Facts For You-A Magazine for Business and Economy

Facts For You September 2010 Issue Vol. 30 No. 12 Market Survey Can Indian Apples Beat Imports in Quality and Price? Although China’s Fuji apples lack the deep red colour favoured by Indian consumers, these compete successfully in price and taste.
Market Survey Sorghum Demand on the Rise Sorghum has the same nutritional value as corn and that is why it is gaining importance as livestock feed.	Market Survey Innovation Keeps Bicycles Going Innovation has played a key role in keeping the bicycle industry alive. Today, one can pick and choose from an entire range of bicycles beginning from children bikes to all-terrain mountain bikes, city urban bikes, sports/race bikes, utility bikes and roadsters.

Market Survey Turmeric: The Golden Spice In Erode, Tamil Nadu, a 100kg bag of turmeric now costs more than 8 gm of gold. The district has seen its turmeric trading prices shoot up 30 per cent over the past few months.	Market Survey Horticulture: Potential Untapped There is an urgent need for proper utilisation of cultivable wastelands. India has 250 million acres of such land, which has to be brought under orchard crops.

Market Survey Mobile Telephony: Rural India Ringing with Opportunities With mobile penetration approaching saturation in urban India, mobile operators in the country are eying rural India as the next area for their growth. The mobile market in rural India has significant potential with number of subscribers anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 32 per cent between 2009 and 2012.	Industrialisation MSMEs Leading Economic Growth This article analyses the performance of MSMEs in India in terms of growth in the number of MSME units, production, exports, investments and employment during the period 1990-91 to 2008-09.

Energy Natural Gas: A Clean and Efficient Energy Security Other than in power sector, gas already displaces consumption of petroleum fuels such as FO/Naptha in industrial sector and petrol/diesel for transportation, which has made a valuable contribution in improving our energy security position. In the transport sector, supply of gas as CNG to automobiles in cities can not only reduce environmental pollution but also lead to substantial Forex savings on import of crude.	Foreign Direct Investment Foreign Direct Investment During the Post Liberalisation Era FDI flows are usually preferred to other forms of external finance because these are non-debt creating, non-volatile and their return depends on the performance of the project financed by the investor. Since economies that enjoy relatively higher rate of growth succeed in attracting foreign investment, which, in turn, accelerates their growth, it is fair to expect that India would have a larger share of FDI in the coming decades.

Monetary Policy Lessons From the Great Inflation The Great Inflation was mainly a result of crucial monetary policy mistakes. This emerges especially starkly from a comparison between the experience of the United States and of Germany and Switzerland which, thanks to the adoption of an appropriate counter-inflationary policy, largely succeeded in escaping it.	Editorial The New Tax Code

Essay The Search for Happiness The original draft for the American Declaration of Independence emphasised that all men are created equal and independent and from this followed the inalienable right of “the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thus, equality, independence and the pursuit of happiness are considered in the USA as the links in a chain. But George Bernard Shaw looked at happiness in another way. He said, “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” A scholar enquiring into the origin of ideas regarding beauty and virtue, came to the conclusion “that action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.” Rousseau described happiness as a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion. All through the centuries, thus, the search for happiness has been the pursuit of scholars. In Indian mythology, contentment is described as the key to happiness; it is the ignorant who think that happiness can be bought with money, but they learn this bitter lesson after they have spent the best part of their lives in the pursuit of money.
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August 2010

Issue Vol. 30 No. 11