Yashwant Sinha, Finance
Sinha has to be judged on his five Budgets, and on the movement of macro-economic indicators. That proves his undoing: the combined fiscal deficit of the Centre and the states has zoomed from 7.2 per cent of GDP in 1997-98 to 11.5 per cent today; and GDP growth slipped from 4.8 per cent in 1997-98, a bad year, to 4 per cent in 2000-01.

	Westward Ho
	Making Inroads
	Port Of Cell
	Money That Lasts
	Will The Real WiLL Please Stand Up?
	United Technologies

» Rationalisation of tax structure; initiation of second-generation reforms
» Inability to buy political sanction for his economic initiatives; poor performance of the economy

Ram Naik, Petroleum
Naik has overseen the dismantling of the administered price mechanism (APM), thereby taking a step towards market-fixed prices. But his obsession with controlling the public sector oil majors, and his instruction to them to maintain prices despite a surge in global prices from $20 a barrel to $27 raises questions on his free-market credentials.
» APM dismantling; disinvestment of IBP
» Unwillingness to let go; the mess over the disinvestment of IPCL

Arun Shourie, Disinvestment
Despite the opposition to privatisation, including a battle with the Chattisgarh government over Balco, Shourie has managed to sell 10 companies and 12 hotels (of the Indian Tourism Development Corporation). Now, if he can only help Nalco finalise its 'global advisers to disinvestment', and play jamcracker to the IPCL logjam.
» Disinvestment proceeds of Rs 7,164 crore from November 2000 till date
» Has to steer the disinvestment of Nalco, IPCL, HPCL, and BPCL through a politically tough time

Murasoli Maran, Commerce and Industry
Despite constraints placed by the World Trade Organization on one side, and India's ministry of finance on the other, Maran has managed a sweetheart deal for exporters. And he has successfully played reformer at home and protector of national interest overseas (his voice of the developing world act at the WTO ministerial summit at Doha).
» Oversaw removal of Quantitative Restrictions; got India's message across to the WTO
» Flagging export performance; Indian exports grew by a mere 1 per cent in 2001-02

B.C. Khanduri, Road Transport & Highways
Attribute it to the prime minister's interest in the Golden Quadrilateral project, but fact is, Khanduri has ensured that work on the 5,846-kilometre project is ahead of schedule. Better still, the whopping Rs 30,300 crore required for the first phase of the project has been tied up. Now, Khanduri just has to ensure the momentum doesn't flag.
» The Golden Quadrilateral, need we say more
» None so far

Arun Jaitley, Law, Justice, and Company Affairs
As information and broadcasting minister, Jaitley allowed foreign television channels to uplink from India; as disinvestment minister he kicked off privatisation; and in shipping, which he has additional charge of now, cargo handling at major ports has improved. Now, he faces the challenge of bringing companies that duped investors to book.
» Pushing for legislation on the critical issues of bankruptcies and competition
» Nothing personal, but with Parliament in limbo key business-related legislations are stuck

Suresh Prabhu, Power
In July 2001, Prabhu effected the movement of Rs 41,000 crore in unpaid dues of State Electricity Boards (SEBs) off their books and into bonds. Prabhu may have steered 16 states into agreeing to end the supply of free power, but the crucial Electricity Bill is pending in Parliament and the states could yet prove recalcitrant.
» Getting states to toe the line, at least till now
» Errant states could yet play spoilsport, and the Electricity Bill seems stuck

Shanta Kumar, Food & Civil Supplies
Kumar oversaw the export of a record 75.62 lakh tonnes of foodgrain worth Rs 4,000 crore. Still, he doesn't seem to have a handle on what to do with the huge stock of foodgrains rotting in warehouses. And Kumar, a seasoned politician knows that he can't stop procuring from farmers: that would be political hara-kiri.
» Seems open to reforms; oversaw bumper export of grains
» Lacks political will to tackle the surplus foodgrain issue

Pramod Mahajan, Information Technology & Telecommunications
Mahajan can't really take credit for happenings in the infotech and the telecom domain. In the first, it is private enterprise that has driven growth, and in the second, it is a mix of enterprise, and litigation (essentially by private sector players) that has seen the sector opening up. As for his Media Labs Asia, we'd like to reserve comment.
» Hasn't tampered with the self-driven software sector
» Indian hardware remains a laggard

SECOND HELPING
Westward Ho
Having made Kerala a tourist hotspot, a young civil servant hopes to do a repeat with Maharashtra.

