Indian Economy: News and Discussion (Apr 1 2011)

[Theo_Fidel]

Short term No. The numbers are brutal. But the aim is not to replace ALL base power.

Medium term though Renewables can/will become an increasing share of all additional capacity. Increasing it to most of, about 60%-80% of all capacity add is very much feasible. And predictable. No one knows where tomorrow's coal/oil is coming from. But we have to start now. PV price has fallen so dramatically, one should not look a gift horse in its mouth. The path to $0.30 cents a watt panels is open. No show stoppers. There was a time Solar was $70 per watt and even the researchers are stunned that this technology, of all the 100's pursued, has paid off.

Long term our energy source will become intermittent. There is no choice in the matter. It is either Solar/Wind or Nuclear Breeder(U-235 fails math). All others are marginal and the math fails.

Even Nuclear Breeder struggles with scaling beyond even 10%. And the costs will be astronomical. The cheap U-235 once thru is only a curiosity per the math. Thorium is still uncertain. There are so many unresolved commercial show stoppers in the way it make one nervous if it will ever payoff. Even then it is still 50 years away tech. One reason the PFBR quietly switched to Pu-239. Keep in mind that world Nuclear will be shutting down at a rate of about 10% a year over the next 30-40 years, as the plants built till the slow down in the 80's, slowly phase out. This means world needs to add 30,000MW of Nuclear every year just to stand still. Nothing like this build out is even under consideration. So Nuclear will gradually sunset and become ever more marginal.

I've been having a long series of e-mails with a couple of Prof's I know, running numbers and they are very clear on the medium to long term future. The scientific consensus has settled on this for the past few years now. According to them there are 3 test states the US is using. Hawaii, California and Texas. The medium term, 2035 plan is to have Hawaii transition to 75% renewables. California is to get to 30% by 2020 and to 50% by 2035. Texas, if you can believe it, (no coal) is on its way to 30% renewables (mostly wind) by 2020 and is quietly aiming for 50% Renewables by 2035, all the while spiting and sneering at renewable power. It is not accidental that the USA is quietly spending $50 Billion building massive massive transmission lines into the windy Midwest and into the sunny Southwest. USA has the Geographic scale to spread out power and smooth out the intermittency problem. Also about 30,000 MW of pumped storage is wending its way through permits and another 50,000MW is in planning stage. They are preparing for it big time, including the Republicans. Don't believe the stuff you hear in the media.

We on other hand, other than JNNSM are snoozing as usual. I'm sure the coming coal price spike and shortage will hit us with no preparation as well.

How much we displace is a function of how prepared we are. If we can get to 60%-80% with cheaper technologies we can then strap in the more expensive afterburners. Mostly Salt/Thermal storage technologies. These are very cheap. Right now about 2 cents a kw. Projected to decline to about 0.05 cents a kw with scale.

The idea is to have a daily spinning thermal reserve. If we need roughly 700,000 MW by 2050, we need at least, 200,000 MW of 100% plf storage to displace the last 30% of Coal/Nuclear (maybe). This will be the hardest process. The costs will be against us, as the coal plants will be fully depreciated and the temptation to keep burning the cheap coal will be high. But if we do it, we will need a daily salt spinning reserve of roughly 1 km3 or about 1.8 billion tonnes of molten salt! This would be at heat efficiency of 30% or so. If we can get greater efficiency we would need less salt. Like I said the last 30% will be brutal.

[Prem]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/01/3 ... store.html
Starbucks, Tata to open 50 Indian stores this year

,

India — Starbucks aims to open 50 outlets in India by year's end, through a 50-50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages, the companies said Monday.
Tata Starbucks Ltd., as their venture is known, hopes to capitalize on the rising aspirations - and fattening wallets - of many Indians, who are eager to partake of the global latte life.
"What we are seeing is an evolution in lifestyles," said R.K. Krishnakumar, vice chairman of Tata Global Beverages. "In some ways the distinctions between the developed world and the developing world are blurring."He said the partners would initially invest 4 billion rupees ($80 million), with the first outlet to open in Mumbai or New Delhi by September.Long known as a nation of tea drinkers - despite a rich tradition of coffee in the south - India has embraced coffee house culture with a vengeance

[ramana]

Lets see. How it stacks up to two yards madras kaphi!

