The Supreme Court judgment on the telecom scam raises many questions; so this is by no means the last word on the subject. Here are four sets of possibilities. First, the international telecom companies that have paid top dollar to get into the Indian market could sue the government, which may not find it easy to disown its own telecom minister&rsquo;s actions.

T N Ninan: Not end of story

Business Standard

Serious economies cannot behave irresponsibly. That is the lesson to be drawn from the international fallout of our domestic telecom scandal. Within a week of the Supreme Court cancelling 122 telecom licences because of how they were issued, Bahrain Telecommunications Company has pulled out its investment in S Tel, and Etisalat of the UAE has written off investment of $827 million in Etisalat DB, in which it holds a 45 per cent stake.

T N Ninan: The cost of caprice

Anna Hazare is silent on the root of the corruption problem.

Do-gooder economics and the Lokpal

Come a new year, and the guy with some cash to spare invariably wonders how to avoid repeating the investing mistakes of the past year. That explains the spate of analyses over the past week, mostly of the stock market. Many pundits predict that 2012 will be better than its forgettable predecessor, but they predicted that last year too &mdash; only for the market to lose 25 per cent of its value.

T N Ninan: Betting on RBI

The government&rsquo;s spokesmen are busy issuing renewed statements of optimism, now that industrial growth in November has logged in at a pleasing 5.9 per cent &mdash; the highest in five months, and well above the sorry April-November average of 3.8 per cent. They concede that the October-December quarter will deliver poor GDP growth numbers, but expect things to pick up after that, with growth for the full financial year ending up between seven per cent and 7.5 per cent.

T N Ninan: Why growth falters

The debate in a small group earlier this week was about how far India is behind China. The quick numbers tossed out varied all the way from 10 to 25 years and more. Figuring out the gap between the two &ldquo;rising giants of Asia&rdquo; is in fact an instructive study. For instance, China&rsquo;s GDP in 2011 was $6.99 trillion, or nearly four times India&rsquo;s $1.84 trillion. If the Indian economy were to grow at an annual average of 7.8 per cent (the rate for the past decade), it would take 18 years to get to China&rsquo;s current size. If growth were to accelerate to nine per cent, it would still take 15 years.

T N Ninan: Stop the 'Chindia' talk

Much of the debate on Salman Rushdie&rsquo;s (lack of) freedom to speak at Jaipur is notable for how a simplistic focus on first principles has ignored context; and not properly addressed the question of how any law on the subject should be (and should not be) invoked. The libertarians assume that the right to offend is an essential component of the freedom of speech.

T N Ninan