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| Friday, February
9, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Slow down, you move too fast
BILT eyes US listing; board revamp soon
New2Home to bridge digital divide Plan to revive salt output Stocks’ appeal still remains |
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Asia funds
find silver lining in earthquake HONG KONG, Feb 8 — The devastating earthquake in India may herald a much-needed revival in local infrastructure stocks and push privatisation to the top of the government agenda, regional fund managers said.
Convertors cause pollution Task forces to be set
up on biofertilisers
‘Teach my husband that’ Mobile phones to monitor health Tossing oranges for a husband
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Slow down, you move too fast LONDON, Feb 8 Speed is increasingly equated with efficiency. Every invention — mobiles, laptops, fast food — is designed to cut corners. Haste, once a vice, is a virtue. Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum, which met in Davos last week, says: `We are moving from a world in which the big eat the small to a world in which the fast eat the slow.’ But not everyone wants to negotiate the world at the speed of a silicon chip. Our full-throttle lives are beset by anxieties. Some of these are minor: is it worth spending an hour programming the speed-dial on the phone to save a couple of seconds every time we make a call? Others are more troubling. Writer and inventor Stewart Brand says: `Civilisation is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span’. We are changing the earth more rapidly than we are understanding it, yet we are so buzzing with adrenaline that we have no mental energy left to contemplate the consequences. The sense that this is a stupid way to live is encouraging pockets of resistance and creating a movement for slowness. Its adherents may be coming from different directions, but they have similar ends. They want to eat slowly, to live in slow cities and to extend their horizons beyond the next set of quarterly figures or the next software upgrade “We don’t pretend to be able to slow down the whole of life,’ says Renato Sardo of Slow Food, `but we do think it is possible to stop for a bit during the day. Slow rhythms at the table are better for health. Knowing where your food has come from is important psychologically. We are all going to the same place; it’s better to get there slowly.’ Slow Food began in 1986, when an Italian journalist, Carlo Petrini, was so affronted by the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome that he decided something must be done to counter the homogenisation of culture and nuke-it-and-eat-it attitudes to food. The organisation now has 60,000 members in 45 countries. `We work towards the rediscovery of the richness and aromas of local cuisines by opposing the levelling effect of the Fast Life,’ claims its manifesto. `People today want to buy fast, eat fast,’ says Sardo. `But fast food chains are a menace to local traditions and require a particular, industrialised method of production that treats the animal as a commodity. In Italy until recently, everyone had a link to the land. I am 30, and I am the last generation to see their mothers killing the rabbit.” We are surrounded by devices designed to save us time, from express checkout queues to remote controls. But the result of this is, paradoxically, to make us more impatient. An American study has found that moving in and out of `computer time’ makes people intolerant of interruptions from colleagues who cannot move at the speed of software. David Cannon, a British researcher, surveyed university students and concluded that, used to technology and computer games, they have trouble focusing long and hard. A hectic day is not automatically filled with more pleasure and meaning. Racing through everything can leave you wondering what you have been too busy to notice, too preoccupied to savour. To counter this, in late 1999, 30 Italian towns designated themselves Slow Cities. `The model given by America has invaded our cities and risks making Italy’s towns look all the same. We need to stop this kind of colonisation,’ says Paolo Saturnini, the mayor of Greve in Chianti. In common with the Slow Food movement, of which it is an offshoot, Slow Cities favour regional distinctiveness and sustained pleasure. They have yet to roll out to other parts of Europe, although the hope is that they will begin to do so this year. To qualify for Slow status, mayors and councils must permit more neighbourhood restaurants (osterie), ban neon signs, combat traffic and noise pollution, encourage cyclists, plant trees and maintain parks and squares.
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BILT eyes US listing; board revamp soon
NEW DELHI, Feb 8 —
This board reorganisation is aimed at making the group more professional since it plans to get listed on the US stock exchanges eventually, a senior company official said here. “The Ballarpur Industries Board will soon be restructured and two Thapar family members will go. We will induct three more independent directors, and an executive director to strengthen the board’s functioning,” the Managing Director of BILT, Mr Gautam Thapar, told newspersons here, adding that at present there were 12 members in all. He said the reorganisation was part of the company’s preparations to be ultimately listed on the US stock exchange and should hopefully be completed within this fiscal ending June. As another step towards US listing, the company will adopt US Gaap accounting standards from the 2001-02 fiscal beginning July this year. Mr Thapar said, post-restructuring, BILT was very much on the growth path and expected to double its profit after tax (PAT) this year from Rs 62 crore earlier. Mr Thapar today also announced that the Rs 150-crore 10-year bond issue of BILT, which was well-received by financial institutions as well as insurance companies, was part-guaranteed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). “The issue raised Rs 200 crore against the targeted Rs 150 crore, mostly subscribed by FIs and insurance companies,” he said. He said the issue was unique in the guarantee it had received from the IFC, since it was for the first time that the IFC agreed to provide partial guarantee to a 10-year issue anywhere across the world. As per the conditions of guarantee, there will be rolling guarantee for the first three-and-a-half years as per which there will be a two-and-a-half year moratorium on principal repayment. Besides, the bond issue will have both interest and principal payment guaranteed after the first four-and-a-half years, Mr Thapar said, adding that the issue would be used to hike production capacities.