[putnanja]

Tata-Starbucks venture will pose a competition to the coffee day type outlets. The traditional madras type coffee in steel tumblers will continue to coexist with starbucks, just like it does today with Coffee Day etc. In Bangalore, the traditional filter coffee in darshinis (South Indian fast food restaurants) cost around Rs 15-18, while the lowest priced coffee in Coffee Day is Rs 60.

Interesting anecdote when my parents came to US for first time. My parents drink small amount of coffee(traditional steel cup sized, small compared to starbucks) more frequently. Since the "small/tall" sized starbucks was still a lot compared to what they usually drink, we would do a "by 2 (as we call in Blr)" by asking for an empty cup

[Shankas]

^^^
My mom did the same. She'd call it bucket size

At Starbucks in US/Canada they have a size called "Short" which is smaller than "Tall". They don't advertise it.

[nachiket]

Lets see. How it stacks up to two yards madras kaphi!

Their real competition would be Cafe Coffee Day, which seems to be huge success based on the number of outlets. Starbucks may have to adjust their flavor for Indian tastes though. Can't speak for everybody but personally I found the CCD coffee to be miles better than the bitter brown water they give you in Starbucks.
Of course, filter kaapi served in steel tumbler still rules.

[Prem]

Knowing TATA , they might end up buying majority stake in Starbuck and make them another feather in the cap along with Tea.

[Singha]

for hot coffee and breakfast, nothing beats the VFM factor and efficient service of the local darshinis...and you can go in your banian and torn lungi and nobody would give you a ugly look. 4 people can eat a decent breakfast for 250/- bucks consisting of idli-vada, dosa, coffee, kesari bath. nobody beats that VFM.

[Hari Seldon]

Oops. wrong dhaga.

[anishns]

India's per capita income crosses Rs 50K ($1000)

Now to make it 10 times in less than 10 years and then we will have arrived!

[abhischekcc]

When I was in BLR 3-4 years ago, I used to have breakfast of Masala dosa, 2 Idlis and one filter coffee for Rs 23/-

[chetak]

When I was in BLR 3-4 years ago, I used to have breakfast of Masala dosa, 2 Idlis and one filter coffee for Rs 23/-

Today just one darshini dosa is Rs 28/=

[Yogi_G]

Great news

India factory PMI jumps to 8-mth high

[neel]

India's per capita income crosses Rs 50K ($1000)

Now to make it 10 times in less than 10 years and then we will have arrived!

What is meant by per capita income here is NNP per capita. NNP per capita includes those remittances from workers in other countries that are reported to the government (i.e. none of them) and excludes anything that is officially classified as depreciation recovery. For comparison, at PPP, the EU has a per capita income of $24000. At PPP, India has a per capita income of $2500. So a factor of 10 in real terms would put us where the EU is today. If most of that growth is inflation, however, we will not have arrived, as you put it, for another 15 years after that. Basically, India needs 25 more years like 2010-11.

[Prem]

Amazon to India
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/l ... 7420.story

Another Seattle company is heading to India. First Starbucks announced plans to open 50 outlets in India by year's end. Now Amazon.com is launching Junglee.com, a smaller version of its global shopping portal. Junglee offers 12 million products from more than 14,000 Indian and global brands. The site allows shoppers to compare prices, but most actual purchases must be made through a network of third-party retailers. Indians will be able to buy shoes from Reebok, computer gadgets from Microsoft India, clothes from Fabindia and luxury leather handbags from Hidesign. (Associated Press)

[Prem]

Look at the Picture btard put in here.

