INDIA
Asian Voice - Saturday 16th April 2011
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Search panel to finalise Ratan Tata’s successor soon The search to find a successor to Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata has entered the final stages, said R K Krishna Kumar, a member of the search panel. “It is not an easy task but we will identify the next chairman of Tata Sons within a few weeks by the end May or early June,” Mr Kumar said. In India’s business capital of Mumbai, the search has triggered a frenzy of speculation about
Rahul Gandhi is an Amul baby: Kerala CM Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan on Sunday hit out at Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's comment on his age by calling him an 'Amul baby'. Gandhi, at an election meeting on Saturday, pointed out that if the Left came back to power, then at the end of its five-year term the state would have a 93-year-old chief minister. Achuthanandan is 87 years old. 'Is it my fault that I am 87 and even at this age I am going on like this? Please remember that when I was in Class 7 my father passed away and after that I could not continue my studies. At the age of 16, I was involved in fighting the British. Please tell me where was Rahul Gandhi (politically) before he was 40 years.
whether the panel will plump for an internal or external candidate. “It needs to be someone with ambition and the ability to implement,” said a journalist in Mumbai. Among the names being considered are Arun Sarin, the former chief executive of Vodafone, and Indra Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo. Favoured internal candidates include R Gopalakrishnan, a direc-
Ratan Tata
tor at Tata Sons and a former executive at Unilever, as well as Noel Tata, Ratan Tata’s half-brother. Founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868, Tata Group has grown dramatically in size over the past 20 years, with a string of acquisitions in India and overseas. When Ratan Tata was appointed in 1991, the group had revenues of $2 billion and was overwhelmingly focused on the domestic market. The
income of last year this was nearly $70 billion, with 60 per cent generated outside India. Under company rules, Ratan Tata has to retire when he turns 75 in December 2012, giving him 18 months to groom his successor to run Tata, which has had only five chairmen in its 140 year history. Tata Sons, the holding group which oversees about 90 different compa-
nies in sectors from hotels to car making, established a committee to decide on Mr Tata’s replacement last August. The other members of the selection panel are Tata Sons director Cyrus Mistry, NA Soonawala, a former chairman of Tata Sons, Shirin Bhattacharya, a lawyer, and Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, the founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group.
Gujarat’s mango growers find better alternatives AV Correspondent Amreli and Junagadh districts were the main production centres of Gujarat’s famous Kesar mango. But now there are fears that it could cease to be the largest production regions of the state as more and more farmers are switching over to cash crops. While the farmers in Junagadh are fighting against climate change which they believe was eating into their mango productions, their brethren in adjoining Amreli district are fast switching over to other cash crops. Amreli district, about 200 km from Ahmedabad is seeing farmers getting dissuaded from growing mangoes and shifting toward a more
profit making venture. These farmers now want to shift toward the production of cash crops, which needs less investment and more yield. Some of the farmers in this district have now shifted to growing cash crops like cotton. Many of them have cleared mango orchards and are planting cotton plants. In as many as 20 villages in Amreli, farmers have cleared their orchards to make way for production of other cash crops. They cite meagre margin of profit and low productivity as
the reason for replacing mango trees with cash crops. If farmers of these villages are to be believed then over 6,000 mango trees belonging to four farmers have already b e e n chopped off the last t h r e e months. One of the farmers K T Gajera said, ``One reason is that mango does not yield the kind of profit that cash crops do and the labour required to harvest mango is also not available in villages.’’ Gajera says that the maintenance for cash crops is also low and the profit amount is high.
The cash crops preferred by farmers are cotton, groundnut and tuver. The trend is alarming as experts disagree with farmers. Agriculture expert Arjun Mehta says that cash crops were totally market driven. “If there is demand for these crops for one year it is not necessary that they would continue to remain in demand for the next few years as well.’’ He, however, said that the farmers were preferring to shift focus as there was no labour cost involved and they did not have to invest much on the field in terms of plant protection. Another farmer Arvind Gajera who owns 11 acres says that they were ready to outsource the field job to tribals but by growing
mangoes they were just able to earn an amount of Rs 160,000 in last year’s season whereas the farmers assume that if they shift to cash crops on the land then they would earn at least Rs 700,000 to 800,000 per season. “If the demand for crops like tuver and cotton are more then the income levels of farmers are expected to be on the rise,”’ said Gajera. Another farmer Dhiru Gajera pointed out that for this season he would retain half of his mango trees in the 11 acre land and half of it would be utilised for cash crops. “If income for mango continues to be the same as that of previous year then I would prefer to switch over to cash crops like some other farmers in the village,’’ said Gajera.
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