Friday, November 30, 2012

'Stringer' in their stride!

Sony will have to be more realistic in its short term strategy in the wake of new challenges

Sony’s tag line – Like.No.Other; very much seems to live up to its meaning, for Sony Corporation – one of world’s largest manufacturers of consumer durables; and considered to be the benchmark when it comes to product quality and innovation.

Unfortunately, the tagline also seems to fit its appalling losses for the quarter ending September. Seems like the reasons and circumstances, which lead to the appointment of Sir Howard Stringer as the Chairman & CEO of Sony in 2005 are coming back to haunt this consumer electronics giant (Stringer was elevated because his predecessor Nobuyuki Idei was not able to sustain the bottomlines in the midst of commoditisation). In fact, Stringer, at the time of his appointment, was quoted thus, “I got this job in crisis.”

As it appears, the crisis is nowhere near to becoming cris'was'! Net income for the latest quarter declined by 71.8% and stood at 20.82 billion yen ($210.36 million) as opposed to 73.71 billion yen ($745.12 million). But the real shocker was the operating income, which plummeted massively by 89.68% and stood at 10.55 billion yen ($106.57 million). According to Richard Ptak, Managing Partner, Ptak, Noel & Associates, the company’s senior executives did not focus on business fundamentals and misplaced priorities. “Strong Yen versus weak Euro and dollar made their products expensive and the meltdown in US and European markets further augmented the condition,” he avers. A major chunk of Sony’s sales is from overseas markets and a strong yen completely depleted profits especially from the sales of its flat-panel LCDs – Sony Bravia and Sony PlaySation 3. Also, Sony Corp. for the first time included the results of its subsidiaries Sony Ericsson and Sony BMG in its consolidated quarterly results.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Will policy makers ever take technology to the ‘We’?

... and that’s where it will end – ‘I’. Will policy makers ever take technology to the ‘We’? Good question! 

On analysing the Global Economic Prospects 2008 report, it becomes clear that if domestic skills were available to efficiently use the technologies employed, then the Indian GDP could be 4.8 times the current GDP. It’s very obvious that rural telephony and Internet penetration could phenomenally improve the reach of market initiatives and generate further employment in multi-variate sectors. The top performers were able to spread the advantages of IT across their respective countries. But in case of India, the impact of the regional progress of IT was not equally distributed amongst the masses. In spite of campaigns focussing on RTI and e-Governance, the digital-divide can be still felt between the subjects and the government. India stands at 113th position with its e-government readiness dropping by a rattling 26 positions during the last three years. And again, economies like Iran, Maldives and Sri Lanka overtook us. What’s more, India succeeded to find the 54th place out of 69 slots available in The Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness ranking 2007 – pathetic again! Dr. Mark Dutz, Sr. Economist, The World Bank, while talking to B&E suggests that India should promote all the exciting innovations by grassroots entrepreneurs that are bubbling up from bottom of the pyramid. “A specific suggestion is to build on the National Innovation Foundation repository of more than 70,000 innovations and traditional knowledge practices from many districts across India by encouraging private entrepreneurs to commercialise the most promising ideas,” says Dutz.

Imagine the outcome of an IT united India. If all Kendriya Vidhyalayas have IT education and almost all SSIs and SMEs are linked to a central digital portal which allows online international business, India will not longer remain digitally disconnected. One must understand that technology is just not about Internet and satellites, but encompasses every sector, be it health, society, education, corruption, governance et al. Why ITC’s e-choupal model can’t be replicated to help the farmers or why can’t mobile technology be taken to the length and breadth of the country are questions that the policy makers can answer...

Read more.......

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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Monday, November 26, 2012

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My father’s business...

The IIPM Think Tank analyses Indian Railway in ways you cannot imagine: on why a horizontal journey could end up as a vertical one!

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates part of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.

So, a company that is run by 1.4 million personnel and has a network spanning over 63,000 kilometers, running an estimated 18,000 trains daily to nearly 8,000 stations, should ideally be the lifeline and the most indispensable service provider with an impeccable record to boast about. But is that so in reality? Well, surely, it is indispensable; but not by choice, rather compulsion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Sunday, November 25, 2012

The death of the global auto industry

B&E’s Karan Mehrishi dives deep into the auto quagmire and gasps for breath...

The americans are insane[still]!

This August 2008 couldn’t have been more ironic. Here I was supposed to file in the most devastating report I have ever made on the global auto industry, and there I had Audi’s offices requesting me to help them understand how Audi compares with other international auto players and the challenges Audi faces. Ironic because my research on America’s ‘greatest’ companies was complete, and the list of American idols – that is, the biggest five loss making companies America had created in the last year – was staring me on the face! These five stalwarts had a combined loss above $80 billion in the year 2007. What stunned me was that the leader of this bunch was clearly General Motors, with an individual loss touching close to a sickening $39 billion!!! Well, when I’d met Rick Wagoner, Chairman, GM, last year to get his exclusive quotes with respect to his $750 investment in India, I had had no inkling of the times to come, and he’d also been quite confident that “GM wanted to leverage its global resources” to succeed in “such a high growth market.” Strangely, nobody’s been picking up my phones in GM’s Detroit office since then. But Fritz Henderson, GM President and COO, Detroit, on August 20, 2008, writes in a rare letter to the editor in Wall Street Journal, “In the editorial ‘Can America’s Auto Makers Survive?’, Paul Ingrassia asks whether Detroit’s auto makers can survive. In the case of General Motors, the answer is, emphatically, yes. And not only survive, but thrive. There is no question the industry is facing significant pressures driven by a weak US economy and rising fuel costs. At GM, we’re taking the difficult and necessary steps to reduce our cost structure to be more competitive in the global marketplace and build a stronger foundation for our future.” I was stumped. It wasn’t that I was going to analyse the close to $2 billion loss GM suffered in 2005. The fact is that the last six months of GM (January to June 2008) has seen it rake up losses close to another $19 billion. I checked out the last three months (April to June 2008) and GM had losses of $15.5 billion! I really couldn’t see where the improvement, that GM President Henderson was referring to, was. 


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Saturday, November 24, 2012

Under attack!

Ranbaxy won’t be affected much

Daiichi’s acquisition of the Indian Pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. has stirred the hornet’s nest in the pharma industry. And the talks about the deal haven’t even died down when Ranbaxy has to face yet another glitch in the form of adulteration charges in its drugs from the US authorities: the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Justice. Ranbaxy’s stock faced a severe knocking since, falling by 18% to Rs.437 as on July 18, compared to Rs.538 on July 10, when the controversy broke.

It was a foregone conclusion that Big Pharma would not be happy with the deal, which merges a generic giant with an R&D major. But the matter became more complicated due to the statement made by Malvinder Singh, Chairman & CEO, Ranbaxy, to the press on July 18, when he said, “All these issues have emerged after the deal with Daiichi Sankyo... an MNC is trying to derail Ranbaxy’s deal with Daiichi Sankyo.”


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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Thursday, November 22, 2012

Vladimir Med!

Medvedev’s first name still is Putin

Analysts have claimed that Dmitry Medvedev, the new Russian President, seems to be now having his own policies moving away from Putin’s. As a start, he candidly accepted the two major problems of Russia, poverty and corruption. To add to that, he recently even acted to strengthen ties with EU. And the binding force of this new affinity is without doubt, the trade. Russia is the third largest trading partner of EU, which Medvedev wants to use to bring about a better and more congenial environment in the EU, which is West-dominated. Energy is another tool as Russia is the second largest producer of oil and gives one-fourth of EU’s imports. With most erstwhile Warsaw Pact nations trying to join EU, Medvedev presumably does not want to be left behind.

So is this the change that finally says Putin is a titular head? The premise is laughable. Medvedev has not only followed his predecessor’s rather stubborn foreign policy (involving Beijing, to try and form a buffer against Uncle Sam’s overwhelming supremacy), but he has even visited China and issued a joint statement against the US Anti-Missile Defence System.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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India, Today & Tomorrow?

The current economic crisis threatens to destroy all that India has gained in the past 15 years of growth. Who is to blame?

When bad news comes in torrents, even driblets of good news can appear as manna from heaven. On the political front, after almost 12 successive electoral defeats, the survival of the Congress led UPA government has been ‘temporarily guaranteed’ by the Samajwadi Party and Manmohan Singh can still nurse hopes that the Nuclear Deal will be a proud moment in his otherwise tattered and ramshackle legacy. On the economic front, spin masters of the UPA government are looking at agriculture as the saviour. Latest reports indicate that farm output in 2007-08 will actually cross a record 230 million tonnes. This, many hope will lead to inflation coming down to reasonable levels by the time the next Lok Sabha elections come around.

That’s become the leitmotif of the Indian polity and economy at the moment. Fighting crisis after crisis has become the norm rather than the exception. There are already signs that the Reserve bank of India might go for yet another interest rate hike-yet another sign of an ad hoc and desperate way to tackle double digit inflation. Says economic advisor to FICCI Anjan Roy, “RBI might raise CRR and Repo rate but that is not the solution; it may aggravate the condition.”

And what is the condition of the Indian economy? Trade deficit will soar beyond $100 billion this year; the monthly average is already more than $10 billion. In 2008, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) have withdrawn more than $8 billion from the Indian stock markets. The impact of this is evident in an interesting piece of statistics that has not been given the kind of attention it deserves by pundits and the media. For the first time in ages, the foreign exchange reserves of India actually declined by a precious few billion dollars. Of course, rising oil prices are to blame. In fact, oil at about $140 a barrel is, and will continue to play mayhem with government finances, making a mockery of lofty targets set for fiscal sobriety. The Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and his team of advisors can play around with numbers and project that fiscal deficit targets are being met. But the fact of the matter is they are not being met.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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