Based on the sources, here is the full text of the article titled "Kharif revival lifts fertilizer demand; urea continues to lead" as it appears on page 2:
Kharif revival lifts fertilizer demand; urea continues to lead
MONTHLY SALES. Fertilizer sales hit 41 lt by July 17, against estimated demand of 74.2 lt
Prabhudatta Mishra New Delhi
Fertilizer demand recovered in the first half of July as kharif sowing gathered pace after a weather-induced slowdown in May and June. The latest sales data show that farmers continue to overwhelmingly prefer subsidised urea, underscoring the persistent imbalance in nutrient consumption despite the government’s push for balanced input.
Against an estimated demand of 74.24 lakh tonnes (lt) for July, the peak sowing month, the total fertilizer sales touched 41.09 lt by July 17, indicating that over half the month’s projected demand had already been met. Urea accounted for 25.86 lt, more than 62 per cent of its estimated monthly demand of 41.67 lt and nearly two-thirds of total fertilizer off-take. In comparison, sales of Di-ammonium Phosphate (DAP) stood at 5.74 lt against a projected demand of 12 lt, Muriate of Potash (MoP) at 1.07 lt against 3.54 lt, and complex fertilizers at 8.42 lt against 17.03 lt.
The sharp recovery in demand coincided with a revival in monsoon rains. Having improved monsoon rains after a slow start, sowing of paddy narrowed to 2 per cent as of July 31 from 9 per cent on July 10, while the shortfall in cotton reduced to 2 per cent from 15 per cent and in maize to 7 per cent from 20 per cent.
Overall kharif sowing was down only 1.5 per cent from last year’s level by July-end, compared with a 4.7 per cent deficit a week earlier. “There has been a significant rise in sowing of paddy, maize and cotton in July. Consequently, demand for fertilizers has increased. As the latest forecasts rise further in August on above-normal rainfall in most parts that were severely deficient in June, fertilizer demand is expected to rise further in August depending on the pace of sowing,” said SK Singh, an agriculture demand expert.
Reflecting expectations of sustained field activity, the Department of Fertilizers has projected August demand at 38.01 lt of urea, 9.81 lt of DAP, 3.27 lt of MoP and 14.23 lt of complex fertilizers.
Q1 SALES LAG
Fertilizer sales in the first quarter (April-June) remained lower than a year ago. Total sales of the four major fertilizers declined 5 per cent to 115.11 lt from 121.19 lt in the corresponding period last year. Urea sales fell to 65.06 lt from 68.04 lt, while MoP and complex fertilizers also recorded lower off-take. DAP was broadly unchanged at 16.25 lt. According to sources, the decline followed an unusually strong April, when fertilizer sales surged 25 per cent to 25.59 lt.
The government subsequently introduced measures, including linking fertilizer distribution with Agristack data in select States, to curb surplus purchases. Demand was further dampened by a weak monsoon in June, when rainfall ended 11 per cent below normal and kharif sowing lagged by nearly 20 per cent.
Based on the sources, here is the text of the article titled "Air freight rises 16% in June, Delhi tops with 1 lakh tonnes for third straight month" as it appears on page 2:
Air freight rises 16% in June, Delhi tops with 1 lakh tonnes for third straight month
T E Raja Simhan Chennai
Airports handled a record 3.64 lakh tonnes of freight in June 2024, representing a 16 per cent year-on-year increase over 3.13 lt in the same month last year, driven by robust growth in both international and domestic, according to Airports Authority of India (AAI) data.
International freight remained the principal growth driver, accounting for 2.31 lt — significantly over 64 per cent — of the country's total air cargo throughput. International cargo expanded 19 per cent year-on-year, significantly outpacing the domestic freight growth, reflecting sustained strength in India’s export-import trade.
Airports handled 1.32 lt (1.31 lt) of domestic freight during the month, up 9 per cent, according to the data.
DELHI DOMINATES
Indira Gandhi International, India’s air cargo landscape, saw a significant milestone this month: the national capital’s airport handled more than one lakh tonnes of cargo in June, marking its third consecutive month. Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, says the data.
Bengaluru further widened its lead over Chennai, with the gap in monthly freight volumes increasing to more than 12,200 tonnes. Bengaluru’s growth was driven by stronger performance in both international and domestic cargo, cementing the city's position as the leading air cargo hub in South India.
J Krishnan of S Natesa Logistics LLP, noted that disruptions in West Asia and the Red Sea route by merchant ships have resulted in increased demand for air cargo. This is because of the opening of the perishable market in the West and increased frequencies have all had a direct impact.
On Bengaluru’s increasing lead over Chennai, Krishnan observed that it has followed efforts to build reputation and improve both the infrastructure and process, keeping the customer interest paramount. Chennai’s its natural ship is a consequence.
Q1 GROWTH
During the first quarter of the fiscal (April-June), India’s airports handled 10.80 lt of freight, an increase of 12 per cent over 9.61 lt in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal. Growth despite the West Asia crisis that started in October 2023.
International cargo continued to outperform domestic air cargo during the quarter. International cargo expanded 14 per cent to 6.78 lt, while domestic cargo rose 8 per cent to 3.97 lt, according to the AAI data. For the momentum to grow, the focus must now shift towards expanding terminal capacity, improving landside connectivity, simplifying regulatory procedures, and attracting additional freighter operations, says CK Govil, CMD of CASBY Logistics and President, Airfreight India Pvt. Ltd..
These measures will enable Delhi to consolidate its leadership and support India’s ambition of becoming a global aviation and manufacturing hub, he added.
Based on the sources, here is the full text of the article titled "The economics of medical education" as it appears on page 3:
The economics of medical education
India should be importing doctors, which can be funded by the revenue earned from importing patients
TCA SRINIVASA RAGHAVAN
Every now and then in India, education generally and medical education and healthcare specifically, generate a lot of heated discussion. After a while things go back to their original state as everyone goes off to a Bollywood movie or an IPL match. These two topics, I ought to point out, occupy opposite ends of capital intensity.
Primary education requires a teacher, a blackboard, and a few students, which is where my own primary education began: in the shed of a ramshackle missionary school. My father was the doctor in-charge of a very small town then.
Medical education, on the other hand, requires, about 18 years later, a lot of equipment and an enormous amount of initial investment to start a medical college, not to mention the operating expenses.
People who have their hearts in the right place, then tend to remain unaware of the most important aspect of all this: the economics. A medical education needs a lot of money, primary education needs a lot of time.
It’s as hard to create an even average level doctor as it is to teach a six-year old to read and write, let alone to count. So we come back to the most basic of all constraints: scarce money, time and money. Both are scarce.
SCARCE MONEY, WASTED TIME
Even if everything was free, from the high school you will be doing what you were doing without that education, you will find that after 15 to 20 years you go through all that trouble and boredom and misery.
And money, because unlike time, it’s a fixed resource when it comes to doctors. If we want a doctor for every thousand people, we need 700,000 more doctors. This means that we need, at 250 students per year from one college, 400x400 — 1,600 more colleges?
Economists call this the opportunity cost, in this case of education. It’s defined as what you lose when you choose option A over option B.
There’s another problem: without primary education you can’t have a doctor. So where would you rather spend those lakhs of crores? This, too, is a form of opportunity cost.
Which leads to two other questions. If you have ₹100 to spend on education, how would you divide it between primary and medical education? And who will bear how much of the cost? The Central, States and Centre?
India, to its credit, has been grappling with these issues since the mid-1960s. It has had mixed success, at best. Different governments have tried different solutions. Absolutely nothing seems to have worked because need-based demand has far outstripped any kind of supply.
Before we start beating ourselves up, remember that all countries are short of domestically trained doctors. That’s why they import doctors and export patients under the misleading name of medical tourism.
IMPORT DOCTORS
Alternatively, if you want one doctor for every thousand people the world would need about 10 million. The current stock of doctors is 14 million but which are distributed between rich and poor countries.
I have a radical suggestion: India should be importing doctors, not exporting them. India currently does allow the “commercial” importation of doctors. Instead, it imports patients, around 500,000 a year, as if domestic demand for medical services is low.
I must here a confession to make. Back in 1988 I wrote a research paper for ICRIER (unpublished because it was deemed too “journalistic”) saying that India should import patients instead of exporting doctors.
Now we are doing both, which means we have got one half right. Today it's the other half, the importation of doctors, which is important. The revenue from the imported patients can pay for the cost of importing doctors.
The massive supply-demand gap, meanwhile, explains the high demand for medical education. Currently as many as 25,000 Indians are studying medicine abroad. They spend around ₹7,500 crore each year.
This is seen as worthwhile because, apart from the social status a doctor enjoys, assuming a 40-year working life, say, 45 years are far more than in any other occupation. The average income of a doctor is around ₹17,000 a day.
This is an average, so the less experienced doctors who earn far less than the senior ones. Doctors in government service earn significantly downwards.
If this is restricted even a bit, the average daily income of a doctor would be even higher. No wonder then that the demand for medical education is so high.
Interestingly, not many doctors want to join government service in spite of the non-monetary benefits. It's too much work for too little money.
TAILPIECE
One final observation about our cockroaches: student memories are very good: let's hope senior doctors soon become mummies and daddies.
Based on the sources, here is the full text of the article titled "Monetary policy and persisting supply shocks" as it appears on page 3:
Monetary policy and persisting supply shocks
Given the resumption of hostilities in West Asia and rising crude prices, RBI should consider raising rates?
Abhiman Das Smita Roy Trivedi
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of RBI announces its next policy on August 8, 2026. This comes at a time when geo-political uncertainties have returned.
The fragile agreements of peace and security in West Asia, it appears, did not last long. Escalating attacks and the blockade over the Strait of Hormuz pushed the brent crude price above $100 per barrel again with an upside trend.
Falling inflation in the past few months provided the MPC enough leeway to support growth. However, even when rupee depreciated significantly, the situation was seen changing quite rapidly, with upside pressures concurrently in WPI and CPI and lower demand growth prospects.
STORY SO FAR
CPI headline inflation breached the 4 per cent target in June. Further, the base effect of low and declining base will keep it high in the next few months. Our forecasts show higher probability of CPI inflation crossing the 6 per cent upper tolerance limit by Q3.
At the same time, downside risks to the domestic growth continues. Nominal GDP has been declining, from 11.2 per cent in 2023-24 to 8.9 per cent in 2025-26. Low overall inflation for the past many months primarily helped showing a reasonably high real GDP growth. High frequency indicators including IIMA’s Business Inflation Expectation Survey (BIES) indicate declining sales and profit margin expectations. The depreciation pressure on rupee hasn't eased either even with consistent intervention by the central bank. What would MPC do against this persisting supply shocks, slowing growth and increasing inflation scenario?
THE ‘SCISSOR’ EFFECT
In February 2026, the RBI revised the CPI base from 2012 to 2024. With consumption weights based on the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24, the food weight in CPI declined from 45.86 per cent to 36.75 per cent. However, in the new series, the statistical association between food inflation and CPI-headline inflation has indeed increased and stood at 0.97.
In new series CPI headline and food inflation trends show some interesting features. There are times when food inflation fall is sharper compared to headline inflation and vice versa. In the past two years, this has happened twice when food and headline crisis cross each other: called the ‘scissor’ effect (Chart 1). This dichotomy has direct policy implications particularly when food prices decline faster and becomes negative. Consequently, farmers adapt their expectations to the low prices and adjust next period production accordingly. This results in sharp increase in food inflation in the next period, surpassing of that headline inflation (Chart 2).
The WPI headline crossed 9 per cent in July 2026 (with base revision to base 2022-23). Will this increase in prices in wholesale market translate into higher prices in retail market? As the index is a weighted sum of price relatives, it is likely to show up, at least in common items.
For example, the correlation between WPI and CPI food inflation is 0.97 in the new series. Ensuing CPI food inflation therefore is likely to be high with WPI food inflation is already hovering above 6 per cent. Further, the fuel inflation has also turned positive and rose to 30 per cent during last quarter.
This surge in the universal intermediate, fuel, results in the expected spill-overs to other components of WPI. Expectedly, WPI non-food manufactured products (NFMP) high inflation potentially manifests as the core inflation of the manufactured goods, has been running at around 4 per cent for the past three consecutive months.
Also, WPI is closely linked with GDP deflator (correlation over 0.80). It is likely that cost-based price pressures both in CPI and WPI will push up the GDP deflator significantly resulting in subdued real GDP growth.
RATE HIKE LIKELY?
First, with Fed keeping rates unchanged but dividend house pledging to ‘deliver price stability’, rupee would get support from a higher interest rate. From February 2025 till date, WPI and rupee shows correlation of 0.81: pass through of supply side shock to domestic inflation needs to be contained.
Second, rising crude prices almost invariably translate into rupee depreciation; periods of crude price correction do not necessarily halt rupee depreciation, as capital account outflows can outweigh the gains from an improving current account.
Second, the high growth (credit (with FCNRNR leading to cheaper deposits)), energy transition, inflation and persisting adverse supply shocks indicate playing with the traditional interest rate instrument. As monetary policy is forward looking and there is a lag long in transmission, a 25-bps increase in repo is not a distant possibility.
Abhiman Das is IIMA Chair Professor, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). Smita Roy Trivedi is Assistant Professor, National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM). Views expressed are personal.
Based on the sources, the following text is from the "Twenty Years Ago Today" section on page 4, originally published on August 3, 2006:
SAP plans to invest $1 bn in India over 5 years
German software major SAP said today it plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years to expand its operations in India. The move is part of the company’s decision to make India a strategic hub in the Asia-Pacific region. The company also plans to increase its headcount in India to 3,500 by the end of 2006 from 2,750 employees currently.
Based on the sources, here is the text for the snippet titled "New airport, Creating ‘credit’" as it appears in the "Below the Line" column on page 3:
NEW AIRPORT. Creating ‘credit’
A whole new international airport at Bhogapuram may be fine for the business world, but who deserves the credit is still debated! Former CM N Chandrababu Naidu has claimed the project was conceived and land-acquisition done during his 2014-19 tenure. Not to be outdone, the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) has said the project was fast-tracked and given legs by the Jagan Mohan Reddy government. The Jagan regime too is claiming credit, saying they laid the foundation stone for the airport. The current TDP government under CM N Chandrababu Naidu is also not far behind, saying the airport is being developed in a mission-mode for the benefit of Andhra Pradesh. The project is being developed by GMR Group on a PPP basis. The airport is expected to be ready by June 2026.
Based on the sources, here is the full text of the article titled "The long and the short of decarbonising Tata Steel" as it appears on page 5:
The long and the short of decarbonising Tata Steel
Steel giant invests in breakthrough processes for long-term clean transition, alongside the use of eco-friendly stop-gap substitutions
M Ramesh
Tata Steel is pursuing a two-speed strategy to decarbonise its steel-making operations — investing heavily in breakthrough technologies that could transform iron making in the medium term, while simultaneously deploying more immediate measures such as the use of scrap, biochar and renewable energy to reduce emissions from its existing operations.
The company plans to invest about €7,000 crore in two next generation iron making technologies — Easy-Melt and Hisarna. EasyMelt, developed by Tata Steel, seeks to dramatically lower the use of coke in blast furnaces by employing the reducing gases from the company’s own coke oven gas. The technology requires only modifications to existing blast furnaces, rather than new facilities. HIsarna, on the other hand, was developed in Europe, with Tata Steel as a key partner. It combines cyclone smelting with a smelting-reduction vessel, allowing iron ore to be directly converted into molten iron without first producing coke or sinter. The process can lead to significantly lower carbon emissions compared with conventional blast furnace iron-making.
These technologies represent Tata Steel’s long-term decarbonisation pathway and will take several years to reach commercial scale. In the meantime, the company is focusing on measures that can be implemented immediately. One of these involves increasing the use of steel scrap.
The company is close to commissioning a steel plant in Ludhiana with capacity to produce 0.8 million tonnes per annum using an electric arc furnace (EAF). Unlike blast furnaces, an EAF primarily melts scrap steel, substantially lowering carbon emissions, particularly when powered by renewable electricity. Tata Steel plans to establish two more EAF plants — one each in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Although scrap-based steel making is more expensive than conventional production, it remains commercially viable, company officials said.
The more intriguing innovation, however, involves replacing a portion of the pulverised coal injected into blast furnaces with biochar produced from agricultural residues and biomass. Tata Steel aims to substitute 5 per cent of its pulverised coal injection with biochar over the next four to five years, eventually targeting the technical limit of around 10 per cent.
NEW BUSINESS
Biochar currently costs considerably more than the coal it replaces, making the transition expensive. Yet, Tata Steel intends to proceed. “We are still injecting because that’s the right thing to do,” Rajiv Mangal, Vice-President, Health, Safety and Sustainability, Tata Steel, told BusinessLine. “If there is no demand, no supply will come”.
The company believes its commitment could catalyse an entirely new domestic biochar industry. Tata Steel plans to work with suppliers to establish dedicated biochar manufacturing units near its steel plants, with long-term purchase commitments to give entrepreneurs the confidence to invest in production capacity. This, in turn, could create a new market for converting agricultural waste and bamboo into industrial fuel, providing farmers and rural entrepreneurs an additional source of income while supporting the steel industry’s decarbonisation efforts. “When I talk to industry, when I talk to chambers of commerce, I tell them that you should look at this as an opportunity,” Mangal said.
Renewable energy forms the third pillar of Tata Steel’s near-term strategy. The company plans to procure more green electricity, with a significant share coming from sister company Tata Power. At the same time, its integrated steel plants already generate a substantial portion of their electricity requirement from the by-product gases.
For Tata Steel, the message is clear. While breakthrough technologies such as EasyMelt and HIsarna promise to reshape steel making over the next decade, the company is unwilling to wait for them to reduce emissions. Instead, it is pursuing every practical lever available today — even when they come with a higher price tag.
No comments:
Post a Comment