Australian Open 2012: A look back

The just concluded Australian Open once again proved the sound health of the men's tennis. We are truly blessed to be witnessing the golden era of tennis, for there are at-least 2-3 men from this generation who will go down as one of the greatest players. Not to forget the coming of age of some young men to reinforce the fact that the strength of men'd tennis is here to stay. Here is my take on the Australian Open 2012.
Young talent was in abundance as some of the promising players made impressive runs at the Australian Open. On top of the list would be the home favorite Bernand Tomic. The teenager had already made waves at Wimbledon by reaching the quarters and he did his reputation no harm by reaching the 4th round at his home slam. His list of victims include the 2009 semi-finalist Verdasco, Sam Qurrey and fellow star Alexandr Dolgopolov. His five setters against two of the above proved his mettle and his ability to grind. Next on the list is Alexandr Dolgopolov. Another huge talent, he, like Tomic plays a very different brand of tennis. Slicing, taking the pace off the ball, and luring the other person to attack, they don't follow the conventional defensive or offensive style. There match was a true classic and one player appeared the mirror image of other. The pint sized Dolgopolov, the 13th seed has already announced his credentials the previous season and it is good to see him living up to his reputation. The third in list, Milos Raonic, the 23rd seed is another upcoming talent, who has been hand picked by none other than Rafael Nadal as one of the players to look out for. Reaching the third round successfully, he disappointed in his loss to Hewitt. The serve, his strongest weapon was short of the mark as her served only 53% 1st serve to lose to the Aussie veteran. Still his talent was out for everyone to see and the future slams hold a lot for the young Canadian.
Talented and bright as they are, this Australian Open also proved that they had a long way to go before they could catch the players from the "Golden Generation". Each of them was taught a lesson in their defeat to one of the greats. Bernand was given a stern lecture in the course of tennis by Roger Federer. Tennis like the one he saw from the other side of court in the 4th round would have taught him some valuable lessons. Same is the case for Raonic, who was shown that a big serve can be overcome by smart and intelligent play.
The top players once again highlighted their credentials as the best and proved the rankings correct once again. Six of the top-8 and Del Potro made to the quarters. On a comeback trail, the Argentine once again proved why he is a grand slam champion and  I am sure that we would see him in the ATP World Tour finals in November. David Ferrer also made it to the quarters before losing a high intensity match to eventual champion Djokovic. Berdych suffered the same fate at the hands of runners up Nadal.
The top-4 were in supreme form throughout the tournament. Andy Murray was brilliant throughout the tournament and looked on course for a third straight final. He looked razor sharp and his semi-final match(which unfortunately I didn't watch) appears to have been a classic. That he manged to stretch the best to five sets and was very close to victory shows that he has improved from last year when he lost in straight sets. I definitely think he is capable of reaching grand slam finals again this season.Roger Federer, arguably the greatest ever, played in similar vein, reaching semis without dropping a set. His wins over Tomic and JMDP highlighted the variety of shots he can play and that even at 30, he is going strong. However, the semi-final was exactly opposite. Familiar nemesis Nadal once again bested him. Roger was good in patches only and against Nadal, that was never going to be enough. I believe Nadal has got to his head and he needs to be a little more free while playing the Spaniard. He will be a regular at semis in the slams and if luck and draw favoring, he might pick up a slam or maybe even two. Rafa Nadal was also his usual self, the determination, passion and will was on display throughout the fortnight. He won highly charged quarters and semis before losing the final to Djokovic. He will have another good season with good showings in slams and I am sure he will add at-least one more to his kitty of 10 before 2013 arrives. Novak Djokovic continued from where he had left off in 2011, and passed early tests easily before the last three matches made him sweat out. His game is exactly where he wants it. Moreover, the winner's mentality that he now possesses has helped him out of a lot of tight spots in the last three days. The Djoker slam, as the French would now be called would be his for taking, though he has to be careful of Rafa. Defence of the other two might prove difficult and I am sure he would lose one of them. A year similar to 2011 awaits if he can maintain his form.
 Here are my pick for the three best matches of the tournament(I did not watch the second semi-final):

(3) Rafa Nadal defeats Roger Federer 6-7 6-2 7-6 6-4: To me, it was a disappointing match. When two greats, sharing 26 slams between them finish with more unforced errors than winners, you can conclude that match was not as great as it could have been. However, there were some riveting rallies, some amazing defense from Rafa and some shots of pure genius from Roger. But they were short lived moments and hence it was not the best match of the tournament.

