovery. What makes such chances even more remote is the plunging Indian currency, which fell to a historic low of 57.54 against the US Dollar (USD) on June 10, 2013. The next day the rupee depreciation worsened to a new low of 58.35 vs. the USD. Several financial analysts have started believing that the rupee will drift further south towards 59-60 vs. the USD in the days to come. Can India hope to recover from the ongoing economic downturn with a currency that is fast losing all semblance of holding its own?

Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram has tried to nullify the impact of a depreciating rupee saying, “panic (in) the market is unwarranted”. Chief Economic Advisor Raghuram Rajan, in a conference, confidently stated that “the weakness in rupee could be a temporary phenomenon.” But the current scenario indicates otherwise. As the depreciation of rupee makes imports costlier, there is no doubt that the weakening currency (which has devalued by over 7 per cent against USD during the current fiscal) will make it tougher for our government and the RBI to contain the current account deficit and check inflation.

On the other hand, exporters are celebrating as they get to earn more local currency for every unit of foreign currency worth of goods and services sold. The Indian IT sector is expected to reap a windfall as its revenue depends overwhelmingly from overseas markets. However, it would be naive to expect our exports to offset the adverse impact of costlier imports. The country's import bill is set for an exponential jump in light of the bulge in the cost of crude imports. Crude oil import accounts for 70 per cent of our fuel requirements and the ongoing currency depreciation will invariably aggravate the CAD situation besides also stoking domestic inflation as rising fuel prices will have a cascading effect.

Voicing her concern over the sliding rupee, Radhika Rao, an economist with DBS Bank says: "A weak rupee can upset the easing inflation trajectory, raise CAD financing concerns and up the currency risks for offshore borrowers. This might also raise another hurdle for the central bank to cut rates." In order to allay such apprehensions, India will need to quickly take steps to restore stability to its currency.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Down and out in Sarai Khaleel

Once razed to the ground in Emergency, a 65-year old roofless Urdu school now faces closure. Firoz Bakht Ahmed reports.

The Congress may have announced the creation of five minority universities in its never-ending quest to play the vote bank card, but it is unable to protect one school which caters to children from poor families in Delhi’s walled city, an institution once demolished by the party’s city elite in the heyday of the Emergency.

The Qaumi Senior Secondary School, a 65-year old institution which has on its rolls poor Muslim students from Sadar, Qasabpura, Quresh Nagar, Bara Hindu Rao and Kishanganj in the Walled City of Delhi, is in terminal stages of closure.

In the salad days of the Congress family cabal which ran Delhi like a personal fief between 1975-1977, the school was razed to the ground in the presence of then DDA Commissioner BR Tamta, Sanjay Gandhi’s friend Rukhsana Sultana and Jagmohan (now with the BJP) on June 30, 1976, on the promise of being rebuilt in the neighbouring premises: the justification was the construction of ‘janta flats’. The flats have long been sold out but the school never found space.

Temporarily, it was shifted to the Eidgah where it has remained since then. Now the Eidgah management has served an ultimatum to the school asking it to move after 37 years of existence there.

The Qaumi School was founded after Partition in 1948 when it was set up with funds raised by poor Muslim residents of the area. It was taken over by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in 1960 as a primary school and in 1975 was raised to the higher secondary level.

Since its callous demolition, the school has perpetually faced an uncertain future. For one, it has functioned with minimal infrastructure; a few tents under tarpaulin sheets, a moth-eaten blackboard and creaky furniture passing off as a classroom. Vermin have not just damaged school records but have all but eaten away into the school’s now almost non-existent library. Nearly 70 percent of its furniture and equipment was stolen when the school was forced to shift in 1976.

During monsoon, the school practically closes down because of water logging. If that was not bad enough, a make-shift laboratory under a tin roof is blown away if the weather is inclement!

“Every time there is a dust storm, rain or a cold gust of wind, over 500 students in the ragged tents huddle together wondering when this official apathy will end,’’ says M Atyab Siddiqui, legal affairs secretary of Friends for Education, an NGO devoted to improve the lot of this hapless school.

The school’s manager Abdul Malik Qureshi says exposed to such natural vagaries it is students who suffer the most. Students report sick due to hot sand storms in summers and chilly winds during winter.

