Daily Pulse India: Another Parliament Washout, How To Shed Bad Assets, More Headwinds At Air Asia

Let down again: Two days to go and the Parliament hasn’t really done any serious business this time either. The washout that was the monsoon session has repeated itself yet again. Last time it was the Lalit Modi-related controversies and this time it’s the National Herald court case against the Gandhi family and 'Delhi Cricket Association' corruption allegations against the finance minister that kept the lawmakers busy.
The Congress was quick to stall any kind of serious business and the NDA government’s negotiation skills fell short. The monsoon session had started with two big hopes: The land acquisition bill and the GST bill. The land bill was watered down along the way and fell off the radar sharpening the focus on GST this time. For a while, it seemed like the GST may even make it through, but business was again sidetracked by politics.
That is not to say no business was done at all. Some smaller bills were passed – supplementary grants were passed in the Upper House, the National Waterways bills was passed in the Lower House. But with two more business days left in this session, it’s unlikely anything bigger will happen now.

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Discarding Assets: New loan rules allowed banks to take equity control of defaulting companies to ensure that the management is serious about turning the companies around. As part of the rules, banks should also exit these companies as quickly as possible. So, lenders are now talking to PE firms hoping they will take these assets off the hands. Banks in question are SBI and Axis Bank, while the PE investors being wooed are TPG, KKR and SSG. Hopefully, this will help banks clean up their balance sheets some more.

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Electric, Hybrid Cars: After the Delhi government came down heavily on diesel vehicles for polluting air in the cities, carmakers Tata Motors and Mahindra & MAhindra are working on developing cleaner models. Tata Motors is working on electric and hybrid cars, taking advantage of China’s efforts to bring down battery costs for these cars. Mahindra plans to launch electric variants of its sedan and mini truck by as early as February.

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Air Asia has seen the departure of more than a dozen of the 20 top officials who were part of the original startup team of the airline. There were reports of boardroom trouble and differences between the promoters, so it does seem like the troubles run deeper than what they appeared at first.

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Flipkart has said that Accel Partners has not sold any shares, denying what was reported in the newspaper yesterday and also in this column.

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Cover Image: The capital is witnessing citizen protests once more as a juvenile accused in the infamous 2012 rape case was released over the weekend and the Supreme Court refused to stay the release. The mother of the victim is leading this protest. 

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