(2) Bernand Tomic defeats Alexandr Dolgopolov 4-6 7-6 7-6 2-6 6-3:  A compelling match that brought together two players with very similar styles. Playing a very weird brand of tennis, this match showed us what to expect from tennis in coming years.The almost four hour encounter was truly enthralling.

(1) Novak Djokovic defeats Rafael Nadal 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-7 7-5:  I don't really have to describe the match. Brutal tennis at its best, the rallies in the match were at a different level all together. At times it appeared as if there were two bulls on the court not giving each other even an inch. The physical stamina of each was tested to the hilt and I was a little surprised to see Djokovic come out on the top in 5th. Physically drained after a five hour semi final, the herculean effort to win the 5th was even more appreciable. I believe Nadal has developed a mental block against Djokovic, for he was unable to stop a half fit Djokovic in the decider. That takes nothing away from the Spaniard who gave it his best and was gracious in defeat in a match that I rate as the 2nd best (that I have ever watched) after the Wimbledon 2008 final.

The Vodafone tax case: A landmark judgement

How would it feel to get Rs 11,000 crore? Just ask Vodafone and you will get the answer. The Supreme Court decision for relief to Vodafone in the Rs 11,000 crore tax must have led to a sigh of relief at its London headquarters. Fought over a time period of almost 5 years, the decision once again outlines the independence of judiciary and the legislative & executive in India.
What was all the ruckus about? The story starts when Vodafone entered into an agreement with Hutchison Telecommunication International Limited for acquisition of its 67% share in Hutchison-Essar. The deal led to transaction worth $11.206 billion. The IT department, in September 2007 accused Vodafone of failing to deduct Indian tax on payment to HTIL and a show cause notice was issued. To understand why Vodafone was supposed to pay tax, we need to understand the meaning of capital gain. Capital Gain refers to profit in investment in a capital asset. If you purchase a plot today and sell it two years late, the profit is the capital gain. And like on everything else, we have to pay a tax for it. This capital gain tax is precisely what the taxman demanded. The Bombay High Court, in 2010 rejected the appeal of Vodafone and upheld the IT department's demand.
It is difficult to imagine why then has the decision been reversed by the supreme court and on what basis did it overturn the decision? The explanation of tax seems to make it evident that Vodafone are the culprits. But this case had a flip side to it. Hutchison is a Hong_kong based company while Vodafone is British based. The argument put forth was that  the law allows taxation of income deemed to accrue or arise in India through the transfer of a capital asset "situated in India". Since both the companies involved are non-Indians, the law does not apply onto them. The Bombay high court had rejected the argument saying that the source of income for the company was from India. But source of income lies where the transaction takes place and not where the economic interest lies. And since there is no explicit mention for out of country promoters, Vodafone argued that thy have no liability towards the IT department.
The Supreme Court handed the decision in favor of British telecom giant saying that unclarity in laws and legislation need to be overcome to prevent such situations from arising. It said that it could hold Vodafone accountable if there were specific laws that took care of this situation or if it could be proved that the transaction had been carried out to evade tax. It also asked the IT department to return the Rs 2500 crore deposited with it with 4% interest.
The decision has naturally made the finmin sit up and take notice. Already, a team has been formed to review the case. There are also talks about forming clear and unambiguous laws to avoid such precedence. But the decision is likely to improve the foreign investor sentiment. Buoyed by this decision, it is believed that the outlook towards investment in India is going to improve. At the same time, it needs to be ensured that no-one can make use of these ambiguous laws to his own profit.