“The plight of students mostly drawn from families of book-binders, muezzins, imams, carpenters, box-makers and petty hawkers is pitiable,’’ says Atif Rasheed, a young BJP leader from Qasabpura.

Since 1976, students passing out of Qaumi School have not experienced a roof over their heads, a far cry from the time the 23-roomed five-storeyed building with more than 600 students in Sarai Khaleel area, was pulled down.

Senior economics teacher Furqan Ahmed says it is irreligious in Islam to run a school on Eidgah grounds. While the post-Emergency resettlement programme rehabilitated other residents and shopkeepers in Shahzada Bagh and Inderlok, nothing was done for the school – apart from a slew of hollow promises.

Naim Querishi, member of the Qaumi School Old Boys’ Association, says a memorandum accompanied by affidavits signed by thousands of residents of the Bara Hindu Rao area was given to the then President of India, Zail Singh and freedom fighter Aruna Asaf Ali.

He reels off an impressive list of VIPs who have been contacted for help: Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Chandra Shekhar, Rajiv Gandhi, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Sikandar Bakht, Arif Mohammed Khan, Tara Chand Khandelwal, Jai Prakash Agrawal and Jagmohan.

In 1991, Jagdish Tytler, then area MP and Union Communications Minister, tried to get school land in Dwarka, Narela or Pitampura but the plan proved unfeasible; poor students had no means to travel from old to outer Delhi. “We informed DDA that moving to the area allotted by them was akin to closing the school,’’ says ex-principal Azhar-ul-Hadi, adding, “most students are below the poverty line and come walking.’’

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Digitisation drives players to step up their DTH play

Of the six major DTH players in the fray, Dishtv commands a comfortable lead over the others. But with Tata Sky shedding its premium tag and Airtel and Videocon offering more interactive services, the contest is getting keener. By Sanjay Kumar

The mandatory cable TV digitisation is helping the Direct-to-Home (DTH), or satellite TV players, to expand their subscriber base, which stood over 48 million last year. While phase 1 of digitisation saw around 10 million TV homes in the four metros convert to digital, over 90 million analogue cable TV homes are estimated to go digital by the end of the fourth phase in December 2014. For the uninitiated, digitisation is being carried out in four phases. In the first phase, which ended on December 31, 2012, the four metros switched to set-top boxes (STBs). In the second phase, 38 cities in 15 states moved to STBs by March 31, 2013. In the third phase – the deadline for which is September 30, 2014 – all urban areas of India have to switch to STBs. By December 31, 2014, the entire country will have to switch to STBs.

As a result of this digitisation drive, the DTH sector, which has clocked phenomenal growth ever since the category was first introduced in India, is set to grow at an even more furious pace. In 2003, when the first mover and the country’s largest DTH player, Delhi-based Dishtv, launched India’s first DTH service, not many people knew about the technology and its advantages. The entry of other players such as Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Big TV, Airtel and Videocon in the following years has added traction to the market. From one service provider and a little over half-a-million subscribers at the end of FY2006, to six players and 48 million plus subscribers now, the DTH industry has come a long way in an analogue cable-dominated market.

The industry is expected to add 11-12 million subscribers annually for the next couple of years and is estimated to take it subscriber count to 55 million by the end of the current fiscal. According to Media Partners Asia (MPA), Dishtv continues to lead with a market share of 28% while Tata Sky falls a distant second with 18% market share. Airtel Digital TV and Sun Direct both come next with 16% share. Yet, the biggest surprise, according to MPA, seems to be Videocon. Despite being the weakest player in the DTH market a year ago, it showed strong growth and has overtaken Reliance’s Big TV with over 11.4% share and about 6 million subscribers.

In fact, as part of the mandatory digitisation, companies in the DTH and digital cable segments are now engaged in an interesting tussle, vying to maintain their existing subscriber base as well as increase market penetration. The reason is simple. India is the second-largest pay-TV market in the world, with almost 120 million subscribers and a reach of 48% of Indian households. As it is, STAR India’s statistics show that DTH is emerging as the key growth driver for the overall pay-TV industry, growing at an impressive 74% as compared to 15% for digital cable and 11% for analog cable. According to industry veterans, value-added services are proving to be a game-clincher for DTH, and the popularity of value-adds such as interactive education for students, farming advisory content and religious content are helping DTH operators to woo more consumers into their fold. “Integrating interactive capabilities into basic DTH packages is an increasingly important initiative for operators,” says R.C. Venkateish, CEO, Dishtv.

