17.10.2008

• Today's headlines hold so much drama and emotion!
• Jet recalls its decision of firing 1900 staff even as Air India is reported to have offered leave to 15000 staff
  
• We have noted the decision of the Jet Airways to fire 1900 employees in the last couple of days and also how political parties immediately criticized the decision. But Jet Airways took a complete U-turn with an emotionally charged Chairman of the Jet Airways announcing at a press conference in Mumbai that every single employee of the Jet Airways family would be taken back.
• Even as the news of this u-turn is being digested, Air India is contemplating to introduce a voluntary leave scheme for all of its 15000 employees working in the non-operational areas. The proposed scheme will allow them to opt for a three to five year leave period without pay. Air India's loss for 2007-08 is pegged at Rs. 2,144 crores while its wage bill is at Rs. 6,500 crore.
• Ranbaxy Promoters at the receiving end; may have to cough up about Rs. 1000 crore as tax in the Daiichi deal
• We have noted about this issue sometime back in our blog. It was about 'bulk deals' and 'block deals'. Take a look at it here and also refer to our 14th June 2008 notes, to get a picture of the issue.
• Ranbaxy promoters approached SEBI seeking an exemption from the rules applicable to block deals. The promoters of Ranbaxy wanted SEBI to allow a block deal between them and Daiichi Sankyo in an off-market transaction for the sale of their 34.82% stake in Ranbaxy to Daiichi for a consideration of Rs. 737 per share even though the current market price of Ranbaxy is Rs. 266. Back in June this year, that was the negotiated price between Ranbaxy and Daiichi for stake sale. SEBI refused to give such a permission saying that it cannot be done for a single case.
  
• If the block deal has to be put through the stock exchange route, then the transaction will attract a capital gains tax of 10%, which with all the surcharges and others applicable will translate to about Rs. 1000 crore for the Ranbaxy promoters.
• RBI staff to be on strike on October 21. Why?
  
• The root of the matter is an internal circular issued by the central bank — at the behest of the finance ministry — to withdraw an updated pension scheme. According to the directive, RBI has withdrawn the updated pension scheme to pre-November 1997 retirees. The circular, among other things, implies a drastic reduction of pension to retired RBI employees in relation to that drawn by government retirees of comparable levels. What has irked RBI staff and officers is that the government diktat is being forced on the central bank despite the it having its own pool of funds to manage the pensions.
  
• RBI staffers are striking to ensure that basic pensions are updated after every revision of pay scales. Reportedly most members of the board except the then government representative (incidentally, the current RBI governor, D Subbarao) were not in favour of implementing the circular at a meeting held in mid-August.
• India-Sri Lanka CEPA
  
• The two countries concluded negotiations on CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement), India’s second such agreement after Singapore, as early as July, but since then there has been no movement on signing the agreement. India has been waiting for the Rajapakse government to get Cabinet approval for CEPA before it approaches its own Cabinet.
• With Sri Lanka's current offensive against LTTE entering a decisive phase and some of the political parties back here in India taking strong objection to the offensive, the CEPA deal is on the back burner now.
• Something about organic farming
• What’s less known about it is that the formal organic movement has deep roots in India, and can even be considered to have been born here. Most histories of the organic movement credit the pioneering efforts of Sir Albert Howard, whose 1943 book, An Agricultural Testament is one of the founding texts. In it, Howard developed the idea of the soil as almost a living organism, in whose fertility lay the health of nations. The ideas he advanced in it, of the importance of humus, the organic matter in soil that is responsible for much of its fertility, and of the need to compost and spread waste material to renew humus, were popularised by admirers like Eve Balfour in UK who founded the Soil Association, the main UK organic organisation, and J I Rodale in the US, the founder of health-based magazines like Men’s Health.
• Those of you who are organic farming enthusiasts like me, can't afford to miss reading this piece that appeared in today's ET. The above noting is an excerpt from it.
• BTW, know anything about the Indore process of compost making? It is about collection and admixture of vegetable and animal wastes off the area farmed into heaps or pits, kept at a degree of moisture resembling that of a squeezed-out sponge, turned, and emerging finally at the end of a period of three months as a rich, crumbling compost, containing a wealth of plant nutrients and organisms essential for growth. (Excerpted from a book by Sir Albert Howard, who is credited as the inventor of this process.) Actually this process is what is used traditionally by our Indian agriculturists for ages. But it was popularized by Sir Albert Howard.
• Internet crime
• Internet crimes cost consumers and businesses $239 million in 2007, up 20% from the year before, according to US government data.
• World-wide daily count of zombie computers, which are infected with viruses and bent to malevolent purposes, doubled this month to 3,00,000 from 1,50,000 a year earlier.
• The average daily number of active bot-infected computers rose 17% to 61,940 from the first half of 2007 to the second, according to Symantec, the biggest maker of security software.