India's Intractable Inflation
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj

Investors should understand that this fall was payback from the spike in inflation the previous year. As economists say, it is the base effect. This phenomenon will keep driving down inflation and the headline rate could fall below 7% by March. But the effect will be fleeting. Underlying inflation in India is still vicious, judging by core inflation, which strips away food and fuel price changes, running at an annualized 10%.
Come May, inflation will likely resurge. By July-August headline inflation could well print in the 8% range. The good news is that the RBI is aware of this possibility. That's why it has reserved cutting interest rates so far, though it cut banks' reserve requirements last month.This might come as a surprise to many, who still believe that the "normal" inflation rate in India is 4-5%. But headline inflation in India has been continuously high from 2008, with the global financial panic in 2009 just offering an intermission. Food inflation, the origin for the current spurt in generalized inflation, last registered below 5% in October 2005, barring four months from November 2007 to February 2008Since these wages got indexed to inflation in 2011, this welfare program has actually institutionalized a vicious wage-inflation spiral. Higher food inflation now automatically translates into higher wages that raises input costs for all goods. This economic shockwave causes a bigger one: The government raises the administered floor price for many agricultural products and increases food inflation further. Since rural wages act as the benchmark for construction and informal workers, wages in urban areas have risen in tandem.
These are structural problems that need fiscal responses, which is perhaps why monetary policy hasn't been entirely effective. Take this year. Much of the impact of the RBI's tightening was undone by the fiscal deficit expanding by 1-1.5% of GDP and adding to demand. In the face of falling inflation and a rise in growth concerns, the RBI has found it hard to keep monetary policy on a tightening bias, suggesting that the central bank's target has shifted from a ceiling on inflation to a floor on growth.
The fiscal response most necessary is to persuade companies to invest. What kept headline inflation down in the mid-2000s was a sustained surge in corporate investment that kept adding to industrial capacity. But since mid-2008, corporate investment has plunged 4% of GDP with no signs of rebounding.

[kmkraoind]

Honey, I shrunk the fiscal deficit, and I don’t know how - Firstpost

Hilarious and at its best , but sadly its the reality too

[nawabs]

2G decision and its implications for fiscal deficit.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 854863.ece

The Supreme Court verdict in the 2G case, quashing 122 telecom licences and ordering auction of the allocated spectrum within four months, may have come as a body blow to the government and its decision-making process, but the net import of the ruling in the long term should be positive — be it in terms of judicial transparency, signals to foreign investors or consolidation of the telecom sector.

Of more immediate import, however, would be the fiscal cushion that the order has made available in 2012-13 to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who, along with his mandarins, is neck deep in trying to narrow the gap in fiscal deficit targeted at 4.6 per cent of the GDP (gross domestic product) for 2011-12.


3G gains

Considering that 3G spectrum auction in April 2010 along with BWA (broadband wireless access) fetched the exchequer a windfall of well over Rs. 1 lakh crore, with spectrum auction alone accounting for Rs. 67,719 crore, auction of over 500 Mhz of 2G spectrum at current market rates in the next four months is likely to rake in close to that figure, according to ballpark estimates.

In the event, even as the Finance Minister may have to show a fiscal deficit of say 5.6 per cent of the GDP, or about one percentage point higher than budgeted, in his revised estimates for the current fiscal, he may well be able to dub the overshoot as an aberration and stick to the path of fiscal consolidation during 2012-13 and target for a fiscal deficit of about 4.1- 4.3 per cent of the GDP.

“I am putting pressure on my colleagues in the CBEC, CBDT ... and on my behalf Secretary [Revenue] is continuously breathing [down] their neck to improve revenue because our demand and requirement is much more,” Mr. Mukherjee said on the sidelines of a Customs function here.

Asked to comment on the court verdict, he said: “Judgments have come and we will have to examine judgments and its implications. Government will examine it.”

Though Mr. Mukherjee's statement was terse, evidently owing to the likely political ramifications, it is clear that the financial implications are going to be positive. For, except for the telecom operators who are directly affected by the judgment, both India Inc. and the stock markets have welcomed the ushering in of transparency and certainty in policy decision-making in the telecom sector.


Weeding out non-serious players

For one, the exercise of re-allocating 2G spectrum through auction is expected to weed out the non-serious players in the sector through consolidation by way of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). It is clear that a number of players have entered the field to make a fast buck and are averse to putting in their own funds through larger equity stake.

Since a number of new players are largely playing on debt in the sector, a grey area remains on the exposure of banks and how they may be affected in the spectrum overhaul process. Thankfully, a large part of the exposure is through bank guarantees and that is a saving grace for the lenders.

