I was at a popular club in Shillong recently. It was well past 10 on a Friday, but there were only a handful of people sitting around the bar sipping their drinks. For a gig night in the &ldquo;rock capital&rdquo; of the country, it was as dead as a graveyard. I turned to Rudy, the blues guitarist for Soulmate, and asked him if this really was the Mecca of rock I&rsquo;d heard about while growing up. He told me it wasn&rsquo;t, and even his own band did only the odd show here. Why? &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so much cheaper to get a DJ,&rdquo; the club owner told me. &ldquo;You are paying for just one guy.

No place for music

Business Standard

The e-mail my wife received the other day from someone calling himself the Royal Bank of Scotland&rsquo;s (RBS&rsquo;) &ldquo;auditor and head of computing department&rdquo; and offering to share $100 million with her (&ldquo;you will stand to get 40 per cent while 60 per cent will be for me&rdquo;) as, otherwise, the RBS &ldquo;management might divert the funds to their own accounts&rdquo; was obviously another internet hoax. But &ndash; and this is the tragedy of contemporary British banking &ndash; the promise to &ldquo;use [his] position and influence to effect the legal approval and onward transfer of the funds&rdquo; might well have been genuine.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Are you being served?

Over the last 14 months that I&rsquo;ve been writing this column, I&rsquo;ve had a chance to observe the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem at close quarters. Of course, marriage in the pre-internet world to an entrepreneur whose life straddled Silicon Valley and India for almost 20 years has also allowed me insights into these worlds as they evolved.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Enterprise knows no gender

Anyone who studies cinema &mdash; or reads film literature at a level beyond magazine gossip &mdash; must sooner or later stub his toes on the Auteur Theory. The debates around it are too many to properly discuss in this space, but here&rsquo;s a condensation: in the 1950s, a group of French critics &mdash; who championed popular American cinema and drew attention to the artistry in many genre films &mdash; proposed that some directors imposed a unified artistic vision on the movies they helmed, even while working within the constraints of the studio system or under the watchful eye of a money-minded producer. Thus, though filmmaking is a messy, collaborative process, certain movies could be seen as bearing the stamp of a single distinct personality. Cinema, even commercial cinema, could be a deeply personal art form.

The star as author

On most days, the dozen boys and girls who work with me to produce what I sell in the small craft shop I run in Santiniketan behave predictably.

Keya Sarkar: Hundred days of paradise?

Last week I visited what surely is the best and biggest new winery in India in the last 10 years: Alpine Winery, situated about 120 km from Bangalore, off the road to Mysore.

In the Alpine winery

His friends remembered to call him only after midnight, so my college-going cousin &ndash; who had been reminded that very day by his visiting mother of his frequent AWOLs from his boarding school that cost him his last term there &ndash; decided to sneak out of home at 2 a m, hoping to be back before my aunt roused herself in the morning. Imagine his shock &ndash; and hers &ndash; when he found, on tiptoeing back in, that she&rsquo;d woken earlier than usual, and instead of in her bedroom, as was her norm, was having tea in the living room. Shock gave way to lamentations, then admonitions, and expectedly his grounding. Ever since, she&rsquo;s been accompanying him to his college, to the gym, and keeping vigil outside his bedroom. While he and his friends are hoping she&rsquo;ll return to Shillong sooner rather than later, she&rsquo;s confided in us of extending her originally intended stay of two months in Delhi to three.

Kishore Singh: The night managers

Corruption has become a major governance challenge in today&rsquo;s world. Its effect on the economy of a country &mdash; more so of a developing country &mdash; is debilitating, as it hampers socio-economic development. Corruption is a complex socio-economic and cultural phenomena, the fight against which not only calls for innovative and localised solutions, but requires the support of the global community through INTERPOL and similar multilateral organisations.

'Less trust among nations hampers asset recovery'

The spinning wheel goes round and round &mdash; much like the lives of Bashruddin and his two married sons in their village of Ramdiha in East Champaran district of Bihar.

Sreelatha Menon: Khadi for the jawan

It is startling to see the change in sentiment one bearish week can cause. The Nifty dropped about 2.5 per cent, after a 20 per cent rise in 2012. But traders are suddenly talking knowledgeably about Greece, bank non-performing assets (NPAs), the large and rising deficits, Iran and the price of oil.

