Where Are The Indian Innovations?

Why seek retail FDI for cold storage?

The region is home to a third of Nigeria's population of over 150 million people. The people are mostly small farmers and cattle-rearers. The area suffers from poor roads and power shortage, making cold storage difficult (a description that applies to vast tracts of India).

Consequently, farmers had to sell their produce at low prices, since they could not hold the produce.After studying the problem in depth, Mohammed Bah Abba, an enterprising lecturer at the Jigawa State Polytechnic, Dutse, came up with a unique solution. Hailing from a family of potters, he invented the pot-in-pot system of cooling (calledzeerin local language).

The pot-in-pot technology consists of two earthenware pots of different diameters, one placed inside the other. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand that is kept constantly moist, thereby keeping both pots damp. Fruit and vegetables are put in the inner pot, which is covered with a damp cloth. The phenomenon that occurs is based on a simple principle of physics: the water contained in the sand between the two pots evaporates towards the outer surface of the larger pot where the drier air is circulating.

The evaporation automatically produces cooling, causing a drop in temperature of several degrees in the inner container, extending the life of the perishable foods inside. In tests conducted, the temperature in the inner pot was reduced by 6-8 degrees C in 12 hours, and could be maintained by keeping the sand moist.

The shelf life of the produce improved significantly, as shown in the table.

The impact of the pot-in-pot was a reduction in the wastage of fresh fruits and vegetables. Farmers could hold the produce longer and sell on demand at higher prices. The cost of a pot-in-pot unit is around $5 (less than Rs 300).

So where are the innovations in India?  What are our hug business conglomerates doing to help the common people?

Why Did They Search for Tata's Successor?

Shyam Menon wants to know.  A perfectly natural question.

The great search

Thus, even as the media gets busy telling us who and what Cyrus Mistry is, the totality of this succession can be gauged only when his top management team is also in place. 

Right now in the public eye, Mr Mistry is a child of equity holding. He has to prove himself within the larger Tata context (that is, Tata in the world as opposed to the world of Tata) or risk being seen as there thanks to shareholding. That is a clean slate to start off. It is also what typically happens during succession in family businesses. Things change and yet they don't. 

Which is why what puzzles me still is — why did they go searching? May be at heart, all businesses are simple and expectations otherwise are the stuff of public imagination and gullibility?

'CIC orders RBI to expose 100 top loan defaulters'

CIC orders RBI to expose 100 top loan defaulters

In a move to usher in transparency in the functioning of banks, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the RBI to reveal the names and divulge other details of the top 100 businessmen and industrialists defaulting on repaying loans taken from public sector banks. 

The CIC has also directed the country’s Central bank to post the complete information of all such defaulting businessmen and industrialists on its web site as part of a suo motu disclosure mandated under Section 4 of the transparency law, before December 31. The RBI has been directed to update this list every year. 

“There can be no doubt that the information on defaulters received from banks are held by the Reserve Bank in a fiduciary capacity and are confidential in nature,” an RBI official had said while deciding on Kapoor’s RTI application. 

Although Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi agreed with the RBI’s argument that such information was fiduciary in nature, he said that exemption could not be allowed when there was larger public interest in the disclosure. 

Gandhi’s argument was that “this (disclosure) could lead to safeguarding the economic and moral interests of the nation. The commission is conv­inced that the benefits accruing to the economic and moral fibre of the country, far outweigh any damage to the fiduciary relationship of bankers and their customers if the details of the top defaulters are disclosed.” 

Absolutely.  Let the names out.  Let us see where the money is going to.  We know that SBI has an exposure of Rs 1,400 crore to Kindfisher Airlines.  Who else has taken PSU bank money?  

In fact, why restrict it to the top 100?  Put it all out there.  Maybe the said businessmen and industrialists will be more careful taking out loans in the first place.  Each public sector bank could put out its own list too.  They are already doing it for the aam defaulters : India's banking lobby asks lenders not to use tough bad loan recovery measures

The Indian Banks Association -- a lobby group for banks -- has asked lenders in the country not to use very harsh measures to recover outstanding loan amounts from their customers, after India's public sector lenders including Corporation Bank and the State Bank of India adopted 'name and shame' tactic to recover bad loans. 

The banks displayed names, photographs and other details of willful loan defaulters on the notice board of its branches from where loan amount has been sanctioned, with a view that through such exercise, the fear of social ostracisation would drive the borrowers to repay dues owed to the bank.