It is sad news that millions in Chennai have been hit by floods due to torrential rain. Not long ago there were floods in Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat and Assam

Letters: Prevent recurrence

Business Standard

Newly-appointed CJI T S Thakur's term is barely 13 months. In 68 years we have had 43 chief justices, thus the average tenure works out to one year and seven months

Letters: Fix CJI's tenure

In the column, "Class of 2014" (December 5), Mihir S Sharma's assessment of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as an under-performer is uncharitable and against the facts

Letters: Unfair assessment

A decade and a half ago, then CJI J S Verma had complained that his white shirt would turn grey by evening due to pollution in the nation's capital city, New Delhi

Pollution then and now

In the rallies that the ruling Trinamool Congress and Left parties organised in West Bengal on the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition

Not a force to reckon with

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been quite vocal in praising his government for the 17 per cent growth achieved in 2014-15

Point, counterpoint

Special measures introduced for MSME exporters

However, India's merchandise exports fell for the eleventh consecutive month in October 2015, making the downward trend a cause for concern

Regulator for private coaching doesn't address the real problem

A risky move

Fed rate hike may be priced in, but dangers remain

Misplaced confidence

Click on graphic

Business Standard analyses one family's finances and suggests a way forward

Case study

The ministry of Statistics and programme Implementation has released data for to India's progress on gender-related fronts

StatsGuru: India's report card on gender progress

Numbers at a glance

As many as 415 million people in India, almost three times the population of Russia, have never attended any educational institute, of which 242 million (58%) are women, according to the Census data. The data reveal three major trends:| As many as 1,403 women have never attended any educational institution for every 1,000 men who have not done so. The ratio increases sharply from 17 years till the 30-34 year age group where it is 2,009-which means for every man who has never attended an educational institution, there are two women who haven't|  In terms of attending schools, the number of women per 1,000 men remains fairly stable till the age of 16, and drops significantly from ages 17 to 24. And, more women than men (who are older than 24 years) are attending schools after marriage, especially in rural areas| For colleges, the ratio is fairly stable in the 18-19 year age group but starts dropping from the 20-24-year age group. The trend observed in colleges eventually translates into

Domestic investors keep faith in equities

Though 2015 has been tepid in terms of returns, domestic investors have continued to keep their faith in equity mutual fund (MF) schemes

Realty check: Budget - Rs 2- 2.5 crore

If you are looking at buying real estate and your budget falls within this range, an idea about prevailing rates would come handy

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Pakistan this week. The event is a 27-nation meeting on Afghanistan, which will be held in Islamabad, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif met in Paris, where they had gone to attend the global climate change summit. India had been invited for the conference, which will be held on December 7 and 8. The plan to send Swaraj came after the two leaders shook hands and shared a sofa for a few minutes on November 30. It was described as a "courtesy meeting" by government officials. Later, Sharif had said, "Talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi were good. Doors of dialogue should open."The previous initiative for India-Pakistan talks came in July, when Modi and Sharif held a meeting in Russia's Ufa on the sidelines of a conference. Soon after, national security advisor-level talks were scheduled.The initiative fell through at the last minute when the talks were cancelled over a proposed meeting

Swaraj's visit to open doors for Indo-Pak dialogue

With reference to Ajit Balakrishnan's column, "Broken educational systems" (November 30), is not the number of zeros in fees charged by educational institutes in India shocking?

Letters: Education and the rupee

In the midst of the Chennai flood crisis, the website of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, went overboard, photoshopping a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducting an aerial survey of the affected areas. Modi's view of the affected areas appeared too sharply focused on the site, leading former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah to tweet: "Amazing. It's not as if the PM didn't visit Chennai, so why the heck resort to photoshopping images". On Friday, the PIB issued a statement regretting the "inconvenience caused" by the "merging of two pictures" of Modi visiting flood-hit areas of Chennai that it had shared a day earlier.

Photoshop op

Last week, real estate developer Amrapali launched an affordable housing project in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh for current and retired government employees. The project generated interest even before the conference to announce the launch was held at a five-star hotel in Delhi. Across the corridor in the same hotel, a conference was being held on broadband-related issues, where several government employees and bureaucrats were present. A large number of them were seen queuing up to enquire about the Amrapali project; some others were seen carefully scanning the advertising collateral displayed outside the conference hall.

Project of interest

Former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi has credited Jitan Ram Manjhi, the chief minister for nine months in 2014-15, for the state's 17.5 per cent growth rate in the last financial year. Predictably, there was only a passing mention of current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who preceded and succeeded Manjhi to the post. Modi said that while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained that Bihar's growth story suffered since the collapse of its alliance with the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), there had, indeed, been a small improvement in the last fiscal, the credit for which should go to Manjhi and not Kumar. Modi cited a NITI Aayog report to bolster the BJP's stand that development activities had come to a grinding halt in the state after the alliance between the BJP and the JD-U ended in June 2013.

Credit to Jitan Ram Manjhi

The list of companies in which banks have decided to convert their debt into equity under the strategic debt restructuring scheme is getting longer by the day: Visa Steel, Jyoti Structures, IVRCL, Electrosteel Steels, Gammon India and Monnet Ispat & Energy. Under the rules, banks have 18 months to sell the companies they have thus acquired and recover their dues. This scheme was introduced in June by the Reserve Bank of India after the corporate debt restructuring programme didn't make much progress in helping banks bring down their bad assets. Under strategic debt restructuring, the asset classification remains what it was before the debt got converted into equity. This means that banks don't have to make higher provisions against their bad assets for a period of 18 months. This temporary respite perhaps explains why banks have shown such alacrity to convert debt into equity.While banks look enthusiastic about the new scheme, there are practical problems in its implementation. For

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 371 - Business Standard

Letters: Prevent recurrence

Letters: Fix CJI's tenure

Letters: Unfair assessment

Pollution then and now

Not a force to reckon with

Point, counterpoint

Special measures introduced for MSME exporters

A risky move

Misplaced confidence

Case study

StatsGuru: India's report card on gender progress

Numbers at a glance

Domestic investors keep faith in equities

Realty check: Budget - Rs 2- 2.5 crore

Swaraj's visit to open doors for Indo-Pak dialogue

Letters: Education and the rupee

Photoshop op

Project of interest

Credit to Jitan Ram Manjhi

Banks as managers