— PTI
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New2Home
to bridge
digital divide NEW DELHI, Feb 8 —
This group of services consists of three options that bring the convenience of Internet communication to the home of the Indian population who do not have access to a computer. The services are: Call India, Gram India and Tele-Mail. These three services are intended to bridge the digital divide between the people who have access to computers and those without it. Giving an overview of the Deltagram satellite mail services, the Managing Director of the company Mr R. Kothandaraman, said 350 towns with population of 15000 and more and all villages in the country would be covered initially by 27,000 personal computers. Call India service enables anyone who doesn’t have access to a computer/Internet, living anywhere in India, to receive messages from anywhere in the world over
phone, fax or pager. Gram India service enables a person living anywhere in India to receive messages at his or her doorstep. Tele-Mail service will provide a unique phone connectivity to e-mail service. |
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Plan to revive salt output NEW DELHI, Feb 8
— The NSDI, being set up by the Department of Science and Technology, will be regulated by the National Spatial Data Commission (NSDC), which is being set up for the purpose. The NSDC will work out the mechanism of obtaining funds for the proposed infrastructure and a mix of financing options, including government, private funding and international aid is being considered for the purpose. Meanwhile, the government today said all-out efforts were being made to revive the production of salt in Gujarat and urged the salt manufacturers of Rajasthan and Maharashtra to assist the affected salt manufacturers in the quake-hit state. Aid and relief material continue to pour in for quake-devastated Gujarat. The Union Home Minister, Mr L. K. Advani, today flagged off a medical van of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) equipped with X-ray, ECG and ultrasound machines and other diagnostic equipment to provide medical aid to quake victims in the state. The PHDCCI president, Mr Sushil Ansal, also handed over a cheque for Rs 8.40 lakh as a contribution to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. The Hotel Association of India has contributed Rs 11 lakh for the relief measures in Gujarat, while the Federation of Hotel and Restaurants Industry has given Rs 5 lakhs to the fund. The Ministry of Steel and Public Sector Undertakings in the steel industry today contributed Rs 2.44 crore as interim contribution to the Prime Minister Relief Fund. Ericsson today claimed to have reactivated 32 out of the 40 GSM base stations affected during the quake in Gujarat and according to company officials the entire network is operational. The company has arranged for 30 GSM phones and will send additional 20 phones to the area, officials said. |
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Stocks’ appeal still remains MUMBAI, Feb 8 — “The concerns will be stock-specific and not on the economy as a whole,” said Samir Arora, head of Asian Emerging Markets at Alliance Capital, which has an estimated $700 million invested in India. He was referring to damage to plants. Yet most plants and other facilities built in the earthquake-affected region by listed companies like Reliance Petroleum, Reliance Industries, and Indian Oil Corp were not damaged, according to those companies. “Investors may hold back briefly as they gauge the speed of the reconstruction, but once the spending effect of the rebuilding comes through, the benefits will spur growth,” said Ved Prakash Chaturvedi, chief executive officer with Cholamandalam Cazenove Asset Management, who manages nearly seven billion rupees. That view was seconded by Ajay Srinivasan, Managing Director of mutual funds for Prudential Corporation (Asia), who stressed investment decisions were made on a stock-specific basis and foreign investors were not investing on the basis of the big picture for the Indian economy. “India has never been a macro story,” Srinivasan said. “Investment decisions have been made on the basis of stock-picking.” Gul Tekchandani, chief investment officer at Sun F & C Asset Management which manages 15 billion rupees, said foreign funds would continue to flow into India as the software sector, the main magnet, was untouched by the earthquake. Rather than the earthquake, software shares are much more likely to be affected by the state of the U.S. economy, as around 60 percent of India’s software exports are to that country, analysts said. Leading software companies continue providing three-digit rates of growth in net profit, far in excess of what even the best of the manufacturing sector provides, they said. In the past October-December quarter, net profit of Infosys Technologies Ltd surged 125 per cent year-on-year to 1.66 billion rupees, Satyam Computer Services’ profit rose 142 per cent to 875.09 million rupees, and Wipro Ltd posted a three-fold jump in profit to 1.89 billion rupees.
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Asia
funds find silver lining in earthquake HONG KONG, Feb 8 — “We view the devastation wrought by the earthquake as a positive catalyst for domestic economic momentum,’’ a spokesman for fund manager CMG first State Investments in Singapore said. India’s equity market sprang to life at the start of the year with portfolio inflows reaching US $ 849.9 million in January, the highest monthly level since 1993, and totalling more than half of last year’s entire fund input. The country is benefiting from an outflow of US money in the wake of a downturn in American interest rates. And while January’s flows could slow in the aftermath of the January 26 quake that wrought havoc on Gujarat it will not do so significantly, say fund managers and strategists in the region outside of India. Mr K.C. Reddy, a fund manager at Indocam H.K Ltd in Hong Kong, may step up his Indian portfolio in favour of firms like Gujarat Ambuja Cements and banks such as
ICICI Ltd. Mr Reddy’s picks are based on a view of reflation and heavy investment in infrastructure to rebuild the quake-hit area. “The problem with India in the past four or five years has been deflation rather than reflation,’’ said Mr Reddy. “The government has not been spending on infrastructure so cement, automobile and construction shares have been trading at multi-year lows. Now it will have to spend money on those sectors, he added.’’ Gujarat is one of India’s wealthiest regions and considerable private spending on rebuilding the area is expected in addition to government and international reconstruction efforts. The risk to investors is that the government has yet to determine how it will pay for that reconstruction. “The devastation is pretty complete so they will have to raise taxes but where the axe will fall, I don’t know,’’ Mr Edmund Harriss, a fund manager at Investec Asset Management said. But Hong Kong-based Harris is not unduly worried and has only one concern in his portfolio: Hindustan Lever, India’s largest consumer goods maker whose distribution may be hit as a result of the quake. The rest of his Indian portfolio covers the technology, IT services, pharmaceuticals and consumer sectors and Mr Harriss has no plans to change it. Underpinning stocks is relatively stable currency and political stability that make India more attractive than the Philippines, Indonesia or Taiwan, fund managers say. Economic growth is also favourable, forecast to be a reasonably robust 6 per cent this year, and while India lacks the appeal of China’s World Trade Organisation entry story, it does have a strong privatisation angle. Roger Yip, currency strategist at the Bank of America in Hong Kong, says the earthquake’s cost will force the cash-strapped government to accelerate its intended privatisation programme. Many listed state-owned companies surged late last week after the government announced it would privatise Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, the monopoly telecom service provider, and CMC Ltd, a software and hardware maintenance company. Investors expect oil companies, banks and infrastructure companies to be next in line for a sell-off. Indocam’s Reddy, however, is avoiding privatisation plays. He views the VSNL sale as a move to off-load a potential loss-maker rather than the start of a widespread disposal of solid assets. “VSNL will lose its monopoly in April of next year and the government knows the company will plunge into losses and it won’t be able to sell it then,’’ Mr Reddy said. "They will privatise Air India but that’s about it for now.’’he feels.— Reuters
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Convertors cause pollution LONDON, Feb 8 —
Researchers have found metal from convertors in remote areas of Greenland proving, they say, that it is a global problem. “It’s not just close to the cities and highways,” Carlo Barbante, a chemist at the University of Venice, Italy, told New Scientist magazine. Catalytic convertors convert pollutant gases into less noxious products. The platinum, palladium and rhodium in the
convertors fitted to cars catalyse reactions that convert hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.