[Aditya_V]

2G decision and its implications for fiscal deficit.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 854863.ece

The Supreme Court verdict in the 2G case, quashing 122 telecom licences and ordering auction of the allocated spectrum within four months, may have come as a body blow to the government and its decision-making process, but the net import of the ruling in the long term should be positive — be it in terms of judicial transparency, signals to foreign investors or consolidation of the telecom sector.

Of more immediate import, however, would be the fiscal cushion that the order has made available in 2012-13 to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who, along with his mandarins, is neck deep in trying to narrow the gap in fiscal deficit targeted at 4.6 per cent of the GDP (gross domestic product) for 2011-12.


3G gains

Considering that 3G spectrum auction in April 2010 along with BWA (broadband wireless access) fetched the exchequer a windfall of well over Rs. 1 lakh crore, with spectrum auction alone accounting for Rs. 67,719 crore, auction of over 500 Mhz of 2G spectrum at current market rates in the next four months is likely to rake in close to that figure, according to ballpark estimates.

In the event, even as the Finance Minister may have to show a fiscal deficit of say 5.6 per cent of the GDP, or about one percentage point higher than budgeted, in his revised estimates for the current fiscal, he may well be able to dub the overshoot as an aberration and stick to the path of fiscal consolidation during 2012-13 and target for a fiscal deficit of about 4.1- 4.3 per cent of the GDP.

“I am putting pressure on my colleagues in the CBEC, CBDT ... and on my behalf Secretary [Revenue] is continuously breathing [down] their neck to improve revenue because our demand and requirement is much more,” Mr. Mukherjee said on the sidelines of a Customs function here.

Asked to comment on the court verdict, he said: “Judgments have come and we will have to examine judgments and its implications. Government will examine it.”

Though Mr. Mukherjee's statement was terse, evidently owing to the likely political ramifications, it is clear that the financial implications are going to be positive. For, except for the telecom operators who are directly affected by the judgment, both India Inc. and the stock markets have welcomed the ushering in of transparency and certainty in policy decision-making in the telecom sector.


Weeding out non-serious players

For one, the exercise of re-allocating 2G spectrum through auction is expected to weed out the non-serious players in the sector through consolidation by way of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). It is clear that a number of players have entered the field to make a fast buck and are averse to putting in their own funds through larger equity stake.

Since a number of new players are largely playing on debt in the sector, a grey area remains on the exposure of banks and how they may be affected in the spectrum overhaul process. Thankfully, a large part of the exposure is through bank guarantees and that is a saving grace for the lenders.

What the Supreme Court has done by cancelling the license is put the oneness of the Lost Licenses to punish he guilty. Believe the Europeans who lost out on this are going to take it on the corrupt cabal for messing up the earlier auctions

[gakakkad]

Investor appetite for Indian markets is back: Mobius

Investment guru and executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, Mark Mobius, is bullish on the Indian markets, which have outperformed its global peers, posting almost 11 percent gains in January.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Mobius says the bear market of last year was actually a correction in the ongoing bull market, which was caused by too many IPOs (initial public offers) in 2010. “As you know, it was about $540 billion of new emerging markets IPOs,” said Mobius. However, now that the correction phase is over, more foreign money is being pumped into overall funds — a sign that investor appetite is back.

[Theo_Fidel]

FWIW GDP growth is revised...

[Suraj]

Never mind the GDP figure. It's the savings/GDP and investment/GDP figures that concern me - they're back down to 2008-09 levels. Not good at all.

[gakakkad]

Never mind the GDP figure. It's the savings/GDP and investment/GDP figures that concern me - they're back down to 2008-09 levels. Not good at all.

Could the decline in investment be attributed to the high interest rates ? When interest rates are high , savings should go up right ? A 10% interest rate is a big incentive for saving . So if both investment and saving are down , could it be that we are underestimating the inflation ? I mean we are investing less and saving less , so we are spending more on basic stuff . Is this assumption correct ?

