Expense Account, Mint The house-help is on leave and I’m in the market for six eggs, making an infrequent visit to buy the EBE (everyone buys everyday) goods. How much? I ask. Paanch kam tees. 25 bucks? I need six and not a dozen, I correct; your numbers are wrong, you mean half that, right? The...
Expense Account, Mint What is your first reaction if you come to know that 10% of seats in the Indian Institutes of Technology will be auctioned to the highest bidder from this year? What if a rich privately funded foreign university like Harvard does the same? Is it okay to pay children to read to...
Expense Account, Mint The world hit the Millennium Development Goal (set in 1990) of halving poverty five years ahead of time in 2010, but delve deeper into the numbers and it is clear that India has reason to worry. It has been China’s ability to take 660 million people out of poverty that has powered...
Expense Account, Mint Last week’s bailout of the ONGC stake sale by Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) has turned the spotlight on an institution that is a household name in India and now finds itself being publicly questioned over its investment decisions. Should you be worried about your money in government-owned LIC that was...
Expense Account, Mint Because much of policymaking in India is about lobbying power, we see some strange outcomes. Take the draft bancassurance guidelines, for example, that lay down the rules of bank tie-ups for insurance companies. The weird spectrum-like allocation of banks to insurance companies is a classic example of a compromise that benefits no...
Expense Account, Mint If you hear of a company selling a stake in itself, and then giving money to the buyer to buy that stake, what would you think? There’s something wrong with the deal. That’s the story in the bancassurance market right now and the rush of life insurance companies to tie up with...
Expense Account, Mint The Rs2.9 trillion Indian life insurance industry has, for the first time since privatization in 2000, seen contraction over two consecutive financial years. Fiscal 2010-11 saw a shrinking of 20% and the full year 2011-12, estimates the insurance regulator, will contract 15%. This means that enough of us did not buy an...
Expense Account, Mint No. The Indian fund industry will not shut shop, but the news that Fidelity mutual fund may be on the block did burn the financial industry airwaves earlier this week. The possible sale of the almost seven-year-old fund house known for its retail focus, mature industry practices and its stable performance did...
Expense Account, Mint What do you expect your mutual fund to do? It is worth asking and answering this question as we carry out Mint Money’s biannual exercise of examining Mint50—the portfolio of investment-worthy funds that the Mint Money team curates. A quick word on why we do this. Indian households have a high savings rate but most...
Expense Account, Mint In the market for a TV, I checked out all the vendors nearby. In the Sony and Samsung showrooms I got the Sony and Samsung TVs. In Croma, I got a variety of brands. On one TV it said Croma. That was the in-house brand which was cheaper than the other branded...