Market before Budget is bullish but volatile

The manner in which a leading scientist recently obtained vital information on global warming from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, may seem incredible to someone unaware about the climate change wars. What started as an arcane policy debate has long since degenerated into a series of acrimonious ideological battles. The Heartland Institute is among what have come to be called climate-change deniers, those who wage political battles against the overwhelming scientific evidence for human-made global warming. It is a prominent campaigner against green legislation. On the other side is the well-known hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur &ldquo;Genius&rdquo; Fellow.

Deniers polarise 

With a price tag of Rs 1 lakh crore to be spent over the next five years, the High-Level Safety Review Committee &mdash; led by Anil Kakodkar, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission &mdash; has set a stiff target for Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi. After all, Indian Railways (IR) &mdash; India&rsquo;s economic lifeline &mdash; is already starved of cash.

R C Acharya: Tracks to safety

There are many things that are significant about the report of the task force studying a unified payment infrastructure that uses the Unique ID, or Aadhaar, but perhaps the most notable is its timing. It has been presented to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee just as the Budget season is at its height. This is indicative of the direction in which Mr Mukherjee must go in order to control the United Progressive Alliance&rsquo;s (UPA&rsquo;s) politically sensitive but fiscally damaging welfare spending. Cost savings must come from somewhere, and improvements in the efficiency of transfers are the best long-term method to save costs. The report, which was drafted by a committee headed by Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), was meant to study possible methods to route payments under various government schemes to beneficiaries through direct cash transfers.

Transforming transfers

Going by various economic indicators and developments in the country, the finance minister has much to attend to in the Budget this year. While numbers are important, I hope the finance minister takes this opportunity to also unveil policies that systemically address the issues that impact business and industry in India.

Spectrum-related issues should be addressed

In various Union Budgets since 2005, the &ldquo;progress&rdquo; on the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been limited to the finance minister announcing he was happy with the progress being made by the empowered committee. It seems unlikely that the Budget speech this year will have anything more substantial than this.

Going beyond progress made by Empowered Committee

It&rsquo;s a dispute which has been inexplicably low profile, even though proceedings arising out of the disputes were filed before two high courts, and two rounds in the Supreme Court, where it languished for years before being tagged alongwith a pending matter before the Constitution Bench for consideration whether foreign awards can be set aside by Indian courts.

India loses BITs arbitration

Indices are past their 200 daily moving average (DMA) for the first time since February 2011. Sector rotation has hit a 15-month high. Cyclicals are back and the so-called defensives have underperformed. These are tell-tale signs of a new bull market. Is this a case of the market telling us where the fundamentals are heading or is this a head fake? Simply put, are we in a new bull market?.

A new bull market?

With the BSE100 and MSCI Emerging Markets up 17 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, year to date, there is excitement in the air after a long time. But can this last? I believe while investors should increase their exposure to cyclical sectors, such as power, infrastructure and financial services, they should focus on well-managed companies with strong balance sheets, because the foundations of the current rally are suspect.

Foundations of rally are suspect

A once in a year opportunity for a commoner to communicate with India&rsquo;s most experienced FM &ndash; and, here I am availing of it.

Make growth top priority

The introduction of GST is now nearer than ever. The Budget 2012 should, therefore, take positive steps towards making the path of GST smoother. GST is a combination of comprehensive service tax and comprehensive goods tax. The Comprehensive service tax is expected to come in this Budget. So the next step towards that end is the introduction of comprehensive goods tax (excise tax) with a negative list of goods (not to be taxed).

What should be done for advancement of GST?

The Supreme Court ruled, last week, that if a disputing party asks its rival to appoint an arbitrator according to their agreement and if it is not complied with, the former can approach a court for appointment of an arbitrator under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. After that, the arbitrator appointed by the court will proceed with the arbitration. In this case, Dakshin Shelters Ltd vs Geeta Johari, disputes arose between the two parties who had signed a development agreement. Geeta Johari invoked the arbitration clause in the agreement and nominated a former judge of the Andhra Pradesh high court on behalf of her and called upon the firm to nominate its arbitrator. The firm raised objections to this request. She moved the high court, which appointed an arbitrator. This was opposed by the firm, leading to the appeal in the Supreme Court.

Right to move court for arbitration

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