There&rsquo;s been quite a flurry in the art world recently, with the 3rd Art Summit in Delhi, coinciding with the first-ever exhibition of works by Anish Kapoor in Bombay and in Delhi.

Jamal Mecklai: Thank you, Anish Kapoor

Business Standard

Policy makers in the industrialised economies moved away a long time ago from focusing on headline inflation &mdash; reflected through the wholesale price index. They recognised that this is influenced by volatile movements in food and fuel prices &mdash; as India is discovering. So policy makers shifted focus to the underlying inflation trends, or core inflation.

T N Ninan: Wrong price target


Exogenous shocks like rising global fuel prices and bad weather can start feeding into the general price level, if food prices rise sufficiently for labour to demand higher wages
When the Union minister for what was then a comprehensive portfolio covering both Food and Agriculture said he was responsible for the prices of five stockpiled commodities, and not for &ldquo;tomatoes, onions or lady finger&rdquo;, he put his finger on the central structural problem with the current inflation,

Indira Rajaraman: Prices and wages

Ahdaf Soueif, the acclaimed Egyptian writer, and possibly the best-known internationally after the late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, has been in India at least a couple of times recently. I met her briefly at the Jaipur Litfest last fortnight but, in May 2010, shortly after she won the first Mahmoud Darwish award, named in memory of the Palestinian poet, I recorded a long interview with her.

Sunil Sethi: Egypt's unchanging map

K Subrahmanyam was amiable, conscientious, dedicated, forthright, talented and an inspirational thinker. Civil servants after retirement generally go to seed. But Subrahmanyam never retired. He gave so much to life and got so much out of it; he was a man of great moral passion. He was creatively consistent and so often right. He was a pioneer. Subrahmanyam single-handedly educated us on the complexities of security and strategy. He was in my judgement a one-man think tank.

K Natwar Singh: The man who never retired

Maruti just launched its most expensive offering in India, a luxury sports car, the Kizashi. In Japan, as a baby boy&rsquo;s name it means &ldquo;powerful&rdquo;. As a car badge, Maruti says it means &ldquo;prelude to good things&rdquo;. In India, we will figure what it means once we get past the name. For a company that redefined the four wheeler landscape, Kizashi seems to do little to embolden Maruti&rsquo;s lead as the maker of compact cars. Worse, it&rsquo;s trying to woo an unfamiliar customer &mdash; the luxury seeker &mdash; at a time when competitive pressure in its bread-and-butter compact segment is building. It risks losing focus on both.

'A prelude to good things'

In a fortnight of earthshaking news, one fascinating story became a sideshow. In the Brazilian Amazon, close to the border of Peru, a group from Brazil&rsquo;s National Indian Foundation and the rights group Survival International took a flight over the forest. From their low-flying plane they took video footage, the first ever images of a tribe of Panoan Indians hitherto unknown to the world.

Breaking the spell

Global growth may be rebounding, but labour markets are not, or only very weakly and unevenly. Global unemployment is at a record high for the third year in a row and shows no signs of abating in the near future. Weak labour markets are dragging down growth and threatening the recovery.

Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs: Do we have a jobs recovery yet?

At the peak of winter, Jangpura residents who care about good food stop ordering naans from the local Afghan bakery. In the extreme cold, those large, sturdy flatbreads will lose their savour, unlike the butter-spiked naans more commonly available across Delhi, and become less toothsome. They can be reheated, but the correct etiquette for eating Afghan naans in cold weather is to brave the bylanes of Bhogal, stand there at the shop, and scarf down your outsize, tablecloth of a naan with a handful of kababs and rough-chopped onions.

