Parliament must ensure India gets a biotech regulator

A Bill too long delayed

Business Standard

There is a statue of Sir Stamford Raffles on the banks of the Singapore River that stares roughly in the direction of city-state's Parliament. Its back squarely towards towering high-rises that comprise one of the world's most celebrated business districts

Whither Singapore?

The airline business has eaten up capital over the past century like almost no other business

INSIGHT: Never ever buy airline stocks for the long term

It won't be easy to build domestic computer manufacturing, but the automotive sector provides a good model

India's hardware ambitions

The comment that our normally mild-mannered and scholarly prime minister was reported to have made in an interview with Science magazine, that "There are NGOs [non-governmental organisations], often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries, which are not fully appreciative of the development challenges that our country facesâ€¦", continued to ring in my head for several months. Was there more to NGOs than I had thought so far - at best, an independent third voice in India, bringing specialised expertise to areas such as health care and environment; at worst, idealists clamouring for a way the world ought to be rather than what it was?I stayed in this stage of puzzlement for a few months till I encountered an article by Professor Nimruji Jammulamadaka of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in The Critical Review, a scholarly journal devoted to politics and society. The article, "The Needs of the Needy or the Needs of the Donors?", takes a close look at 5,00

The third voice

External commercial borrowing for low-cost housing is a bad idea

Risks without returns

Borrow cheaply in the West, earn high returns in India

Unilever's logical surprise

What an incredible seven days in the world of club football. Manchester United won their 20th league title; Barcelona were knocked off their pedestal in brutal fashion; Lionel Messi had a bad - no, terrible - game after a very long time; Real Madrid's decima dream lies in tatters; Liverpool's Luis Suarez bit an opposition player; and an Indian telecom consultant became a mini-Twitter celebrity!Where does one begin? Perhaps Lionel Messi and Barcelona, who were made to look like amateurs by a superb Bayern Munich team. Messi, who was only half fit, seemed to have started the game wearing a cloak - not his usual Superman one, but Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. Bayern exposed their over-reliance on Messi and found the perfect balance between patience and aggression to win the Champions League semi-final 4-0, the club's heaviest defeat in the competition in the last 20 years. Ironically, it was 20 years ago when Johan Cruyff's Barcelona, dubbed the "Dream Team", lost to AC Milan 4-0, si

An era ends at Barca?

Recent data suggest that India's macroeconomic situation is looking up

Good news at last

Diesel price hikes should not have been put on hold

Unnecessary reversal

Only resignations and moves to free CBI can help govt now

All co-opted

Since perpetrated by a company registered under the MCA, the whole Saradha scam falls under the central govt and not under the state govt

Sleeping dogs and flogging dead snakes

Not because the government thinks so; but relative to some Eastern European countries, it certainly doesIndia has been courting the global credit rating agencies, pitching for a rating upgrade. Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram met the Standard & Poor's (S&P) officials recently, having met officials from Fitch earlier. The S&P currently rates India as BBB-, which is the lowest in the investment grade, with the outlook being downgraded from stable to negative in 2012.Mayaram is trying to impress upon these agencies that, let alone a rating downgrade, India's sovereign rating should actually be upgraded based on the country's determined effort to reduce the fiscal deficit and spur economic growth through increased investment activity.Is there a case for a rating upgrade as is being sought by the government? The answer could be both yes and no. To explain the ambiguity, one needs to go back a little in history.In early 2009, S&P downgraded its outlook for India fro

Why India deserves a rating upgrade

Financial repression in China means savers are increasingly turning to the risky shadow banking sector

China lends in the dark

But only indulging in it with discrimination can make it work

Office gossip can be good...

Horns of a dilemma

Back in my day, which was of course when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Delhi University suffered from a serious case of envy.It had the St Stephen's versus Hindu battles, the dazzling brilliance of the Kirori Mal dramatic society, the nerdy appeal of Sri Venkateswara, the steely intelligence of Lady Shri Ram College and Miranda, the drama obligingly provided by Ramjas' swaggering sons of the soil each year. But it remained dismally aware that it was not, despite all its hopeful bravado, anywhere near the twin towers of excellence represented - in those decades - by Oxford-Harvard.Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) attracted international students in reasonable numbers, even if those percentages didn't come anywhere near the casually global feel of a US college campus. Delhi University gawked at the scattered handful of students who had strayed so far from home. The twin ambitions of students in the late 1980s and early 1990s demonstrated a sound grasp of Indian reality: you either sat for

A is for Apple: where universities fail

There are reasons for the no-big-deal public posture of PM & Khurshid, linked to evolving bilateral tiesPrime Minister Manmohan Singh and external affairs minister Salman Khurshid are trying to calm the rising stridency in some circles, especially here, over the continuing standoff with China in the eastern Ladakh area, also called the 'western sector', by likening it to a "localised" problem, a developing pimple in an otherwise beautiful face.Having the face temporarily scarred by this eruption, Khurshid has said, doesn't mean it will remain so. Both countries are in touch with each other to return to the status quo. In fact, Khurshid has decided not to cancel his trip to Beijing on May 9, signalling that Delhi is willing to give Beijing another chance to tell its troops to turn back from their 19-odd-km transgression across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into India.WhyThis is a mature thing to do. First, the India-China relationship has grown by leaps and bounds since the 1962

Delhi allowing Beijing to save face

Asian investment is booming again, so why are global interest rates even lower now

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