Uniform national licences in telecom are overdue

Breaking the circles

Business Standard

Bookshops that arent really bookshops have an unmistakeable feel about them, like faux Italian cafes that serve butter chicken a la Tuscany.The books will take second place to a variety of other tchotchkes: handbags, pretty stationery, cell phone covers, aromatherapy candles and incense sticks, tatty jewellery and assorted bling. The high-end bookstores will display these tastefully, the middle-range bookstores will lay these out in the manner of a Janpath pavement sale, but the effect is the same  to warn the bibliophile to step carefully. There is nothing innocuous about this merchandise; like a virus, it will slowly infect an even otherwise good store, until it has vanquished the books completely.This is the kind of bookshop most commonly found in the places where new readers come in, lured by the idea of buying books. Often, these readers have had far more exposure to the cinema or to music than they have to reading. You cannot reasonably expect readers to thrive in an environment

Secret explorers

West Bengal's commitment to reform seems doubtful

Old policies, new costs

UPA's leadership says one thing, its tax office does another

Conflicting signals

Projects run the risk of getting derailed in the absence of an institutional mechanism for renegotiation

Renegotiating PPP contracts

Domestic farming of Vannamei shrimp has expanded the export market

Bonanza from the Pacific

The government needs to be less hesitant about inflation-indexed bonds, or the market wont be liquid enough

A detox programme

Recent surveys have suggested that the temporary staff (temp staff) market is seeing a growth upwards of 10%, on a y-o-y basis. With salaries inching closer to that of permanent staff, the human resource industry is hopeful that the base of the temp staff will rise in the next few quarters. However, keeping aside the pay packages, temp staff in India have other issues including recognition of work, work-life balance, among others, that may lead to a slower pace of growth

Why pay parity alone may not help retain temp staff

While Indian policy makers have been sensitive to slowing growth, growing inflation and widening fiscal and current account deficits, few account for the impact of the fall in social trust

The economics of trust

Support vs procurement

When the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) came to New Delhi last month, the government laid out the red carpet for its analysts; senior functionaries argued persuasively that reforms were in hand and the Indian economy was on the brink of returning to a high-growth path. It appears that the government at its most persuasive has not made so much as a small dent in S&P's pessimism. On Friday the agency announced that not only was it not upgrading India's rating from BBB-, the lowest "investment-grade" rung, it was not going to change its outlook on the rating from negative, either. Indeed, S&P warned that unless India undertook major reforms in the coming year, the country would be downgraded next year. The full effects of a sovereign rating for India in junk territory could possibly be very large indeed. India is dependent, for financing its capital account deficit, on foreign institutional flows, which could dry up if India was no longer investment-grade. In

Ratings and resources

The binding constraint has shifted from power generation to coal availability

Where's the coal?

Outsourcing government services to the private sector will work only if the system is monitored properly

Corrupting the PPP model

The government earns Rs 70,000 cr off its six million social workforce by flouting labour laws

Free labour for govt

It gives me immense pleasure to be here today for the third Convocation of Nagaland University, a premier centre of higher learning in the north-eastern region. I am privileged to be in this University, whose foundation was laid in 1987, by our former Prime Minister, Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi.Ever since its establishment, Nagaland University has made great strides in various fields of teaching and research. By imparting quality education to students from this region, it has acted as a centre of empowerment of people. I am happy to note that this University has a Centre for Gandhian Studies and Research, to impart Gandhian values to its students. This University's Campus at Lumani is characterised by its picturesque beauty and lush environment providing congeniality for teaching and research. It is a result of the vision of leaders like Dr S C Jamir and I K Sema that this Central University in Nagaland was conceived. I am happy to confer today the Honorary Degrees on Dr Jamir and Professor

'We must identify the causes of moral decline in our society'

In a recent talk delivered in New Delhi, the former foreign secretary and current chairman of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), Shyam Saran, suggested among other things that it was not a fact that the armed forces were not involved in the formulation of national security thought - or strategy, if one might call "thought" that. The speaker has more knowledge than most of ground realities and his articulations need to be taken seriously. On the other hand, the great majority of military men who have held high positions, including chiefs, have bemoaned their exclusion from the decision-making process in national security even as that, undoubtedly, is their first charge. This mismatch in perceptions needs some examination.India has never had a publicly declared National Security Strategy (NSS), an all inclusive and comprehensive statement of how the country views the challenges with which it is faced and how it proposes to deal with them. Many developed countries with long expe

Time to state a strategy

Focus on integrating India into regional trade blocs and helping professional services transcend borders

How India should reform its trade for the 21st century

America's upper and working classes have grown very far apart

Changing class in America

Last year, Kabir turned to his diary of two decades ago to check how he'd fared against the goals he'd set himselfÂ - the serious as well as the facetiousÂ -Â when graduating from college. He'd turned his back on the family's well-established business to become an entrepreneur, travelled, made and lost friends, managed to avoid discussions on politics, appeared on television for his five minutes of vicarious fame, taken up riding, given up riding, trekked to the base camp at Mt Everest, eaten escargots (under duress: he won the bet, but threw up after), got drunk and gone to a strip club in Bangkok, got drunk and sung karaoke also in Bangkok, made his first 10 million before turning 30, and now, on the cusp of 40, he was looking at his potential failures. He hadn't fallen in love, hadn't married, and any hope of becoming a father appeared remote. "I'd promised myself I would be a dad by the time I was 40," he mused.You'd imagine love would be easy to find in India's capital with youngs

The family business

"Is the vomiting accompanied by cramps?""The patient's in the second stage of labour. She is waiting under the tallest neem tree in Kishanpura village!""Tie a tourniquet above the bite. And don't panicâ€¦"The snippets of conversations I was eavesdropping on sounded like I was in an emergency room of a busy hospital. I wasn't. I was behind the scenes of a 24-hour medical call centre in Jaipur, headquarters of the 104 Toll Free Medical Advice Service, a public-private health initiative by Health Management and Research Institute (a Piramal social venture), that enables people all over Rajasthan to call 104 toll free to seek medical advice. As I watched, callers from villages in Barmer, Sikar and other remote districts received single-dose prescriptions, diet counselling and even grandmother's home remedies over the phone. If at any time it appeared that the patient calling in needed more expert help, that call would be diverted by the paramedics to one of the two doctors on duty."In many

Call the doctor, toll free

It's a truth seldom acknowledged, but frequently whispered, that HR is the black sheep of management

No room for HR

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