The RBI’s annual policy for 2006-07 stresses on growth but with restraint. It has projected growth at a reasonable trajectory of 20 per cent implying a calibrated deceleration from a growth of around 30 per cent over 28 per cent the previous year. The RBI sees this as a serious problem.

The one per cent increase on four select sectors where growth has been rapid and the 150 per cent rise in risk rate on real estate and venture capital, which has been treated as part of capital market exposure, had been done "to protect the banks" said Dr Y.V. Reddy, governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

He said when asset prices are moving there could be a risk to the banking system so it must be equipped to absorb these risks. Regarding the high risk provisioning for real estate and housing, Dr Reddy said there was a feeling that there was multiple acquisitions of houses due to the earning capacity of wives combined with that of their husbands, so this increased the risk.

The housing markets were such, he added, that the cost of processing and selling are high, so while organised lending increases the housing market, conditions such as greater costs were fraught with risks. He said that the raised provisioning limits could be withdrawn if there was an improvement in the tenancy laws, repeal of the urban land ceiling act, reduction in transaction costs, etc.

Justifying the curbs on retail lending Dr Reddy said there has been a consumer boom but the number of complaints about the extraordinary efforts that have to be made to recover the loans highlighted the growing pressures.

The growth in lending to big and small industries was 16 per cent, for personal loans it was 28 per cent, for housing 29 per cent and in real estate it was 84 per cent.

Most of the banks are expected to increase the borrowing rates and home loans in particular may see a rise. Dr Reddy expressed concern on the number of farmers’ suicides and said a technical group would be constituted to review the efficacy of the existing legislative framework governing money lending and its enforcement machinery in different states.

US security major McAfee with FY 2005 revenues of $987.3 million could possibly enter into a tie up with either Tata Teleservices or Bharti Tele-Ventures, two of India’s leading telecommunications service providers, to provide mobile anti-virus to subscribers on their networks.

Mr Ashley Wearne, vice-president, marketing and integrated solution sales (Asia Pacific), McAfee, said, "Talks are underway with leading telecos in India for anti-virus mobile services on handsets. End point security is very important in the wireless industry. India is a strategic market for McAfee. We may be in talks with Tata or Bharti. McAfee has a relationship of two years with Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc for supplying anti-virus technology to millions of mobile handsets connected to DoCoMo’s networks."

McAfee is already providing their Internet security software services to Sify and Bharti, added Mr Shahani.

Anti-virus companies are also entering into tie ups with handset manufacturers to provide software on the memory card itself and Mr Wearne indicated that the company could also do the same with leading manufacturers. The company announced in Mumbai, the industry’s first security offering that combines and manages all the elements of system security through a single console and agent platform.

Two weeks ago, F-Secure Corp., a leading global provider of data security for consumers, announced a partnership deal with Reliance Communications for broadband customers in India and sources indicated that a mobile anti-virus solution was also in the offing.

Even if one out of 30 million handsets were to report a virus infection, McAfee’s sales director (India) Kartik Shahani implied that the loss in revenue for Indian mobile networks would be immense. McAfee had earlier been reported to profit from the increasing number of mobile phone viruses sent into circulation by malicious code-writers.