Maharashtra Tourism's Singh: Hoping for an encore 'unlimited'

You've seen Maharashtra Tourism Development Corp's campaigns for Matheran (Fontainbleau), Mahabaleshwar (Grand Canyon) and the like. Now, meet the man behind them, Ashish Kumar Singh.

The 37-year-old Managing Director of Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation hopes to make Maharashtra the ''number 1'' destination for tourists. The 'Maharashtra Unlimited' campaign is a step in that direction. ''Maharashtra is all about unlimited choices,'' plugs Singh. ''It's all there-beaches, backwaters, mountains, history, and nightlife.''

Coincidence, it may be, but the class-of-1988 IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer was, as managing director of Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, behind the campaign that made Kerala God's own country. By the time he left in 1998, Kerala was investing Rs 80 crore in tourism infrastructure.

Singh may have a mere Rs 3 crore at his disposal at MTDC this year, but that hasn't stopped the flow of his creative juices. His next big idea: The Bollywood Trail, a tour of locations where Bollywood blockbusters were shot. ''Tourism is all about creating a premium product with high brand recall, and ensuring that it is available to consumers off-the-shelf,'' spells out Singh. That's not too bad for someone whose entry into tourism was accidental.

-Abir Pal

TARMAC
Making Inroads
A Rs 52,000-crore opportunity is luring corporates like Essar and Videocon into the business of making roads.

Ebony's Narula: From stores to roads

Software services, dotcoms, call centres, biotech, roads... Roads? That's right, the tarmac, going by corporate behaviour, is the next gold rush in India Inc. With road construction projects valued at a whopping Rs 52,000 crore underway, corporates can't help but effect neat detours into the business of making roads. The Videocon Group is upgrading the Mumbai-Aurangabad-Nagpur highway and is involved in the Western Freeway Sea Link Project; Mukand is working on two projects in Uttar Pradesh; and an Essar Group joint venture is building a highway in Karnataka. ''We see this as an important business for the group,'' gushes Sashi Ruia, the Chairman of the Essar Group. Adds, Rumneek Bawa the Chief Operating Officer of D.S. Construction (part of the D.S. Narula Group that runs the Ebony store chain), ''With power projects having dried up and not much industrial construction activity, we found getting into road construction a good business proposition.'' The money helps. Videocon's projects are worth Rs 320 crore and Essar's, Rs 717 crore. And D.S. Construction and the Jaypee Group will together build the Rs 550-crore Delhi-Gurgaon highway project. This is one old-economy diversification that looks like it will actually work.

-Swati Prasad

ANCHORS AWEIGH
Port Of Call
AP Moeller/Maersk CEO Jess Soederberg wants a bigger piece of the Indian pie.

AP Moeller/ Maersk's CEO Jess Soederberg: Hunting for opps

It may not sound like the logical next-step for a shipping company that anchored on Indian shores 12 years ago, but Maersk's decision to go further inland is steeped in good sense. Thus, when Thomas Dyrbye, the Managing Director of the company's Indian operations, says, ''We are looking at setting up inland ports in places like New Delhi,'' he is merely referring to the now accepted practice for integrated shipping and logistics companies like Maersk to set up dry ports in the hinterland, ideally in places where sufficient commercial activity occurs. ''We'd like to be part of the future development of infrastructure in India,'' adds Jess Soederberg, the CEO of the Copenhagen-based AP Moeller/Maersk, sounding fairly upbeat after his meeting with officials in the Ministry of Shipping in Delhi. Maersk has a 14 per cent stake in Gujarat Pipavav Port, India's first private sector port that can handle bulk, container, and liquid cargo, and it established India's first private Container Freight Station (CFS) in Mumbai. Now, Soederberg hopes it can play a role in the privatisation effort of the shipping ministry. Press the man for details and he ducks behind an innocuous, ''we will grow with the Indian market.''

-Roshni Jayakar

PLASTIC MONEY
Money That Lasts
If two materials hothouses have their way, India could soon have currency that lasts and lasts.