My reservations against reservations

I have been trying to read newspaper daily for sometime now. And I have come to realize that reading the full newspaper can make you dislike your country. Every page is filled with such filthy stories and loads of crap from our (mostly)useless politicians that I feel sorry that I was born here sometimes. The line may have come out more strongly than how I wanted it to, but the basic feeling is the same. The critics may say that we are better off than a lot of other places, but we never count the people below us but look at the people above us. I thought of bringing one such topic to the light here.
Elections in the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Manipur are due. The campaigning for the same is on in full swing. The spotlight is naturally on the largest state of India, Uttar Pradesh. Traditional heavyweights SP and BSP are leaving no stones unturned in their efforts to get to power. National parties BJP and Congress are also busy designing strategies to win the UP polls.
I find the politics at UP very weird. It is completely caste and religion based. The vote bank for Mayawati, the BSP supremo and the current CM  Jarawas, her native tribe. Not that Mulayam Singh, SP chief is far behind. He has his own following of Yadavs.
When politicians campaign in UP, there agenda is not to please the public of UP but to appease their vote banks. The latest group to be targeted is the Muslims. While Congress promised a quota of 4.5% within OBC quota for muslims in education and job sectors, the SP went one step ahead and promised them 9%. It leaves me astounded. I mean, in India everyone wants reservation for their caste/ religion. The women want a 33% reservation in parliament. The SC/ST/OBC want reservation in higher education and jobs. The Gujjars were up in arms demanding reservation for their community a while back. Now, the muslims want a reservation too. And a couple of months back, Mayawati was seen asking for reservation for Jats too. Every freaking minority wants that it should be represented in proportion to its population.
I gave my MBA admission exams this winter. I learned that in the last 4 years IIMs have increased their seats from a little over 2000 to 3000. But the seats for general category remain almost same. Why? Because of 275 reservation for OBCs. When I check out forums and see a 92%ile OBC getting the nod above a 99.8%ile general category student it makes my blood boil. What has this OBC done to deserve the seat more than the other guy. Clearly he is less intelligent and less deserving. Why then should this guy get a seat? Because he is an OBC? Does that give him the right to snatch the seat from a more deserving candidate? Even in our college, when we started we had 60 seats. For general there were only 34. That means a lot of deserving general category candidates lost out to a lot of undeserving reserved seats candidates. If someone among them reads it and is offended, then be my guest. That guy has reached here because of his caste and not because of his capabilities.
The problem is that the reserved seats now form 49.5% of total seats in higher education. Only 50.5% seats are available for general category. If this number goes below 50%, and with the lousy and pathetic political system that we have I am sure it will, then the definition of general would fail. Because then we all would fall under the minorities too as we will have less than half of the total share. Sounds bizzare? Such is our system.
The reservation for muslims is even more bewildering. Suppose a general category guy goes for a job and is rejected because of lack of seats. Next day, he converts to become a muslim. If he now applies, would he get the job? It is totally eccentric.
The case of DU is even more pathetic. The seats reserved are sometimes not even filled. And neither are they changed to the general category. Another occasion when a lot of bright minds are unable to get into a college they deserve.
I am not saying that we should completely eradicate the system. I believe reservation on basis of economic stability is a better approach. A poor hindu boy deserved a seat more than a rich OBC candidate. If our system is able to get him a seat using this system, then I believe that is the correct use of reservation. I know that coming up with procedures for such a system is very tough and ambiguous but I think that such a system will benefit all (except the highly undeserving caste based candidates!).
As I see politicians openly and shamelessly trying to woo the voters on basis of caste/ religion and create newer vote banks, my heart cringes at the fact that the innocent will continue to miss opportunities due to our flawed reservation laws.
The laws which had been created for equality are now a chief source of inequality.

