Businessmen are bullish about rural India and finance companies are no different. At a recent conference, Harsha Raghavan, the MD and CEO of Fairbridge Capital, shared an interesting anecdote regarding business opportunities.. When the Bata brothers, Tomas and Antonin, first came to India in 1931, one of them commented that there was no scope since no one wore shoes while the other said the entire country was a market.

Winning moves

Looks like Kerala has become the jackpot destination. Consider the case of Ponnaiyya from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh, who went to Kerala to make a living from begging. He came up trumps on Wednesday when lots were drawn for the ₹65-lakh first prize of Akshaya lottery run by the Kerala government. The lottery agent tracked him down and took him to Vellarada police station to ensure his security. The police then escorted him to the Parassala branch of SBI. Since his wife, and not he, had an account with a branch in Anantapur, and since transactions could not be carried out, the police kept him overnight at the station. On Thursday, his father and brother took him home.

Less than a month ago, a migrant worker from West Bengal won the ₹1-crore Karunya lottery of the Kerala government. Mohijul Rahima Sheikh of Bardhaman district had come to Kozhikode in search of work when Lady Luck smiled on him.

One up

During a recent interaction with the media in Mumbai, DK Sarraf, the CMD of ONGC, was hounded with questions about the company’s ongoing dispute with Reliance Industries. The two oil exploration giants are in a spat about natural gas reserves in the Krishna-Godavari basin in Andhra Pradesh. ONGC has accused RIL of pumping out natural gas worth as much as ₹11,000 crore from its reservoir which borders another resource owned by RIL. Sarraf said he had nothing the reporters didn’t already know, slyly alluding to certain sections of the media accessing government files. “Sometimes, when I need some reports regarding this case and my team has difficulty pulling out the data, I just look for what the media has reported,” he quipped.

Friends indeed

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao made a compelling PPT presentation in the Telangana Legislative Assembly on harnessing the State’s irrigation potential and floored everyone with his depth of information. He went on to say that (Chandrababu) Naidu was his friend and that he would send him the presentation. Complimenting his counterpart for taking up the Pattiseema irrigation project linking the Godavari and Krishna, he expressed confidence that the two States would work towards their mutual benefit. Friends in need are friends in deed?

The men in white

All of last week, men in white veshti and shirt thronged the famous Parthasarathy temple in the heart of Chennai seeking divine intervention for nominations from their respective parties — mostly the AIADMK — to contest in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Not only did they perform special prayers for themselves, they also prayed for their supreme leader, J Jayalalithaa. “This has become a tradition every election. However, the number this time is huge,” said a priest in the temple. An aspiring candidate, who was carrying a large garland, said he was heading straight to Jayalalithaa’s residence to attend the interview.

Killing suspense

Will he, won’t he? With September just a few months away, speculation about whether Raghuram Rajan will get an extension is getting feverish. In January the buzz was that the popular RBI governor was getting a second term. In March, rumours of a rift with FM Arun Jaitley surfaced. But now again, the gossip is that he will be offered an extension, if not some post in the finance ministry.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW