The figures for the month of May released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) establish beyond doubt the astounding growth in the mobile sector in the country. In May alone, India had an additional 11.6 million mobile subscribers. This takes the total subscriber base in the country to 617.5 million, says a Trai release.

Bharti Airtel lead the show by adding 3 million subscribers in May, followed closely by Reliance Communications with 2.8 million, Vodafone Essar with 2.6 million and Tata Teleservices with 2.32 million. Telecom PSUs BSNL and MTNL added 1.05 million and 40,000 each.

Even as the mobile connectivity in India is on the rise, the number of landline subscribers is on the decline. It slid down from 36.8 million to 36.4 million in a month. According to the latest Trai data, almost 55 out of 100 Indians have phone connection, which is a substantial improvement from 39/100 a year back.

The Trai data is compiled from the information provided by operators. It comes with flaws such as a person with multiple phone connections being counted separately and innumerable unused connection being taken into account.

In spite of the bonhomie in the mobile sector, all is not well. One of the significant revelations is that urban mobile market growth has reached saturation levels, with the country’s 14 operators concentrating on less profitable rural markets. The severe competition in the sector is pushing the rates down to incredible low levels. Moreover, even as May figure is quite encouraging, it is lower than April tally of 20.3 million new subscribers. This is partially attributed to aggressive marketing by new operators.

Meanwhile, Trai announced its decision to initiate quarterly review of telecom service quality, Quarterly Audit of Quality of Service (QoS), instead of annually, as is done at present. This is done to heighten the transparency and protect the interest of both landline and mobile subscribers.

The government has announced that there is an expected growth in the current fiscal in the automobile export of India as the demand from Europe for automobiles is all set to increase. This growth is expected to be in tune of 15 per cent.
The Joint Secretary in Department of Heavy Industry, Mr. Ambuj Sharma said “We may see a 10-15 per cent increase in auto exports over and above the last fiscal’s export”.

The overall automobile exports in India has risen at 18,04,619 units over last years figures of 15,30,594 units showing a 17.90 per cent growth. These details were provided by the Society of Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM)

Mr. Ambuj Sharma believes that the growth of the European National will increase the demand and consumer spending in those regions and thus increase the exports in India.

One of the major destinations for Indian automobile industry is the European markets, especially for the passenger car sections.

Several major automobile manufacturers and markets had witnessed a sharp decline last fiscal, where as India’s export has show a 33.23 per cent growth in the last fiscal.

The main reason for the increase in the growth was due to the scrappage scheme that was introduced by the European nations which has helped boost the small car sales by a large extent.  The various governments have offered to bonuses to citizens who buy a new car in exchange for the old one.

Indian majors like Hyundai Motors India, Maruti Suzuki etc. have made the most of this incentive scheme rolled out by the European nations.

Now that the scheme has expired, the Indian car manufacturers are scouting out for several new markets like the ones in the Latin American nations.
Even in the two wheeler category the growth in the exports was on the rise registering a 13.54 per cent increase. Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto led the surge in the two wheelers export.

It has been requested to the Indian government by SIAM to provide several impetus to sales to the overseas market by offering the manufacturers n India several measures like the increasing the list of markets that would offer several duty benefits to the manufacturers.

India has become a lucrative market for multinational food companies. With India being the second fastest growing economy, companies do not want to miss this golden opportunity to take a share in this boom. Companies are accelerating investments, pushing distribution and fine-tuning strategies to capture the huge middle income population. Major companies such as Unilever, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Kellogg’s and Yum! Foods have named India as a critical market as sales from US and Europe have been stagnant.

Frits van Dijk, Nestle SA’s head of Zone Asia, Africa and Oceania announced in an investors’ conference that the company would invest about 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.35 billion) in India, Brazil, Russia and China between 2010 and 2012. Nestlé touched over 2.2 million Indian customers last year. It plans to set up a new research and development centre in India in 2012.

Yum! Brands Inc, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurant chains, plans to invest $100 to $120 million in India. The company said they plan to open 1,000 restaurants employing around 50,000 people by 2015. The company expects a profit of $100 million from India by 2015.

World’s largest cereal maker Kellogg’s international business head Paul Norman said, “India was set to become the capital of heart health and diabetes over the next decade and the company would use its brands to build its presence in India, France and Mexico.”

P&G plans to target one billion new customers by 2015 from India and China. One of the company’s spokeswoman said, “The bigger picture here is that there are almost seven billion people in the world today and we reach only half of those. As we strive to serve the remainder of the world’s consumers, India becomes an important destination.” GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare plans to invest over Rs.270 in India over the next 3 years. Unilever also plans to focus on the Indian market.

The uncanny relation of agriculture and economy is pressuring government to draw up district-specific contingency plan to overcome the vagaries of nature. The past years have witnessed weather playing a major role in agricultural output and thereby in the country’s economy.

Agriculture, accounting for 16.6% of the GDP and employing 52% of country’s total workforce, is vastly affected by the unpredictable weather patterns, mostly blamed on global warming and the ensuing climate change. The tumbling effect on economy is becoming too grave for the government to ignore of late. Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) in tandem with state agricultural universities has come out with a contingency plan to get over this eventuality.

Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the government initiative in combating unruly weather-related disasters, has prepared a draft manual for 89 out of 600-plus districts in the country. This is awaiting approval and validation by agriculture experts.

This draft manual divides the country into five zones and further into districts in formulating the contingency plan, which is considered more effective than a single plan for the whole country. In the manual, alternative plans are suggested in crop selection and cultivation methods, when the climate turns abnormal. This includes less or delayed rains, unseasonal rains, floods or excessive rains, above-normal temperature and frost.

ICAR is being assisted in this work by Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), an affiliated organization based in Hyderabad. The contingency manual for each district would have details regarding basic agricultural statistics and soil mapping. It would also contain information on livestock and fisheries, which is vital in disaster management.

“Each district would have a scientific document at the disposal of district collector for adaptation in case of eventualities,” says B Venkateswarlu, director, CRIDA.

The contingency manuals are expected to be ready in a year.