The UID Row: MHA interference is uncalled for

There has been quite an uproar regarding the bio metric collection authority with both MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) and UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) staking claim. Both sides have claimed the right to do so with MHA even doubting the procedure followed by UID for collecting data from among 170 million people.
But first, what is UID? It is a project started by the government to provide people with a unique identification number. The 12 digit number will be provided to each person and his demographic and biometric data would be stored to establish his uniqueness. This will help in proper distribution of subsidized foods, ration cards etc. The organization responsible for it is the UIDAI headed by IT Czar Nandan Nilekani and backed by the Planning Commission as well as Sonia Gandhi. The MHA is undertaking a similar project in which chip based smart cards are being issued to people as per the National Population Register(NPR). While Mr. Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, planning commission has dismissed this project, the MHA has called the UIDAI project as a duplicate of their own. The finance ministry is worried that too much money is being spent on two similar projects.
The problem here is that UIDAI was mandated to collect the data for about 200 million people. As the target approaches, the department has asked for an extension in the number. The home ministry, naturally is not pleased and wants to carry on the project on its own now. Now that the battle-lines had been drawn, the Union home minister fired the first salvo questioning the authenticity of UID. Questioning the collection system, he has said that the data is not reliable. As per the rumours, a lot of illegal migrants, especially in north-east have got their adhaar cards on basis of false documents. It has demanded that it wants to look into the UIDAI data servers and carry out checks on people responsible for data collection. However, the Nilekani led UID has a strong backing of the planning commission and the finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
So who should it be?UIDAI or MHA? I would like to believe that the MHA has no business interfering ith the working of UIDAI. They have done phenomenal work so far. With 200 million people covered in less than year, the efficiency of the organization is for all to see. The biggest biometric data capture so far, the reason for its success can be attributed to the department head, Nilekani. The former Infosys chief has led the organization in an systematic way and coming from an IT background has certainly been an advantage for him. Yes, some false UID number might have been created for wrong people, but at below 0.15%, the number does not sound so big. Also, to expect the age old government machinery to be able to carry out such a path breaking and efficient program is a little too optimistic.
With people's Rs 14800 crore at stake, this inter ministry politics has highlighted the inefficiency of the UPA-2 once again. As the bill now rests with the cabinet, one hopes that the best sense may prevail and the system is up and alive as soon as possible.

Devaluation of rupee:Greed and fear do us in

A very interesting point has come to my observation today. We all know that the Indian rupee (INR) was on a depreciating spree in the last four months or so. We have seen INR fall to record low of 54 against dollar. A lot of explanations have been given for the same. One of the prime reasons was that it was believed that the Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) had withdrawn money from the Indian market due to loss of credibility caused by a variety of factors.

The surprising fact that has emerged is that this was a false conjecture. Certainly FII did take money out of the market, but it was more than matched by the inflows. The net result was positive, even though it was a tenth of what it was last year. But the larger question still remains. If the FII kept faith in the Indian market, how do we explain the rapid fall of the rupee? 

The phenomena can be explained by a combination of two factors- fear and greed. There was a greed among the exporters. They did not convert their dollars into rupees. The reason for this was simple. Seeing the negative market sentiment, they expected the rupee to fall and they wanted to take the advantage of this to earn more value for their dollars. The fear among importers compounded the problem as seeing the falling rupee, they sought dollars. The exporters held them back, creating a scarcity of dollars and leading to its escalation. Thus, a mixture of greed and fear led to the drastic fall of rupee against the dollar.

The RBI's moves in mid-December helped in restoring balance. The moves had an immediate impact on the value of rupee. First, it limited the net intra-day and overnight open positions. Then it reduced the extent to which forward contracts could be cancelled or re-booked. Such moves helped rupee gain on dollar and right now it is about 51.

Food Security Bill: Biting more than we can chew?

