1. Gandhinagar is gleaming
Days after hosting a mega RSS conclave, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar is gearing up for its “biggest show ever”—the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors summit. The state government, under new CM Anandiben Patel, has reportedly spent `200 crore to spruce up the capital. Special arrangements are being made to accommodate 100 chartered planes. Also coming up are three new helipads—and a special PMO. Residents say they have never seen the city so clean and “that it could easily be mistaken for an American creation”. Given that Narendra Modi wooed corporate India on this platform, his successor is clearly crafting a Vegas-style thank you.
2. Calcutta has an India Inc moment
Despite Mamata Banerjee’s earnest plea of ‘Come to Bengal, Ride the Growth’, it was almost a no-show from political and industry bigwigs at the two-day Bengal Global Industrial Summit in Calcutta. While state finance minister Amit Mitra had promised an impressive guest list, the only surprise visitor was Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who declared, in direct contradiction to what the Bengal FM had claimed seconds earlier, that Bengal’s state of industry was far from satisfactory. If all this wasn’t embarrassing enough for the state government, The Telegraph took a dig at the no-show summit by observing how a Wall Street Journal reporter arrived in the city, not to attend the business event, but to research a story on the gang rape of a Japanese tourist.
3. The battle of the two Bharats
Should government spend more on highways and ports or on healthcare and education? That is something that will engage the North Block and the Niti Aayog. The focus of chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian in his mid-term review was on higher public spending to accelerate economic growth and make up for the continuing poor investment appetite of the private sector. Ditto for the Niti Aayog. The question remains whether the focus will remain on infrastructure spend or also extend to social-sector spending to improve healthcare and education access for the deprived? As an economy watcher put it, wish Modi had adopted Swasth Bharat as his motto and not just Swachh Bharat!
Math
849 tonnes of gold India imported in 2014, 8.5 per cent higher than 2013
30% of Snapdeal’s sellers are women entrepreneurs
India meat export
April-Nov 2013 to April-Nov 2014
$3.3 billion India exported meat worth this during April-November 2014 period when the NDA government was in power
1.24 mn people worldwide are killed and 50 million people are injured in road accidents every year
Mojo
Yet another small, small car
Despite the rather limited success of the Tata Nano, another industry giant is venturing into the small-car segment. Eicher Motors has tied up with US company Polaris Industries, which makes all-terrain vehicles, to develop a 600 cc diesel vehicle aimed at traders and for family use.
Mind
This week we learnt about…the death of music downloads…
Despite the immense popularity of iTunes and online music downloads, things do not seem well with the music industry, which recorded negative growth last year. According to new data from Nielsen, digital album sales in the US fell by 9 per cent from 117.6 million in 2013 to 106.5 million in 2014. What is of concern is that despite the iTunes phenomenon, digital song sales decreased about 11 per cent. Even iTunes saw its numbers shrinking to 1.1 billion tracks, from 1.26 billion in 2013. Music streaming is becoming increasingly popular and could be the Next Big Thing.