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Task forces to be set
up on biofertilisers NEW DELHI, Feb 8 This was decided at a national seminar on bio-fertilisers and micro nutrients here today, which was inaugurated by the Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers, Mr Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa. The Fertiliser Secretary, Mr Ashok Pahwa told newspersons after the seminar the task forces would work out potentials of bio-fertiliser use in different states and agro-climatic regionals, delineate response areas and formulate broad promotional strategy for increasing bio-fertiliser use and research and development activities. Bio-fertiliser involves the use of micro-organisms at the cultivation stage, which enables seeds to draw on natural nitrogen and surround phosphates to provide nutrition for the plants. The problem in its usage, however, has been its short shelf life as the micro-organisms die in hot weather, and composite solution for all the needs of a plant like nitrogent, phosphate and other nutrients. The consumption of bio-fertilisers in the country at present is marginal at 10,000 tonnes while the production capacity is 18,000 tonnes. Bio-fertilisers have been referred to as the plant nutrients of the future as they are a low cost, effective and renewable source of plant nutrients. Earlier inaugurating the seminar, Mr Dhindsa said in 10 years from now plant nutrients would continue to play a major role in achieving the target of doubling food production. Last year the total nutrient consumption of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium was around 18 million tonnes. FDI in pharmaceuticals may be allowed PTI: India may soon allow 100 per cent automatic approval for foreign direct investment (FDI) in pharmaceuticals and the proposal may come up in the forthcoming Budget session of Parliament. “The proposal for allowing 100 per cent FDI for pharmaceuticals is under consideration,” Mr Dhindsa told reporters. At present 74 per cent FDI is allowed in the sector and the increase to 100 per cent is reportedly meant to encourage MNCs to set up base in India. However, officials say though this was cited as the reason when the ceiling was earlier raised from 51 per cent to 74 per cent, no MNC had set up base here. But this move could attract foreign contract manufacturing companies into India, they said adding that MNC pharmaceutical, companies too were asking for this. For instance, a proposal by multinational pharma giant Pfizer, to set up a 100 per cent subsidiary in India is still in the pipeline even though it has been approved by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board
(FIPB).
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IMF reviews Pak performance US workers’ productivity up Murdoch may strike $ 70 bn deal GM denies plans to buy Jeep |
sti
‘Teach my husband that’ WASHINGTON: All he was trying to do was ease her chronic back pain, but when Dr Stuart Meloy placed an electrode into one patient’s back, she groaned. Not in pain, but in delight. “This is a direct quote — she said, ‘you’re going to have to teach my husband how to do that’,’’ Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said in a telephone interview. Meloy had stumbled onto an unexpected side-effect of the pain device he was using — an ability to cause orgasm. He has just patented this unexpected use of the device, a spinal cord stimulator made by device company medtronic. Now he is trying to talk Minneapolis-based Medtronic into marketing the device for this use. “Yes, she literally got a buzz,’’ meloy sighed. “Yes, we turned her on. The puns can go on and on.’’ But he hopes to turn this to a serious use. “Once you get past the giggles and smirks, as far as orgasmic dysfunction goes, it a very real problem. People don’t like to talk about it. Meloy hopes he could develop the device for temporary use, to retrain a patient’s sexual response. “You could just get them back in the groove or whatever.” then the device could be used outside the body via a catheter. But meloy stressed it was no toy. “Even for pain management patients we certainly exhaust all other possibilities before we start utilising this type of technique,’’ he said. Will it work on all kinds of people, men as well as women? “I observed it twice,’’ Meloy said. “Is it reproducible? I sure hope so.”
— Reuters Mobile phones to monitor health LONDON: Bell Labs, owned by New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, is planning to modify mobile phones with a special circuit that can pick up the owner’s vital signs. “The Bell Labs engineers, led by husband-and-wife team Victor Lubecke and Olga Boric-Lubecke, noticed that some of the microwaves transmitted by a mobile phone antenna bounce back to the phone from the chest, heart and lungs of the person using it,” the weekly magazine said. The phone could also be used to monitor heart rate and breathing, he said. But to pick up the signals it must be held steady for a few seconds. Although the phone needs to be turned on, it doesn’t have to be answered, making it ideal to check on people trapped in rubble from an earthquake or who are unconscious. The researchers said mobile phone networks will have to be modified because they treat the interference information as unwanted noise and discard it. A software change to retain and interpret the signals would be needed. “So while the jury is still out on cellphone safety...It looks like cellphones may have at least some health benefits on the horizon,” the magazine added.
Tossing oranges for a husband SINGAPORE: Under the glow of the full moon on Wednesday night, about a dozen women tossed Mandarin oranges from the concrete river bank in the heart of the city into the murky water below. “In the old days, the single women would throw oranges and the men would come to watch,” one woman in her 40s told The Straits Times newspaper. Singapore’s orange tossing tradition is a variation of an ancient Chinese practice. An unmarried daughter from a rich family would toss a colourful silk ball from a balcony on Chinese Valentine’s Day, which also marked the last day of the Lunar New Year, and marry the man who caught it. In the hustle-bustle of the modern city state, where government organisations help singles find their match, the efficacy of the oranges is questionable. But one woman who has been tossing oranges for eight years has not given up yet. “We are ever hopeful,” she said. |
bb
SBI applies to IRDA Raymond calls EGM Apollo Hospitals Mid-day to tap market Valaya show in Paris |
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