[Aditya_V]

Also, when Real Estate Prices are really high and Intrest rates are high. Most Middle class savings income is taken out right there and given to the builder mafia.

[Singha]

fuel prices, school fees, vegetables, pulses, rice, milk products, eggs, plane fares, clothing... all ++ . egg and paneer has witnessed 100% growth in last 6 yrs span.

the contribution to formal national savings like bank deposits by the middle class is far more than the poor. the rich class have other means of savings that involve black economy and does not appear in govt stats.

[gakakkad]

>>the contribution to formal national savings like bank deposits by the middle class is far more than the poor. the rich class have other means of savings that involve black economy and does not appear in govt stats.


I have a feeling that the average savings percentage are skewed upwards a bit by the rich and upper middil class , by having multiple benaami accounts in banks and even post office savings scheme .

I ll be most interested in the savings figures of 11-12. Stocks were doing badly. Most mutual funds were whacked . FD was the best option for the year. Besides gold. If savings percentage show a decline in 11-12 then we might have a problem .

[Suraj]

Could the decline in investment be attributed to the high interest rates ? When interest rates are high , savings should go up right ? A 10% interest rate is a big incentive for saving . So if both investment and saving are down , could it be that we are underestimating the inflation ? I mean we are investing less and saving less , so we are spending more on basic stuff . Is this assumption correct ?

Hard to say where the drop came from without a breakdown of savings between household, private corporate and public sectors. It's possible most of the delta came from the latter, even though the household sector could have been expected to increase its savings thanks to higher interest rates.

[amit]

FWIW GDP growth is revised...

Despite the slight dip in GDP I think the sliver lining is the agriculture sector growth number. This means more money in the hands of the rural population. Should translate into better demand for industry this fiscal.

However, I fully agree with Suraj on the savings/GDP and investment/GDP numbers. That's bad news.

[vina]

Just got back from my son (15 months old) tonsuring / "mundan" ceremony over the weekend yesterday. My dad's ancestral temple is Vaitheeswaran Koil, which is like 15 kms from Mayuvaram (I cannot bring myself to call it Mayiladuthrai, represented by that doofus Mani Shankar Aiyar), which is the area where my dad's forefathers hailed from.

Took the train and got down at Kumbakonam (45 kms away from Mayuvaram) and met my folks who had reached earlier and checked into the hotel. From there we drove down to Gharbha Rakshambal temple, then Uppiliappan Temple, Swami Malai and then drove down to Vaitheeswaran Koil some 65 kms away.

Now, these parts are in the absolute heart of the densely populated (near kerala and higher kind of density, hardly a gap between villages), extremely fertile Kaveri delta lands and had a good look around.

When I look at the photos from my tonsuring ceremony XX years ago (I am just slightly older than Raja Bose, who is over the hill but pretends to be young ) and from what I remember from the visits long long ago, those areas had visible poverty, broken rutted roads, hard manual labor doing the work, and bullocks pulling the plow and women and men harvesting by hand and standing ankle deep in water in sowing season.

Not anymore. The last I went was for my daughter's tonsuring some 6.5 years ago. Then too, the place had become vastly changed, there was even an A/C "deluxe hotel/cottage" kind of thing available (earlier, we used to stay with the priest's family in his house near the temple, now all the streets around the temple, old homes have been pulled down to become "lodges") . But this time, I noticed something radical. I could not see a SINGLE harvest being done manually. I saw dozens of combine harvesters in the winding roads. There was zero poverty, no one looked destitute, few or no beggars compared to what I remember from 25/30 years ago, absolute world of difference. All the houses were pucca, well built, decent sanitation (no more open drains in TN, all underground drainage, massive difference from even a decade ago, and hence far less mosquitoes and foul smell). Places like Kumbakonam, Mayuvaram, Sirghazi etc looked in great shape.

All piss,plogress and plosepelity onree. So basically I would think that in places like those poverty and destitution that one saw some 25 years ago or even as recently as a decade ago has been firmly wiped out, all the HDI indices will he going vertically up and if this continues, those places will start looking chi-chi in another 25 years with very "posh" hotels etc even in places like Vaitheeswaran Koil (there was another one coming up that I saw) and stuff to cater to the folks coming back to their "kul devata" etc.. Think of it , for most folks who trace their roots there places like Swami Malai,Vaitheeswaran Koil are a must go back to and it was great to see that all is well and fine and dandy in those places.

