The Gold & The Beautiful!

What if on your next wedding anniversary, your well read wife quite sweetly tells you to gift her jewellery in the form of a mutual fund, & that too in a demat form?!?! Yes, we know, you’ll think she’s finally gone off her rockers completely. Not that you would have required such an intellectual reason to accuse her of that infirmity, but we’d still advise you to delay calling your marriage lawyer that fast dear cowboy Clint, for your horses might quite not be that well lettered.

For it’s not just investing in gold with mutual funds that’s jiving up the domestic Indian markets currently, but also that of doing the same in a dematerialized form. And for starters, there are three in a row to do the honours for your wife in the gold Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) arena – Benchmark Asset Management Company (the first to launch a gold fund), UTI Asset Management Company, followed by Kotak Asset Management Company.

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank The Sunday Indian

Russia should concentrate its efforts on the development of its economy

Nearly all areas of policymaking have been in flux since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Defense strategy, as Zolotarev explains, is no exception. For example, in 1992 then President Boris Yeltsin created a special government agency, the Russian Security Council, to help formulate the country’s national security strategy. It was supposed to be a group with a broad vision, charged with considering everything from the country’s defence priorities to citizens’ civil liberties. But its influence was short-lived, and the task of formulating security and defence policy quickly shift ed to the Ministry of Defence. Instead of balancing multiple interests, Russia returned to the Soviet notion that the priorities of the state trump everything else. Both the old establishment and the new political elite could agree on one thing: they were unhappy about Russia’s loss of superpower status and the fact that Western powers were penetrating the space that “legitimately belongs” to Russia – the former Soviet republics. If early Post-Soviet defence doctrines stressed threats of domestic terrorism or breakaway provinces, then more recent versions stress an external threat – the United States. Zolotarev’s article is a sober assessment of the present thinking in Moscow, and it goes a long way toward explaining the fiery Russian reaction over the US missile defence plans in Europe. There is no doubt that Russia’s policies, particularly its combative stance on defence issues, are more than reminiscent of the Soviet days. Putin’s government is an impressive one. Liberal? No. Democratic? Hardly. But Putin and his team had a plan to restore Russia’s great-power status & they have executed it consistently & conscientiously...

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank The Sunday Indian

“If the farmers abdicate their responsibility, moksha is impossible for even saints.”

Bemoans Devinder Sharma, noted food and trade policy expert, to B&E, “The government’s agriculture policy should be more aptly termed as the ‘farmer exit policy’. The official vision envisages to ensure that by year 2050, about 400 million poor framers should quit their farmland and be deprived of their livelihood, in order to hand-over the agriculture to the corporate sector.” That the government is paying only lip service to agriculture is amply proven by the fact that more than half of the cultivated area in India is devoid of irrigation facilities. Not surprising, as agriculture has only 0.8% and irrigation a mere 0.13% share in the 2007-08 budget. The combined expenditure on agriculture, animal husbandry, dairying, irrigation, cooperatives and agricultural R&D is a paltry 1.6% of the total expenditure. Compare this to the fact that agriculture’s share of the European Union’s budget is a massive 34% (from year 2007 till 2013).

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the brilliant leader of India’s Green Revolution, had shared with us in the past the critical problems facing this sector. Interestingly, he and the eminent farm-sector expert, Abhijit Sen, brought out the lopsided agricultural development policy of the government in their latest report.

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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank The Sunday Indian