Do it yourself

One of my close friends bought a plot of land in the outskirts of the city of Dehradun in Uttarakhand, a decade ago. The reason, he outlined, for this investment was that Dehradun is a good place to retire. It is peaceful & clean and has a much lower cost of living. Considering the rising level of pollution (air, noise and water) in larger cities, people would want to move to such places in future. The property prices would therefore appreciate considerably. After a decade, the price of his plot is up by some 300%. He is happy that he made a very good investment decision. When I pointed out to him that Dehradun is no longer the peaceful, clean and cheap city it used to be ten years ago. Therefore, his investment premise has mostly failed. Besides, the land prices in many areas of the NCR have risen equal to or more than Dehradun in the past one decade. The point to ponder over is if you earn a good return on your investment in spite of your assumptions behind making such inve...

Last week I travelled through three divisions of Western Uttar Pradesh and Garhwal division of Uttaranchal. The idea was to assess the current socio-economic conditions, especially in light of a deficient monsoon, inflation and accelerated public investment in infrastructure building. I may share some of the key take away as follows: Crop plentiful The crop, mainly sugarcane, appeared plentiful. The landscape was mostly lush green. However, many farmers suggested that they lost the investment in early sowing; and have again sown cash crops (vegetable etc.) after the late rains. These crops are also yielding much less as excess late rains have flooded the fields, particularly the smaller fields. Most of them are cautious about the rabi crop as the sowing for advance crop of potato is already delayed by 2-3weeks. However, if the current spell of rains ends in another week as forecasted, the rabi crop could be plentiful. Winter setting in early would also help rabi crops. Vehicle an...