Hindustani Khana
The petroleum sector is positively blooming with the dismantling of the price control regime. Look at Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd! After the successful launch of Club HP, which converted 83 filling stations across metros into self-contained personalised service centres, HPCL is now focusing on the neglected countryside. It will soon unleash a chain of dhabas to attract highway travellers. Call it horizontal integration or simply a finger on the market pulse, the company’s going seriously ahead with its project. Hospitality to the long-distance travellers/transporters will include wholesome dhaba staples—daal makhani, tandoori murg, sarson ka saag and makki ki roti. Time now to stress the Hindustan in HP!
Pearls And Swine
Lost in the melee of the "bureaucratic reshuffle" that Gujarat CM Narendra Modi undertook after the riots in the state was experienced IAS officer Sanjay Gupta, MD of the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC). He’s known to have single-handedly morphed a fledgling Rs 15-crore state PSU into a vibrant Rs 350-crore hydrocarbon player with diversified interests in exploration, power, pipelines and even oil advisory business. So where did Modi send him? To the Gujarat State Sangeet Natya Academy as member secretary. An obviously disgusted Gupta quit the IAS and was promptly picked up as CEO for the Rs 200-crore Ahmedabad-based Adani Group which has made its fortunes from exports. Modi’s poison was obviously Adani’s mithai!
Gone With The Dead
Is manufacturing dead in India? Despite the noises made from time to time by industry chambers, figures point to a bleak industrial situation taking shape. One that drains all hope of the country ever being able to compete with China’s innovativeness. Last fiscal’s industrial production growth was only 2.7 per cent, slightly better than the record of 2.3 per cent. Will this year be worse? That’s the fear, considering that riot-hit Gujarat contributes 10-12 per cent of the Index of Industrial Production.