Hmm, so it has taken 60 years since we got rid of the Brits to set things right finally here since the Cholas. But it has been done largely I think.

[Suraj]

vina: Great story!

Does anyone know more about the 'construction has been taken as part of industry' footnote in the graph above ? It seems to be a recent classification change. For quite a while, we've heard that India has a very small industrial sector as a percentage of GDP compared to other Asian tigers, and how our 62% services/GDP is more like a mature economy. Part of that is because construction, which accounts for 8-10% of activity, is (was ?) grouped under services, not industrial activity.

[vina]

vina: Great story!

Yes, it is. I forgot to add. All the small cluster of houses a little away from the road usually had a dirt track connecting them to the road and that tends to get muddy and flooded during the rains leaving puddles in front of the house on the streets and a gloopy muck of sand.

Not anymore. Thanks to Amma , a "Permanent" solution has been made. A thick (I would think 8 in or so) concrete road has been laid from the road to all the houses as access road , so that there is no need to redo this again for kingdom come.

All Piss ,Plogress and Plospelity onree. Have a nice day!

[Theo_Fidel]

Contrary to the rest of the world, construction in India has been separate from industry and manufacturing for a long time and makes our industrial sector seem smaller. This policy has not changed. It appears Business Standard did it on their own.

[Prem]

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/414627 ... s?rid=-100
Large data center coming to India, as regional demand booms

Tulip Data Center Services is setting up a 900,000 square foot (83,612.7 square meters) data center in Bangalore, the largest in India, to benefit from scale and target growing demand for collocation, cloud, and managed services in India and neighboring countries.Some 75,000 square feet of "raised floor space" that could be occupied by IT systems and networking racks is already available, and top multinational companies including IBM and Hewlett-Packard have signed up as customers, said H.S. Bedi, chairman and managing director of Tulip Telecom, the parent company, in a phone interview on Tuesday.IBM was the design consultant for the data center which, has a power usage effectiveness of 1.5., Bedi said. PUE measures the energy efficiency of a data center by dividing the total power consumption of the data center, including cooling and lighting systems, by the power consumption of IT systems.Tulip will benefit from economies of scale, as other third-party data centers in India are typically smaller, with up to 175,000 square feet of area, Sharma said.The data center is already attracting both local businesses and foreign companies that have operations in the country. Customers in the Middle East and South East Asia are also looking to set up data recovery centers at the Tulip Data City, Bedi said.ndian data center capacity is poised to touch 6.6 million square feet by 2016, with service providers driving majority of the growth, Gartner said in November. The data center colocation and hosting market in India is estimated to reach US$609 million this year and $1.3 billion in 2016, according to the research firm.

[Gaurav_S]

Seems like racket of fake currency is getting bigger and bigger day by day. This is the third time I have read some news in newspaper about an attempt to get fake currency in the market. Its really hurting.

3 nabbed with Rs 2L fake currency

This people had came from Malda, WB. This place seems very close to international border and seems to be hot bed for these activities.

[Aditya_V]

Vina, Mayavaram Kumbakonam Highway is a single lane road, and the road from Tirunageswaram to Thiruvinagaram where Uplliappan Koil is situated is really narrow. My Grandfather native village is 3.5Km from there, Last I was there last July. While progress is there, there is long way to go.

[chaanakya]

Seems like racket of fake currency is getting bigger and bigger day by day. This is the third time I have read some news in newspaper about an attempt to get fake currency in the market. Its really hurting.

3 nabbed with Rs 2L fake currency

This people had came from Malda, WB. This place seems very close to international border and seems to be hot bed for these activities.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/221 ... -fake.html
Puducherry police alerts NIA on fake currency

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other key Central Agencies’ have been alerted and their assistance sought as a fake currency racket busted in neighbouring Puducherry, seems to have “international ramifications” and targeted at “destabilizing” the Indian economy.

