The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. The Nainital High Court on Wednesday stayed the floor test that would have determined the fate of the Congress government in Uttarakhand, posting the next date for arguments on April 6.
2. No law prevents women from entering a place of worship, the Bombay High Court ruled while hearing the Shani Shingnapur case.
3. The Indian men's cricket team takes on West Indies in a T20 World Cup semifinal in Mumbai's Wankhede stadium at 7 pm.
The Big Story: Tata bye-bye
Coming as it did around the time Mittal Steel bought Arcelor, Tata Steel's $14-billion acquisition of British steel giant Corus in 2007 became part of the narrative that portrayed Indian companies as the next decade's behemoths. The move made Tata Steel the first Indian company in the Fortune 500 multinational list and made it the fifth-largest steel company in the world. Alongside the Tata group acquiring Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover, it was sold as proof that Indian companies were about take over the world, or at least the United Kingdom.
Today, both those steel deals are in trouble. ArcelorMittal has had its fair share of problems, and the board of Tata Steel has now indicated an intention to sell its UK operations. The announcement has left the British government in disarray, with demands for the state to nationalise the plants and ensure that the 15,000 workers do not lose their jobs.
The reasons for the UK operations' poor performance are manifold, from the economic crisis that came right after the acquisition to the continued doldrums that the Eurozone economies find themselves in. In retrospect, Tata also seems to have been exuberantly optimistic about the steel industry, having paid a premium for Corus after a Brazilian company entered the acquisition race.
The sale will put a major dent in the Tata group's global expansion plans, but it is by no means a sign of Indian companies reverting to purely domestic concerns. The Tata group's other UK operations, including Tetley and JLR, are zooming along and the company is still one of the country's biggest manufacturers, with much of its revenues also coming from Britain. Meanwhile, expect UK politicians to rush to the Tata group's executives now in the hope of preventing the changes from having massive economic and political fallout – a somewhat roundabout reassertion of the fact that Indian companies abroad do still have massive clout.
Politicking & Policying
1. Former chairman of UB Spirits Vijay Mallya has offered to pay Rs 4,000 crore to the banks he owes by September, in a proposal that was submitted to the Supreme Court.
2. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is planning to build a 125-foot tall statue of BR Ambedkar in the state's new capital, Amravati.
3. Seven Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed in a landmine blast in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district.
4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated his call for the United Nations to define terrorism, as he left Brussels for the Nuclear Security Summit, to be held in Washington, DC.
Punditry
1. Charmy Harikrishnan in the Economic Times writes of how the National Awards perpetuates the myth that Bollywood features India's best cinematic offerings.
2. Suhasini Haidar in the Hindu writes that the appearance of an alleged Indian agent in Pakistan could not come at a worse time for relations between the countries.
3. Bibek Debroy in the Indian Express writes of the difficulty of doing cost/benefit analyses when it comes to development policies.
Don't Miss
Ajai Sahni writes that the investigative drama over Pathankot is a bizarre, counterproductive waste of time.
"There is a pernicious certainty about the claim that there is no alternative to talks. This is utter and ignorant nonsense. Break these arguments down. First, the claim that we cannot change our neighbours is contra-factual. We certainly changed our neighbours in 1971 – with the creation of Bangladesh. We changed the neighbourhood, again, in 1975, when Sikkim became an Indian State. China changed the neighbourhood through its gradual process of occupation of Tibet through the 1950s, culminating in the flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959. It changed the neighbourhood again in 1962, occupying a sizeable part of the Aksai Chin region. Indeed, all of history is little more than a record of changing neighbours and neighbourhoods."
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