Friday, February 08, 2013

Mood of the Nation

An exclusive TSI-CVoter Opinion Poll on politics and governance

Methodology

The Mood of the Nation opinion poll has been carried out with a national representative sample of 8,721 randomly selected respondents. The survey was done with CVoter's specially designed Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviews (CATI) process across 180 Lok Sabha seats. The survey was conducted in April-May 2010. The data received has been weighted to India's Census profile. Margin of error is plus or minus 3%. As part of our Mood of the Nation initiative, CVoter is now keeping weekly track of the pulse of the people and what India’s rural and urban masses are thinking and feeling about local and national governance. This is being facilitated by CVoter's Weekly Omnibus wherein our researchers quiz voters for their perception about the performance of the country’s political leaders. They also keep a tab on the contemporary issues that matter to the masses. We hope that the initiative will not just help voters make their voices heard but will also hopefully serve as a weekly reminder to the nation’s political bosses about the immediate and long-term needs and ambitions of the voters who brought them to power in the first place.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Wednesday, February 06, 2013

TOYOTA: PRODUCT RECALL

Toyota President Akio Toyoda’s apology was supposed to firefight the recall controversy – it made it worse! Welcome to the world of unintended consequences

The Japanese carmaker on the other end is very confident about a fast recovery and has forecasted a net profit of $892 million for the current fiscal. Apparently this seems to be a very bullish a forecast as compared with a loss of $2.2 billion previously foreseen, and an actual loss of $4.8 billion last year. The forecast also estimates a narrower operating loss of $2.2 billion, compared with a loss of $3.9 billion in the prior November outlook. But strangely, amidst all this, rather than being at the forefront of the public relations efforts of Toyota, Akio Toyoda is preferring to avoid being at the communications forefront, with his latest noncommittal approach to come to the US to attend a scheduled hearing of a Congressional panel on the recall issue – there are now reports of the possibilities of a subpoena against Toyoda being issued if he refuses to appear before the committee. A part of Toyoda’s lack of responsive behaviour is cultural too – Japanese CEOs are not generally groomed to be the spokespersons of their corporations. To that extent, post Akio Morita, it would be rare for the outside world to know of even one Japanese company’s CEO’s name. Toyoda has to realise that breaking these cultural paradigms, he has to single-handedly rebuild the trust of the Toyota brand. For each day of his failing to do this, Toyota loses millions. “Getting the company back on track is Toyoda’s biggest challenge now as the sales have already started showing a decline,” says San Oppenheim’s Christian Breitprescher to B&E (GM and Ford, for example, are offering discounts of up to $1,000 to Toyota owners trading in; a report from UBS suggests that the Japanese automaker is incurring a weekly loss of $155 million from the lost sales since announcing the recall). Toyoda’s has to be an all-guns-blazing firefighting effort, as nothing else will be able to reduce the debilitating fall in sales the company may suffer. Toyoda could well take a sneak look at Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer who is a delightful example of what all positive PR can achieve; and he isn’t even Japanese!


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Monday, February 04, 2013

Water harvesting is the sole solution for this grave crisis

Water harvesting is the best way of tackling the drinking water crisis. We get sufficient water from rain, but we fail to replenish it. What is needed is good infrastructure and citizens’ resolve. So don’t let rain water go waste.

Experts estimate that rain falling on a house built in a 1,500 sq. feet area can generate enough water to serve a family of six. So collect it and preserve it. In towns where we have fewer open spaces we need boring wells to draw water from the earth’s surface. We can collect water by digging soak pits in our gardens and fields. These recharge the ground water and tube wells. We should also ensure a better garbage management system so that ecological balance is maintained and chemical wastes are deposited safely. Chhattisgarh leads India in water harvesting. Water management is an art and we should learn it. Thousands of litres of water are wasted every day because of overuse. To stop this misuse, we must use buckets in place of bath tubs. While brushing our teeth we must ensure that the tap is not open all the time. To wash our vehicle we must use wet cloth instead of bucketfuls of water. To preserve drinking water NGOs, industrialists and the youth should work together. If we don’t understand the importance of water then the crisis cannot be resolved. Bin pani sab sun (without water, there is nothing).

Water is a lifeline for people. And the crisis is felt mostly in summer. Drinking water has become scarce in big cities and rural India. In the hinterlands the situation is worse as villagers have to trudge miles to get drinking water. And in small towns there are many who wait for hours and hours for water tankers. Besides, there have been reports of water riots. All this has happened because we have failed to preserve rain water.

The crisis is further accentuated by depleting ground water levels. In many areas it has gone from 50 feet to 600 feet. Alarmed by the situation, water authorities are proposing a model legislation to prevent further erosion of the water table. The Central Groundwater Board carried out a survey and found that about 800 areas are in the danger zone. The water level has gone down drastically in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Andhra and Tamil Nadu.

Many areas of Haryana, including Narnaul, Samlakha, Karnal and Moga, Sangur, Maha Kalam, Ahmedgarh in Punjab, Surajgarh, Behror and Bhinmal in Rajasthan, Gandhinagar in Gujarat have seen depleted water levels. Water experts say in coastal areas of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu deep drilling of tube wells has led to saline water ingress from the sea destroying prime agricultural land. And sometimes this endangers the only available source of drinking water. In 43 blocks further extraction of ground water has been banned. Several states have been informed about the worsening situation. They have been told to adopt water harvesting as a means to tackle water crisis.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Friday, February 01, 2013

Macro economic environment in a recession

Firms need to take a holistic view of the macro economic environment in a recession

how is the government?
Firms are constantly making decisions about their near future. In developing economies in particular, the value of imports, like a piece of equipment, a computer or new software for example, depends on the exchange rate. If the government has a monetary policy that is dedicated to stabilise its currency and has conservative fiscal policy, firms will have a relatively clear view of the investment horizon. In that case choosing an array of safe assets with an acceptable return is not that risky.

For instance, countries like Argentina have been able to absorb the shock better than its big neighbours like Brazil or some other countries because its monetary policy stabilises the peso (Argentine currency) to the dollar around a predicable market value. It imposes restrictive capital controls and has a conservative fiscal policy to support its stabilisation plan. It is true that its credit market has felt the impact, but it was not well developed before the crisis. So, one can say that the economic activities in Argentina were not significantly affected by the global crisis. Moreover, because the government taxes the country’s agricultural exports, necessities like beef and grains, revenues have remained stable.

In countries where the government has a floating exchange rate regime and where financial capital can flow freely, relative prices tend to behave erratically during a crisis because fear affects the value of currencies, and thus prices, in unexpected magnitudes. In these cases firms may have to consider relocating to more stable economic environments or to invest in safer assets until the crisis subsides to levels at which the future is more predicable.

As a result, a good understanding of the country’s macroeconomic policy may prove to be important during the process of analysis and planning because successful planning depends in part on the ability of the managers to read the future. And forecasting is more an art than a science. The analyst pieces together different parts of the puzzle to construct a tapestry about the future. The process requires not only formal knowledge of particular production processes, consume behaviour, the characteristics of the markets for the various inputs including labour, fiscal impact on the firm and various other issues, but it also needs to have an open mind to find new niches and to be willing to withstand the storm under an umbrella of falling margins while imagining new ways to allocate the existing assets in the less predicable environment that looms ahead in the next few months of this year.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
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Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
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IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
IIPM – FLP (Flexi Learning Program)
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