SquareShooter

We were watching Madurai Law College students protest for total prohibition in Tamil Nadu. As usual few lessons in history I got from my father. He says Rajaji imposed prohibition soon after taking over as the Chief Minister of Madras in 1937 saying it was Congress policy and they believed in it. That was the first Congress Government. Prohibition continued till the first non-Congress government came to power in Tamil Nadu in 1967. Annadurai was not in favour of lifting prohibition though there was an intention to do so by the party at that time. Periyar who as the Congress party president in his early days of activism had cut down 100 coconut trees in his orchard to prevent toddy tapping, obviously in support of prohibition. But, the same Periyar apparently made fun of Anna when he refused to lift prohibition. Periyar is also supposed to have supported at around this period a movement called “kal venduvor sangam” meaning those who were in favour of toddy. Reasons cited fo...

Dhanalaxmi Bank when it was just transforming from being a "Dhanalakshmi Bank" For the first time in his life, 40 year old Amitabh Chaturvedi wore a dhoti, the traditional attire of Kerala on October 19, 2008. It was his first day as managing director of Thrissur based Dhanalakshmi Bank and his first stop even before he entered their headquarters at Naickanal in Thirssur was at Guruvayur. The Krishna temple at Guruvayur permits only those who follow thits dress code. For Chaturvedi, the decision to don the new garb was also symbolic of the adhering to the cultural traditions of the God’s bank. The bank which was started by a handful of Brahmins in Thrissur is the banker to two of Kerala’s important shrines, Guruvayur and Sabarimala. Chaturvedi was prepared to adapt and convince the bank steeped in tradition and old world banking that the new management will transform it, even while maintaining its identity. For, outsiders it seemed a peculiar mission as Kerala ...

The Bombay Stock Exchange is an heritage of Indian capitalism. But over the years the structure has been damaged so much it needs a serious restoration. Ironically, it is looking for regulatory help to tide over the current crisis and institutional support to reinvent itself. By all counts, the 15 year old National Stock Exchange has over taken the 133 year old  BSE  and is leaps ahead of its competitor. Sensex, the 30-share  BSE  Sensitive Index and the 36-storey  Jeejeebhoy   Towers  are the towering symbols of Indian capital markets. But the market share is with Nifty and all action is in the derivatives segment of the NSE.   The brand  BSE  seemed to be doing well and the business on the revival path, when the exchange successfully got a valuation close to a $ 1 billion last year. Though rival NSE roped in the largest international exchange NYSE-Euronext as its shareholder,  BSE brought in some of the big names, ...

Delhi grapples with C'wealth Games M.C. Vaijayanthi Aishwarya Rai and her colleagues from Bollywood gave a taste of what kind of spectacle India would put up as hosts of the Commonwealth Games 2010, at Melbourne Games closing ceremony last week, overshadowing the 22 Gold medal haul by the Indian contingent and Samaresh Jung who won the best athlete award. Having hosted the Sydney 2000 Olympics and now the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, Australia knows better than us as to what is in store in terms of business opportunities. An Australian newspaper reported on March 31 quoting Australia's senior trade commissioner for South Asia, Mike Moignard, that New Delhi 2010 represented a $1 billion business opportunity, particularly for construction and consulting companies.  "Of that figure, $800 million would be accounted for by providing sports venues and facilities, and Australian design and project management consultants would have significant opportunities in the short ter...

Sameer Vyas,  Managing Director, New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Limited, talks to  M.C. Vaijayanthi  about the uniqueness of the Tirupur Water Supply Project. India's famous knitwear town, Tirupur, which earns a billion US dollars a year through exports, decided to take the private route in the early 1990s to put an end to its water woes. Situated 50 km east of Coimbatore, Tirupur for years has been running on water transported through tankers from afar and whatever little groundwater it had was declared polluted and unfit for human consumption. Tirupur town realised its dream of organised water supply to the town in February this year when the New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Ltd's project was launched. Though skeptics have been crying foul over things ranging from high price, the households and industry have to pay for the water as well as thousands of households being left out of the scheme, NTADCL says that the project is doing fine in terms of c...

M.C. Vaijayanthi Telangana has been demanding separate statehood mainly on the grounds of lack of development vis-à-vis the rest of Andhra Pradesh. The region has been constrained by lack of water sources for irrigation and its topography made cultivation of large tracts difficult. So, when the Godavari Lift Irrigation project was taken up, a majority was in favour of the scheme despite controversies over the ultimate cost of the water that would be supplied. The Godavari Lift Irrigation Scheme, billed as the largest lift irrigation scheme in the country to date, envisages lifting of water from Godavari river near Gangaram, Eturnagaram, Warangal district, to irrigate 6.47 lakh acres ayucat of upland drought-prone areas of Karimnagar, Warangal, Nalgonda and Medak districts from 70 m to elevation of 540 m to utilise 50 tmc of water. The water would be transported through 200 km of pipeline using existing village tanks as online reservoirs. There is no other reply to the question as ...