Moreover, Dishtv  and Tata Sky are not the only DTH brands reaping the dividends from the shift in customers’ preference to digital. According to Shashi Arora, CEO, Airtel DTH, “The number of customers shifting to digital TV from analog has been witnessing a growing momentum due to the digitisation drive across the country. As a leading DTH player in the industry, Airtel DTH has been bagging 25% of all new customers that join the DTH bandwagon every month.”  Like Airtel, Videocon was a late entrant in the DTH field but it has an impressive record in adding subscribers. It crossed 4 million subscribers in 2011 and added another 2.1 million until June last year.

According to a recent Rediffusion-Y&R’s Brand Asset Valuator survey, though Dishtv comes through as the clear leader brand in the DTH space, the other brands that lead the category are Tata Sky, Tata Sky+, and Videocon d2h. Airtel Digital TV also finds a place, lagging slightly behind the rest. The survey notes that the two players to have successfully built 'Differentiation' into their brands as a compelling proposition that stands out in the mind of the customer are the market leader Dishtv and the late entrant Videocon d2h. On the other hand, early mover Tata Sky enjoys the highest awareness and regard among consumers. Newer players like Airtel Digital TV and Videocon d2h are seen as ‘Customer Caring’ and ‘Innovative’, respectively. When it comes to “Total Consideration” scores, Dishtv again leads the pack, followed by Airtel Digital. In fact, 45 percent of households clearly see Dish TV in their consideration set.

With all the six major DTH providers competing for consumer’s attention and business, the ones with more aggressive marketing strategy and flexible plans that offer consumers value for money without compromising on quality and number of available channels will stand to gain the most. Dishtv, as the first major DTH provider has benefited from the early mover advantage and will likely continue to be the lead contender.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Overhaul the intelligence set-up

Our agencies should have a more organic relationship

India faces complex security challenges, which have the potential to derail its economic and social progress. But there does not seem to be any broad-based exercise to reform the country’s intelligence apparatus and make it more pro-active and in line with the pursuit of the nation’s internal and external policies. Whatever piecemeal restructuring has been attempted from time to time, have mostly been crisis-driven and not a comprehensive needs-based attempt to address the structural flaws in the intelligence set-up. So even while we have been eviscerating our intelligence institutions over the decades, the recent attempts to ‘monitor’, ‘coordinate’ and ‘oversee’ this largely dysfunctional apparatus have only created even more layer upon layer of meta-institutions.

Let's take the example of some of those countries which are known for their intelligence-gathering prowess. The UK has just one intelligence agency, the MI-5 that oversees both internal and external intelligence operations. France has four and China one (Ministry of State Security). The US has the highest number of investigation agencies among the developed nations, but even its overall number does not exceed 15. In contrast, India has more than 25 internal and external intelligence agencies -- most have been found of working at cross-purposes instead of complementing each other. As a result, despite their numbers, Indian intelligence is proving to be the soft underbelly of the country with each agency functioning in self-created silos.

The failure of our intelligence agencies to provide for real-time intelligence and advance warnings of developing situations cannot be overstated. But this can happen only by sharing and using multiple databases, including those maintained by the National Intelligence Grid, NATGRID, the Crimes and Criminal Tracking Network and System, CCTNS, and the Intelligence Bureau-run intelligence sharing hub, the Multi-Agency Centre, MAC. Instead, what we get is nebulous intelligence analysis provided by the different agencies that are often in the dark about the investigations carried out by their peer agencies. The sorry outcome of this kind of haphazard sleuthing is that Indian intelligence agencies have time and again failed to perform by producing meaningful, actionable and timely internal and external intelligence.

Even in those cases, where Indian intelligence apparatus has succeeded in busting terror and espionage rings, it has not been able to provide accurate information which could be developed into concrete evidence that stands judicial scrutiny (as was the case with MI-5’s unearthing of the plot to blow-up trans-Atlantic flights over American cities).

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA