Horamavu village seems like an odd place to take stock of the year, but it is in this little hamlet just outside Bangalore that I meet Nagappa, a fruit seller.
I am in Horamavu to find a boarding kennel for Inji, my Labrador, during the Christmas holidays. My vet tells me about this woman who takes in strays and also boards pets for a fee. So, here I am, in the dusty lanes of this tiny village, bordered by lily ponds and mango orchards, trying to find a bargain.
After driving for half an hour through winding roads, I decide that I am hopelessly lost and stop at Nagappa's fruit stand to buy a tender coconut. While I ask for directions, we get talking. He notices that I have cut my arm and suggests a poultice of raw onions and garlic.
"With the price of onions and garlic being what they are, I'd rather go to a doctor," I say.
Late and heavy monsoon rains have wreaked havoc on Indian crops, with onion growers facing a production fall of 50 per cent. In the past few weeks, the price of staples such as onions, tomatoes and garlic have risen eight-fold from 10 rupees a kilo to 80 rupees. India is now importing onions from Pakistan, Iran and Bangladesh. The department of revenue has scrapped the 5 per cent import duty that has been applied to onions.
Onion growers are staging protests and seeking compensation from the government for their losses; onion traders are making a killing, news reports say, while consumers are going easy on the onions and garlic that spice up Indian cuisine.
Nagappa and I commiserate with each other about how we have stopped making the biryanis and onion raitas that we are used to. That's when he says: "All these foreign presidents are coming and going. India is giving them so much business. Why can't our government do something for us, too?"
With that one sentence, Nagappa has connected the macroeconomic issue of energy security with the microeconomics of food security and inflation. In the past six months, India has welcomed a series of foreign leaders. David Cameron, the British prime minister, was here in July, inking several deals including a US$1.1 billion (Dh4.04bn) contract to supply 57 Hawk trainer jets. Barack Obama, the US president, visited last month and signed more than 20 agreements worth $10bn.
This month, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, signed a key deal worth $7bn for Areva of France to supply nuclear reactors. Also this month, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, came and signed 48 memorandums of understanding and contracts worth $16bn.
The last straw, at least for Nagappa, was the $30bn deal that India signed with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, in which Russia will supply fifth-generation fighter aircraft to us and build 18 nuclear reactors in three locations.
Energy-hungry India is bolstering its access to energy. Although domestic coal reserves account for 70 per cent of India's current needs, demand for energy is expected to double by 2025, by which time India will be importing 90 per cent of its petroleum. During Mr Medvedev's visit, ONGC Videsh, the overseas arm of India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, signed a deal with the Russian conglomerate JSFC Sistema that would give ONGC Videsh access to the oilfields of Titov and Trebs in the Arctic.
The overarching trend in all the agreements India has signed with visiting foreign leaders is related to the nation's energy security - defence, petroleum, nuclear reactors - but India's progress on food security and inflation has been tardy.
No wonder the fruit seller asks, "If our government has money to spend on fighter planes, why can't it bring down the price of onions?" In economic terms, the two are not interlinked, of course, but for Indians dealing with higher food prices, they seem gallingly linked.
The past few months has seen a runaway increase in food prices. As my milkwoman, who owns 10 cows, says: "If one item is expensive, we can stop buying that and make do with others. But if everything is more expensive, then what do we do? Stop eating?"
Prices of Indian dals (pulses), rice, vegetables and fruits have doubled or tripled, thanks to the errant monsoon. In Andhra Pradesh, the Telegu Desam Party's president, Chandrababu Naidu, has been on a hunger strike to seek higher compensation from the central government for farmers afflicted by natural calamities.
Not to be outdone, Jagan Reddy, the son of YSR Reddy, a former Andhra Pradesh chief Minister, announced a two-day hunger strike to secure a higher relief package for farmers, who have lost livelihood and life - the suicide rate among farmers in the state is particularly high - because of heavy rains.
The Reserve Bank of India and the Indian government are working to stem this food inflation by adjusting interest rates. Activists view these measures as mere palliatives.
Stemming inflation is only one side of the coin, they say. The problem is deeper and more systemic, thanks to poor distribution, greedy middlemen and wastage arising from poor storage. In a mixed economy such as India's, where the government is unwilling or unable to fully let go, the interplay between public and private-sector interests occasionally compounds the problem.
On one hand, the Indian government doles out huge food subsidies, and on the other hand, food storage and distribution are inefficient. With an election approaching in a couple of years, the Congress-led UPA government will have to turn its attention back to what one blogger calls the "puzzling [food] inflation" at the bottom of the pyramid. Doing so may not create the "fortune" that the late management guru CK Prahalad alluded to, but it will at least reduce, if not prevent, farmer suicides.
Shoba Narayan is a journalist and author based in Bangalore
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Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
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Landfill in numbers
• Landfill gas is composed of 50 per cent methane
• Methane is 28 times more harmful than Co2 in terms of global warming
• 11 million total tonnes of waste are being generated annually in Abu Dhabi
• 18,000 tonnes per year of hazardous and medical waste is produced in Abu Dhabi emirate per year
• 20,000 litres of cooking oil produced in Abu Dhabi’s cafeterias and restaurants every day is thrown away
• 50 per cent of Abu Dhabi’s waste is from construction and demolition
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Mobile phone packages comparison
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
RACE SCHEDULE
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Friday, September 29
First practice: 7am - 8.30am
Second practice: 11am - 12.30pm
Saturday, September 30
Qualifying: 1pm - 2pm
Sunday, October 1
Race: 11am - 1pm
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