Ismail, an accused arrested by the Puducherry UT Police while trying to “pump” the fake currency notes, hails from Jharkhand and had confessed to having picked up the wand of counterfeit notes from Malda in Bengal, Puducherry IGP J K Sharma told Deccan Herald on Saturday over phone.

Looks like Malda in one conduit point.

[SwamyG]

Is there something about small villages and towns? If the people have access to the necessary infrastructure and trade, then there is less signs of poverty. Whereas the story is different with bigger cities. I saw something very similar in Costa Rica. The country side was beautiful, the small villages seemed to be neat and pretty. People dressed and moved about nicely. Some had cars, some had bikes while others had cycles. Is it the population? Is it the attitude that comes with living in a city where one does not know the neighbor?

It seems providing access to clean water, good medical facilities, school, financing and trade opportunities will rise our teeming villages into happiness and prosperity.

[anishns]

SwamyG it's been a while since I responded to your post
I 400% agree on your last statement:

providing access to clean water, good medical facilities, school, financing and trade opportunities will rise our teeming villages into happiness and prosperity.

However, IMVHO I don't think it's fair to compare the villages of Costa Rica to Indian villages. Firstly what you call Villages are infact small towns with a largely homogenous population, 99.9% of which is christian. The one thing which is starkly evident in Costa Rica viz-a-viz India and other Central American regions, is the literacy rate. Everyone can at the least read and write and is kept well informed by regular government sponsored campaigns on the importance of cleanliness and good civil habits. This in itself goes a long way in preventing diseases from spreading and keeping the general population healthy.

Now, I am not going to claim that this is the case all over the country, for e.g. on the eastern coast (Atlantic) you will find the kind of poverty that we are accustomed to in India. There the population is generally black, of African descent and has been ignored, whereas the other coast has flourished thanks to increased tourism. Lawlessness is rife and organized crime a serious issue.

Overall I would like to see Indian villages, be similar to the ones you saw and that can only happen with improvements in infrastructure and overall development. If there are decent facilities provided, a lot of villages can benefit not just from being Agrarian but, also increased tourism activity, similar to Costa Rica. But, unfortunately the govt. of the day is busy building it's vote bank and wasting money on unsustainable "Garibi Hatao" schemes like NREGA, FSB etc rather than truly empowering the villagers by providing them with the basic facilities that you mention....

[pankajs]

For home loans, now pay a bigger pie of property value

MUMBAI: Prospective home loan seekers will now have to shell out 25% to 30% of the value of a property as against 20% until now with the Reserve Bank of India asking banks to exclude stamp duty, registration fee and other levies from total cost.

Experts believe the RBI's latest move is aimed at curbing speculation in the property market. They point out that in December 2010, in order to check excessive lending by banks, RBI had directed commercial banks against lending more than 80 per cent of the value of a property for loans above Rs 20 lakh and not more than 90 per cent for loans below Rs 20 lakh.

Property experts say the RBI's move does not bode well for developers as it may lead to a further drop in home sales.

[Prem]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/ ... 7620120207

TEX-Fitch: Indian slowdown confirmed, but cyclical not structural

Feb 7 - Fitch Ratings reiterates that it expects a cyclical slowdown
rather than a structural downturn for India, following the Central Statistics
Office's advanced estimate of national income Tuesday.
The Indian government's advanced estimates of 2011-2012 GDP show a growth rate
of 6.9%, down from 8.4% in 2010-2011, confirming that the country is
experiencing a sharp slowdown. The slowdown probably reflects the authorities' efforts to correct an
overheating economy. Last year we revised our real GDP forecast for India in
2012 to 7.0% from 7.5%. The cyclical downturn could help further ease inflation,
which appears to have passed its peak. This will give the Indian central bank
room to move to a more accommodative monetary policy, after recent increases in
policy rates. In addition, recent increases in India's PMI data suggests that manufacturing
sector activity may be close to bottoming out.The Indian government's estimates suggest that GDP growth in the second half ofthe fiscal year will be around 6.5%, down from 7.3% in the first. We maintain
our view that India is not facing a structural deterioration in its potential
growth rate of 7.5%-8.5%.