Centre has leads on Jaipur blasts: Patil

Wed, May 14 05:14 PM
Shillong/Kohima, May 14 (PTI) The government has leads on those who carried out the serial blasts in Jaipur that claimed at least 60 lives and injured over 100 people, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said today. "The Centre has leads about the elements involved in the the strikes.
But we will not disclose it now. Investigation is in progress," he told reporters here.
"There is a design behind the strikes," Patil said. Later at Kohima, he said he was in constant touch with his ministry officials in Delhi to monitor the situation in Jaipur.
He was also in touch with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and had assured her of help from the Centre. Patil lauded the people of Rajasthan for showing restraint despite provocation by those who were trying to disturb peace.
He said he would visit Jaipur tomorrow along with Congress president Sonia Gandhi to take stock of the situation. PTI.

Curfew imposed on Indian city after bombings kill 80

Wed, May 14 03:37 PM
JAIPUR, India (AP) _ Police imposed a daylong curfew in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Wednesday to prevent any retaliatory violence after a series of blasts in crowded areas left at least 80 people dead. Authorities suspect Islamic militants were behind the blasts, and they moved quickly to stop any potential clashes between the city's Hindu majority and its sizable Muslim minority.
Police were deployed in force and people kept off the streets of Jaipur's old walled city, where all seven bombs went off on Tuesday. The bombers may have been aiming "to create communal tension," said Vasundhara Raje, the chief minister of Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is the capital.
"But there is peace in the city. The curfew is a precaution.
" With police seemingly everywhere, streets in the old city were largely devoid of pedestrians, and shops throughout the rest of Jaipur were also shuttered. "Neither the Hindus or the Muslims here want to fight," said Mohiuddin Qureshi, a gemstone trader who works in a market that was bombed.
"Our lives are together, our businesses are together. This is the work of outsiders," said Qureshi, who went to 10 burials Wednesday.
The attack came a week before India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, was to visit Pakistan to discuss the rivals' four-year peace process. Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said Mukherjee would press Islamabad to act against Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups, which India accuses Pakistan of backing.
"The absence of violence and stopping cross-border terrorism is a very high priority for India," Menon told reporters. But he stopped short of alleging a Pakistani hand in Tuesday's attack.
"We are still in the process of investigating. I don't want to jump to conclusions," he said.
Police in Jaipur have so far questioned nearly a dozen people. But no arrests have been made, and Raje told reporters that authorities only "have some slender leads.
" Nearly 200 people were wounded in the explosions in the city in western India known for its pink-hued palaces, said A.K.
Jain, a top Rajasthan police official. Police said an eighth bomb was found and defused.
"Obviously, it's a terrorist plot," A.S.
Gill, the police chief of Rajasthan, said hours after the attack. "The way it has been done, the attempt was to cause the maximum damage to human life.
" The blasts began around 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday. One went off at a market near a temple dedicated to the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.
Tuesday is the day of worship set aside for the deity and the temple was crowded with people offering prayers on the way home from work. Brajesh Kumar, 15, was on his way to pray at the temple when the bomb exploded.
"I heard a big noise and then I felt something pierce my leg and chest," he said from a hospital bed Wednesday. He had broken a rib and shrapnel in his feet and chest, he said.
Another bomb exploded near the city's Johari Bazaar jewelry market, a popular tourist attraction. The tourist season ended in March, however, and there was no indication that foreigners were caught in any of the bombings.
Bombing sites were littered with dropped shopping bags, mangled bicycles, damaged cars and overturned bicycle rickshaws, the most popular mode of transport in the crowded lanes of Jaipur. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, as is the case with most bombings in India.
But soon after the attack, authorities were suggesting blame would eventually fall on Pakistan and the Islamic militant groups India accuses it of backing. "One can't rule out the involvement of a foreign power," said India's junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, using language commonly understood to refer to Pakistan.
Jaiswal, speaking just hours after the attack, refused to say if he was talking about Pakistan. But he suggested the bombings were connected to previous attacks on India, saying that "the blasts are part of a big conspiracy.
" Indian authorities have blamed Pakistan-based Islamic extremist groups for a spate of bombings that have killed nearly 400 people in this predominantly Hindu country of 1.1 billion people since 2005.
Pakistan, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, denies any role in the bombings. The attacks have ranged from July 2006 train bombings that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai, India's financial center, to small blasts like the one that struck a Muslim shrine in Rajasthan last year, killing two people.
Each new bombing has brought fears of a new outbreak of violence between Hindus and Muslims, which has sporadically bled India throughout its history. Authorities quickly ordered alerts in New Delhi, Mumbai and several other cities.
Security was also stepped up at airports and railway stations across the country.
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Tata may export Nano to US

Tata Motors [Get Quote] said on Tuesday it will consider exporting the Rs 100,000-car to many promising markets, including the US.
"There is nothing that we can not export Nano to any country. Tata Motors also has plans for exports. But the Tata Nano will be initially marketed in India," Tata Motors spokesperson told PTI.
The announcement comes close on the heels of the US publication Conde Nast Portfolio's report that 'Nano' would not be sold in the US.
"The model (Nano) won't be sold in the US but has the potential to radically alter the market for manufacturers in India. Tata-inspired followers are already revving up their engines," Conde Nast Portfolio said while naming Ratan Tata as one of the 73 biggest brains around the world.
The spokesman, however, said that after positioning firm in the domestic market, the company would consider exporting the car.
"The company has not yet finalised specific exports markets and timelines. The Nano will meet the prevalent norms of any country it is marketed in," the spokesperson said without mentioning any specific country, including the US.
Tata Motors usually does not export any of its products in the first few years of launch, he added.
The list of '73 Biggest Brains in Business', compiled by Conde Nast Portfolio, featured Tata for his $-2,500 car Nano, along with the likes of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and chief executive of investment bank Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein.
Tata Group, which recently snapped up British luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover for a $2.3 billion deal, had unveiled the world's cheapest car Nano during the Delhi Auto Expo this year and roll out is due in the second half of this year.
To compete with Nano, Bajaj Auto Ltd [Get Quote], the country's second largest two-wheeler maker, yesterday announced a joint venture with Renault-Nissan to produce a $-2,500 car. The 'ULC' code-named car, which would be rolled out from a brand new plant in Chakan (Maharashtra), would be available in the Indian market by 2011.
In recent times, the Indian auto market has caught the fancy of many global players too. US car maker General Motors had announced it would introduce a small car in India by 2010, which would be priced below its existing vehicle in the segment Spark.
Last month, Japanese major Toyota announced a Rs 1,400 crore (Rs 14 billion) investment in its Chennai plant to launch a 'strategic small car' within next 2-3 years.

Beware! Tight money days ahead

Two days ago, I got talking to the head of a foreign bank in India. I asked him, inevitably, how he was currently viewing the whole sub-prime meltdown. The question partly stemmed from the fact that just a week before, Swiss banking giant UBS had announced a first quarter loss of $10.5 billion. To add to the over $320 billion already written down the world over.
According to him, the problems were known and the recapitalisation efforts had started so to that extent the situation was under control. However, on the other hand, the bad news he said was that the bottom was yet to be found.
Banks like HSBC (which said it would make a $4.6 billion provision for bad debts on Monday) too are saying that a recovery in the US housing market is unclear and a comeback, if any, can be expected only in 2009. A late 2009 recovery seems to be the consensus now.
Meanwhile, risk aversion is becoming higher all over. "Bank A will not lend to Bank B and that creates a liquidity problem as well," the banker said pointing to the Bear Stearns collapse, where the Federal Reserve had to step in to bail it out by providing emergency loans.
After Bear Stearns, most banks globally were more wary, he said. How would all this impact India? According to him, what the sub-prime crisis had clearly done was to force all banks to carefully relook all their international operations.
The relook, he predicted, would result in several banks recasting, downsizing or selling off pieces of their operations or investments. Actually, this has already begun to happen.
The problem, it turns out, will not just be with foreign banks with operations in India. Many bankers I have spoken to in recent days say the same recklessness in disbursing loans that partly triggered the mortgage market crisis in the US has been visible in India, though obviously not at the same scale.
For instance, there are several cases where individuals have used credit cards from some banks - given out on somewhat weak documentation - to get loans and access to other financial products from the newer and aggressive finance companies.
As it happens, one bank typically gets blamed here but my sense is the competitive forces have caused all credit card issuing banks to behave similarly. It's not that this was not known all this while, it's just that the sub-prime crisis puts it in context.
All this, as I understand it, is coming to roost. While there is no credit blowout being predicted at this moment, the banks themselves are realising the need to tighten the screws, at least in some cases. It appears at this moment that some of the foreign banks who have been active in the retail space will lead the effort but Indian banks will not be too far behind.
Which should be good news. Unfortunately, it comes at a somewhat bad time. Because this is the way it's going to play out. First, banks with a somewhat larger retail spread will (actually they already have in some cases) start weeding out the low-margin, low-volume customers.
This could mean that those at the bottom of the pyramid will find it difficult to leap onto the consumption bandwagon as they were, or hoping to, in the last few years. The weeding out moves could extend to savings bank accounts in the case of some banks.
Second, it would mean that smaller enterprises who are already fighting a losing battle on various fronts will see credit tightening. The banker I spoke to tells me this is already happening. "You see the big companies and their large balance sheets and think this is a blip on the growth curve. That's true but what you don't see in the headlines are the stories of the smaller companies who will start fighting for survival."
So a smaller company has to reckon with tighter credit, higher interest rates and of course massive inflationary pressures on everything from raw material prices to people. Add to the fact that your bank may be telling you that it may either not lend to you or reduce the quantum and you are in somewhat difficult times.
As an individual or an enterprise who has just about starting getting access to credit, you might be forced back to the informal market. The banks themselves will fight this through.
Interestingly, once again the industry is buzzing with predictions on which bank with a recent retail thrust would call it quits, either because of domestic or international pressures.
The fact is that one or two will put up their hands in surrender is almost a foregone conclusion. But on the institutional side, business continues to be strong. The big companies continue to grow, albeit a little slowly and Deal Street is still buzzing.
So some parts of the consumption economy could be in for a slowdown, if that is not evident already. The latest Index of Industrial Production has fallen substantially, from 14.8 per cent in March 2007 to just 3 per cent for March 2008. This may be an aberration, maybe not. But one reason is tightening credit.
We were speaking about bankers and finances, though. My conversation with the bankers leads me to conclude they are focused on two factors. First, when the current global and domestic economic cycle will play out in its entirety and, second, who will replace Y V Reddy when he retires as the Reserve Bank governor on October 1. Some are also hoping he gets an extension.