Economy & Business   

PM asks plan panel to get cracking
on better welfare scheme delivery


What is India News Service, July 17, 2004, 1700 hrs IST


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today asked the Planning Commission to find out ways and means to make the delivery system more efficient and effective.

Addressing the first meeting of the commission, chairman Manmohan Singh said it should focus on how to implement assurances made in the common minimum programme (CMP) and the budget.

Briefing newsmen after the meeting, the commission's deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the Prime Minister was very concerned about the delivery system. He has directed the commission that besides providing additional resources, it should also look at the question of improving the efficiency of the system, Ahluwalia said.

On the issue of allocation of additional Rs 10,000 crore earmarked in the budget, Ahluwalia said: "We are working on that very hard. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks time, we will have the answer." 

Birlas don war paint: The Birlas are getting ready to stop R S Lodha becoming the controlling heir of M P Birla Group.

It's a family superstition that puzzles visitors to Birla House in Kolkata. Step into the lift and there seems to be a floor missing. But it’s not the 13th floor that has been given the miss as in most other high-rise buildings around the world. It’s the 12th floor that isn’t there.

Why? According to business folklore, the Birla family believes that twelve is an inauspicious day for the clan. But that leaves open the question: why was the will of Priyamvada Birla, widow of Madhav Prasad Birla, opened on July 12?

The Birlas certainly weren’t keen on opening the will on July 12. They suggested that the will should be opened after the mandatory mourning period ending on July 15.

But if the will of the Priyamvada Birla is proved to be defective and thrown out by the courts, the rest of the Birla clan may not have much to cheer, going by the succession tangle that would inevitably follow, considering the existence of the little known emerging surviving heirs, say informed sources close to the Birlas.

Textile sector readying for date: Indian textile companies are sprucing up their wardrobes to face the post-WTO regime.

It was a sweeping break with the past. Last October industrialist Ajay Piramal decided it was time to up sticks and relocate the 100-year-old Morarjee Mills from its high-cost Mumbai premises to Buti Bori in Nagpur.

Now Piramal hopes that the Rs 180-crore Morarjee Mills will become a nimble, niche player in the textile industry. It’s investing Rs 60 crore and will soon start making womenswear and furnishing fabrics.

The Rs 2,000-crore Ahmedabad-based Arvind Mills has slightly different plans for the future. It has already carved out its own place in the market, as one of the world’s largest producer of denims. Now, it wants to dress differently and its new wardrobe will be filled with products like shirts, knitted garments and gaberdine trousers.

Murugappa boss will teach: Come August 1, M V Subbiah, the erstwhile chairman of the Rs 5,266-crore Murugappa group, will don his new avatar. He will hold centrestage at Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business (ISB), where he will teach — what else? — ‘Managing Families in Business’. 

A good six months after hanging up his boots, Subbiah will take five classes for the 2005 batch at ISB. Says Ajit Rangnekar, deputy dean at the school, “He is the perfect professor for us to have and there is none more suited in India to speak on issues related to family businesses than him.”

Monsoon uneven but not without silver lining:  The latest information on cumulative rainfall received till July 14 from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) suggests that the monsoon has been relatively good in much of the South and Eastern parts of the country, stretching from East Uttar Pradesh down to Chhattisgarh and Orissa and covering the whole of Bihar, West Bengal and the North-East.

But the situation is bad in a large chunk of Central, West and North-West India (excluding Jammu & Kashmir).

The overall picture that emerges is, therefore, somewhat mixed, unlike in 2002 when it was uniformly bad. 

High-income group expanding: A soon-to-be-published report of the National Council for Applied Economic Research, Delhi (NCAER), says India's high-income class is expanding fast, middle-income classes are bulging in size, especially in rural India, and the low-income class is shrinking rapidly.

Over the past 15 years or so (i.e., the post-reform period), the rate of growth in the upper-income class has been much higher, compared to the corresponding decline in the size of the low-income class. 
 

Overall:

PM asked plan panel to improve delivery: He said increased fund allocation was just one aspect of welfare.  

Birlas donned war paint: They are in no mood to hand over their empire to Lodha. 

Monsoon prospects looked optimistic: The forecast is that it won't be as bad as last year.

High income group is expanding: A survey said high and middle income groups were getting bigger in India.