By bread alone

Last week, I had a problem that gives most home owners nightmares. The sewage line connecting us to the mains was blocked and the backyard was floating in disgusting goop. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do this alone,&rdquo; said the plumber, &ldquo;we need a sewer cleaner!&rdquo; A drain cleaner was duly summoned. Neatly dressed in a white t-shirt and snazzy red track pants, he looked like a college student but negotiated like a pro. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to enter the main sewage pipe from here,&rdquo; he said, pointing to a vast gaping hole in the ground, &ldquo;checking your line&rsquo;s going to take time... This is going to cost you!&rdquo; The sum he asked for was so atrocious that I could only gape. &ldquo;Who else is going to do such dirty work for you?&rdquo; he demanded, refusing to budge. He was right. When I peeped into the drain into which he was about to vanish, I decided to pay him whatever he was asking for.

Geetanjali Krishna: Banking on 'dirty' money

Because the driver was playing truant again, I found myself rushing through the morning routine to get my daughter to college in time, which meant relinquishing breakfast, my favourite meal of the day. Somewhat unusually, a long meeting and a spate of visitors in the office ate into the lunch hour, and I was a little light-headed when driving back home to pick up my wife for a packed evening out. &ldquo;Can you keep a sandwich ready for me?&rdquo; I called ahead, but my wife said she was getting ready and didn&rsquo;t want to be late; besides, she added practically, there was no bread at home. The cook had been given the evening off because no one was at home for dinner. My daughter had just finished the last of the chocolate cookies. &ldquo;I could have made you some instant noodles,&rdquo; my wife smiled, sidling into the car, &ldquo;but I really don&rsquo;t like feeding you junk food.

Kishore Singh: Driven to hunger

Poor Amy Chua! Death threats for writing a parenting memoir? I&rsquo;m so hoping she took some time off from the academic rigour of her life to invest in some meaningful relationships &mdash; you know, like the ones that are formed over sleepovers or fun summer camps? &mdash; because she&rsquo;s really going to need all the friends she can get, ever since she stirred up the biggest parenting storm in recent years with The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

No kidding

So the Cricket Association of Bengal (or CAB) has lost the right to host the India-England match at the Eden Gardens. Work on the stadium, under virtually complete re-construction, is hopelessly incomplete; the ground itself is covered with rubble; and anyone who sees the mess comes to the immediate conclusion that the stadium and ground will not be ready in time for the World Cup. So it may not be just the India-England match, the hallowed Eden Gardens might lose all four World Cup matches.

Not just cricket!

Three decades ago angry young men changed the rules of the game in the Middle East. They deposed the Shah of Iran, attacked and took over Islam&rsquo;s holiest shrine in Mecca and then hordes turned into jihadis to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Rahul Sharma: Redefining change for the Arab world

If the purveyors of the &lsquo;flat world&rsquo; are to be believed, ideas matter &mdash; no matter where they are generated. The increasingly non-hierarchical nature of the technology-driven world &mdash; which according to this theory flattens extant inconsistencies and inequalities at a faster rate than it so apparently seems to be generating, will ensure that ideas, creativity and innovation will not be the sole preserve of the select few but of a &lsquo;wider proletariat&rsquo;.

S Samuel C Rajiv: An honours list for the ideas bazaar

The outlook on rupee is bearish as well. But a turnaround can lead to stock market recovery.

Correlation between currency and stocks

We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.

'The changed world should encourage, not discourage, us'

In a recent round table discussion, a very senior professor, who is engaged in research on corporate governance for about two decades, suggested that state-owned companies should have a different corporate governance structure. They should not have board directors. The suggestion was so radical that he could not take the suggestion forward for discussion.

Firms need to pay up more for Professional Director

Previous articles in this column had addressed the possible expectations from Budget 2011 on service taxes, with respect to the service tax rate, the resolution of the several complexities in service tax law as well as the possible extension of the tax to certain new services. This article discusses the expectations from Budget 2011 on the other taxes and, in particular, the central excise duty.

Expectations from Budget '11 - other indirect taxes

The new president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), Ramu Deora, has presented some useful points before the finance minister in his pre-Budget memorandum. Some of these are workable.

FM must accept FIEO's proposals

Since the 200-Day Moving Averages (DMA) have been decisively broken, we already know it&rsquo;s a long-term bear market.

Expect rally before Budget

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