Isle of Man, Haiti, India's turn next?

If you thought plastic money was all about credit cards, think again. The Government of India could soon allow the use of currency notes made out of polymer substrates instead of paper.

Leading the race for government approval is the $25 billion US chemical giant Dupont with its currency substrate Tyvek, a patented product that combines the properties of paper, cloth, and film. Tyvek costs almost twice as much as the paper currently used to print money, but ''notes made out of Tyvek are washable, lint-free, tear resistant, recyclable, and offer more security features,'' pitches Dupont India's Marketing Representative (Non Wovens), Pradeep Rao. Then, there's the thing about Tyvek's resilience to pinholes caused by multiple stapling (a common practice in Indian banks). Polymer currency is already in use in countries such as like Indonesia, Costa Rica, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka. Also in the race for the rupee-account is Australian firm Securency, with its patented substrate, Guardian. Polymer could be the way out in a market where cash still rules, and where the government replaces lower denomination notes as often as every six months. ''The product will last 10 times longer (than paper currency) and the government will save around Rs 1,000 crore over five years,'' claims J.P. Singh, a distributor for Dupont. Now that's an innovative contribution to the effort to reduce government spend: print on plastic.

-Subhajit Banerjee

WILL-O'-THE-WISPS
Will The Real WiLL Please Stand Up?
Even as the fracas over Wireless-in-Local-Loop continues, a company unveils another variant..

It has close to 7 million subscribers in China who fork out one-sixth of what their fellow mobile phone users connected to Groupe Speciale Mobile (GSM) networks do. In Taiwan, it is a top-of-the-line service with third generation features like e-mail, chat, and always-on-internet. It is PHS (personal handyphone system), and the technology has now made a quiet entry into India through mtnl's trial run in Delhi's upmarket East of Kailash borough. Now, with 200 subscribers on board, MTNL is extending its experiment to business districts Okhla and Chandni Chowk.

PHS is a wireless-in-local-loop platform that is less expensive than the much-in-the-news CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access).

''The cost of connecting each subscriber is as low as $100 (Rs 4,800), compared to $175-200 (Rs 8,400-9,600) needed for each fixed-line connection,'' says Ruchir Godura, Director (South Asia) of UTStarcom, which has supplied the equipment to MTNL.

While MTNL, or any other company using this technology, can't charge a tariff lower than the stipulated Rs 450 monthly rental and Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call, PHS will help them break even on a lower base, making it the right choice for thinly populated areas.

As always, competitors beg to differ. ''We provide 70-kbps internet with simultaneous voice traffic. PHS cannot do that; we can also provide mobility,'' says Shirish B. Purohit, Director, Midas Communication, which makes cordect equipment. This is one battle we'd like to keenly track.

-Suveen K. Sinha

SYMBIOSIS
United Technologies
India's two best known biotech companies strike a workable partnership.

Biocon's Shaw: Her company will provide the process technology

Shantha's Reddy: And his will provide the product technology

It's a picture perfect union. On one side is the country's pioneering biotech company, Biocon, whose founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw was described by Economist magazine as fermentation queen. On the other is Shantha Biotechnics, promoted by Indian biotech's poster boy K. Varaprasad Reddy. The equal joint venture, Biocon-Shantha Biotech will manufacture and market recombinant human insulin, a Rs 100-crore domestic market that could touch Rs 1,000 crore soon. The 20 million diabetics in India can't do without insulin, and Shantha says there are some 20 million more who haven't yet been diagnosed with the disease. Still better, says Shaw, ''it is a billion-dollar market globally'', the patent on recombinant human insulin goes in 2002, making the product a biogeneric, and recent years have seen a shift from the usage of animal insulin to human insulin. ''If we had done it alone we would have had to invest close to Rs 80 crore and wait nearly two years,'' says Reddy. Shansulin-that's the name of the product-will now hit the markets in early 2003, and be priced ''competitively'', says Reddy. That means it will cost lower than the imported human insulin in use in India today: Rs 200 for a 10-ml vial containing 40 IU (international units) of human insulin; and Rs 500 for a 10-ml vial with 100 IU of human insulin. As we said, picture perfect.

-E. Kumar Sharma