Few votes in mango sniffing

I went on the campaign trail last week with Meera Sanyal, head of ABN Amro in India and now standing as an independent political candidate in South Mumbai.

Given Royal Bank of Scotland's disastrous experience with ABN Amro in India, with many star bankers deserting for Barclays and private-equity firms, and the business now on the block, Sanyal can be forgiven for seeking an alternative career path.

She says RBS has been good about it. But chief executive Stephen Hester can't have been overjoyed when she took a sabbatical bang in the middle of the sales process. The idea of having someone capable as an MP appeals to Mumbai's elite and she plays well in the English media.

One of the new developments in this election is the re-engagement of India's upper middle class, from businessmen to MBA students. But watching Sanyal campaign among the vegetable sellers at Crawford Market, I can't see her making much impact on many other Mumbaikers. She sashayed through, sniffing mangoes, rarely telling anyone she was even running, much more comfortable in the role of a middle-class shopper.

"If you win," one tradesman joked, "we'll give you a box of mangoes." Prospective ABN Amro bidders shouldn't worry too much about losing the India business's head to politics.

* It was the Nano car last month, and at the start of this month, India's biggest private company, Reliance Industries, started pumping gas from its huge east coast gas find.

Each could be the year's biggest business news: Reliance's field will double India's gas production. Each also speaks of the delays which have followed the 2006-7 blast of corporate optimism. Reliance's gas had been expected in September.

The Nano won't reach full production until the year end, but one retail expert told me few Indians ever expected such bullish targets to be hit.

* Unwilling expatriates found more grounds to groan last week after a survey in Business Week ranked Mumbai the fifth worst city in the world to be posted to. Lagos, Jakarta, Riyadh and Almaty may have beaten Mumbai to it, but one expat still managed to grumble: "What does Mumbai have that the others don't?"