The Importance Of Being Brajesh
The Opposition and the Sangh Parivar launch an attack on the Prime Minister's Office by targeting the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra. The Vajpayee camp finds itself fighting a grim political battle to retain credibility even as the Establishment tries to discredit the Tehelka allegations. An analysis.

Supercrat In His Labyrinth
There are 240 secretaries to the Government, but N. K. Singh is always a cut above-in style, networking, and power. The economic policy wizard gets defensive.

The Ways And Means Of Ranjan
Ranjan Bhattacharya's role as nursemaid to Atal Bihari Vajpayee gives the fun-loving foster son-in-law
the image of one who dabbles in government decisions.

Congress' Coalition Flight Grounded
With sceptic constituents, Congress President Sonia Gandhi's
plan to form an alliance just before the assembly elections in five states, may backfire.

Desperately Seeking loopholes
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Samata Party find discrepancies
in the charges levelled against them by Tehelka. But it's just details.

Nursery Of Hate
The week-long violence in Kanpur has cooled down, but the spectre of the Students Islamic Movement of India still looms large. A look at the reach of India's in-house Taliban.

Vroom Service
The four-stroke motorcycle overtakes middle-class India's greatest icon since the valve radio set, as sales of the doughty old scooter stagnate in spite of a spirited fightback.

George Cross
The FIR against Sonia Gandhi's private secretary is a plain corruption issue says the CBI. But, an embarrassed Congress complains of vendetta.

Nothing Official About It
The payment crisis is temporarily stemmed, but clandestine financing ticks like a time bomb.

BUSINESS: CALCUTTA STOCK EXCHANGE

Departure From The Trend

The CSE stands in a paradoxical isolation from this established market practice. Thanks to the centuries-old practice of the city's Marwari finance capital, BADLA financing is almost entirely dependent on an unofficial lending system. It provides finance, now at 32 per cent annually, for the speculators to carry forward their bookings from one settlement week to another. The official rate (11 per cent) is shown on the ''dabba'' (the computerised system) while the unofficial part (''dabba se bahar'') is left to the glue of honour that binds the lender and the borrower. The Bankas met with a tragic end probably because of an exorbitant commitment beyond the dabba. Admits CSE President Kamal Parekh: ''The unofficial BADLA rate has overshadowed the official. It is a fact of life.''

The CSE has experienced default problems earlier also, particularly during the 1992 securities scam triggered by Harshad Mehta, which involved nearly a fifth of the exchange's 500-odd broker members. The current problem is somewhat different. It began in January, when Mumbai's bull operator Ketan Parekh, cornered by the free fall in the prices of his favoured new-economy stocks, shifted a chunk of his holdings in HFCL to his ''friends'' in Kolkata. The biggest among Parekh's eastern allies, Dinesh K. Singhania, a second-generation stockbroker, acquired a little over a million HFCL shares through his various firms, with names as striking as Doe Jones Investment and Tripoli Consultancy. Parekh's other frontman, Ashok Poddar, also agreed to carry a large part (about five lakh) of his HFCL holdings in the names of himself and his family members like Prema Poddar and Rajkumar Poddar.

There was yet another set of problems with DSQ Software, whose promoter Dinesh Dalmia had lent Rs 208 crore to stockbrokers and sister companies primarily to ramp up the price of the scrip. As its price dropped within a year from Rs 2,000 to about Rs 380 in January, Harish Chandra Biyani, a CSE broker, came to Dalmia's rescue by holding a large number of the beleagured shares. A SEBI team stationed in Kolkata calculated Biyani's exposure to the DSQ Software scrip alone at about Rs 70 crore.

With the markets witnessing unprecedented selling pressure on both HFCL and DSQ Software counters, notably from March 2 (after a sudden spurt on March 1, the day after the budget), Parekh's Kolkata friends could not bear the heavy cross any longer. Brokers failed to honour the BADLA commitments and more than 50 CSE trading terminals were disconnected by March 8, the pay-in day after the March 1 buying binge.

Things had become worse by March 15, the next pay-in day, despite a SEBI ban on short sales (offering to sell at today's price in the hope that the price would fall tomorrow). Angry sub-brokers laid siege to the CSE building, filling the corridor outside the executive offices with the very Bengali war-cry for paralysing work: Cholbe na, Cholbe na. Outside the building, there was no way that they could trace Singhania, Poddar or Biyani. One of them had reportedly been admitted to Belle Vue Hospital, but the hospital authorities had no clue about it. The others had ''gone to Mumbai'', their family members said.

The CSE somehow managed to ride out the pay-in problems on March 15 and 22 as the SEBI team coerced private financiers to release cash, to the extent of protecting the outstanding positions. The overhang of the unofficial debt, though, persists. The sources of such debt are bizarre. One of them is a well-known jute baron who invests a part of his huge cash flow from forward trading in raw jute in the capital market, notably in acquisition operations. Another financier runs a chain of confectioneries, with most of the daily cash income unaccounted for and, thus, free to be diverted to stock-market adventures.

Though Parekh issued show-cause notices against Singhania, Poddar and Biyani last week, CSE faces endemic problems with speculation driven by No. 2 accounts or, to put it more simply, black money. It is different from Mumbai, where relatively transparent corporate funds are in use for speculation. If Kolkata continues to play the ''rogue exchange'', it will soon become the paradise for speculation based on dubious leveraging.

MetroScape
The Itch For Kitsch
When Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai opened to an overflowing house at Delhi's India Habitat Centre last week, people didn't quite know what to expect.
more...

Looking Glass


Delhi Exhibition: Unbuilt India-Vision 2001

Delhi Music:
Shriram Shankarlal Music Festival, 2001

Delhi: Showroom
Interiors Espania

The 457-acre estate of the Roerichs near Bangalore is in a pathetic condition. But does anyone care, asks INDIA TODAY's Principal Correspondent Stephen David in Despatches.