The Sonia Gandhi backed Food Security Bill (FSB) has been a hotly debated topic lately. In a country where 21% of the population (and 44% of below 5 children ) is undernourished, the bill seems to be the silver lining the whole country was looking for. Yet it has been received with a combination of optimism ans pessimism. Before seeing why this is so, let us look at the bill itself.
The National Food Security Bill, 2011 aims to provide subsidized grains to about 65% of the population. The recipients have been divided into two parts- the people below poverty line (BPL) as priority group/household (PG/PH) and the people above poverty line as general group(GG). The people in PG are entitled to receive grains worth 7kg/person/month at a cost of Re1,2,3, for millet, wheat and rice respectively. The person in GG are entitled to receive 3kg/person/month at maximum half the MSP (Minimum Support Price) given to farmers. The bill aims to cover 75% of rural population(out of which 46% is PG/PH) and 50% urban population((out of which 28% is PG/PH). Lactating mothers will be given Rs 1000 for 6 months and nutritional support. ICDS (Integrated Child Development Society) and mid day scheme are covered under the bill. People affected by natural disaster will get two free meals a day for 3 months. The bill provides for nutritional support for children below 14 years.
So much so for the bill.  The positives to emerge from here are pretty obvious. India has 230 mn malnourished people, worse than its neighbors Pakistan and Nepal, and this bill will provide for food for a large part of this population. The bill might ensure that the grains stored in the warehouses do not go waste and thus decrease the wastage of grains. It would ensure financial stability for the lactating women. So why is it that the seemingly noble and pro-poor bill being rejected by a significant chunk of people?
The answer to this lies in the implementation. While bought up with a noble cause, the implementation can be describes as poor at the best. First lets have a look at the economics of the bill. As per the estimate, the subsidy would cost the government approximately Rs 95,000 crore.The cost for producing extra food grains would cost a little more than Rs110,000 crore according to the ministry of agriculture. The set up required and the movement of the grains through PDS(Public Distribution System) would escalate the cost and it would be safe to assume that the total cost would be Rs 250,000 crore. Then lets not forget that the budget of the FSB would largely depend on the MSPs. MSP is dependent on the cost of production of the grains. In the past three years the production cost for rice has gone up by 15% per year. If this holds true for the coming years too, the expenditure would also go up by at least 20%. At a time of burgeoning fiscal deficit and slowing economy, can the government afford to spend this much? Don't get me wrong, I don't say that let the poor be damned, lets focus on GDP growth but one has to realize that the magnitude of this bill is beyond what we can spend right now. Our debt to GDP ratio is already well above 80%.  The bill needs to be revisited so that it can be "pruned down" a little to make it feasible. Not that economics alone is the reason for reviewing the bill. The bill tries to fit the same hat on everyone's head. It authorizes the government to allow for uniform procurement, distribution and storage of the grains. Different states have different needs and different capacities and hence this centralized system is bound to spell doom as far as the effectiveness of the bill is concerned. A decentralized system is the right approach as it would allow the state the independence to demand the required amount of resources that are required for the malnourished and under developed section. The state, on their part, need to ensure that the system for calculating the resources requirement are efficient and transparent. We have also failed to come up with a fail safe plan. The procurement of these grains has not been looked into. Do we have the resourced to produce this amount of food? What would happen if there is a drought? How will we get the extra grains needed? If we import food, the international food prices get affected adversely leading to even larger subsidiary and consequently higher expenditure. The FCI(Food Corporation of India) which is going to be responsible for distribution, is not known for efficiency ( The World Bank says that 60% of the subsidy reaches the wrong hand) and the food bill would only increase the workload by 2-3 times. The bill will have an adverse affect on the recently tamed inflation. With the larger procurement need, the MSP is going to be pushed up leading to price rise. Then the other point is that who decides which 65% of population is this bill going to serve? In other words, how do we decide who comes under the umbrella of the bill?
There are many such concerns that have not been addressed. The bill needs to be looked into again and amended so that the delivery system becomes efficient. Otherwise it will go into the bin containing the laws created with the right intention, but rendered useless because of ineffective implementation.