Watching the lunar eclipse, I wondered about one of the gaps in India&rsquo;s ethos. It is possible to accurately predict sunrise, sunset, solstices, equinoxes and eclipses for centuries. Since time immemorial, India has had superb calendars and almanacs.

Devangshu Datta: Set the record straight, please

Business Standard

Ever since spring came, the leafy quiet around our house is broken morning and sundown by the insistent calls of a koel. Somebody must have told the creature that its sound is sweet and so it goes on and on. Other birds join in but soon give up. The koel brooks no competition. So at the appointed hours it sings and sings, sending a message that is loud and clear. Yes, nature is losing out in Bangalore but has not given up as yet. It will go on fighting until the last koel has no more trees to perch on.

Subir Roy: The koel just goes on and on

The people I am writing about will never read this column. But anyone who does might consider the irony of kidnap and ransom camouflaged as law enforcement at home while civil-society stars rant about bringing back lakhs of crores of black money salted away in tax havens and whip themselves up into a frenzy over placing the prime minister under the Lok Pal&rsquo;s discipline. It&rsquo;s said the darkness is greatest under the lamp.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Corruption express

Dear Corporate India, why is there so much overt panic about an impending &ldquo;slowdown&rdquo; and &ldquo;policy paralysis&rdquo; at the centre and unfriendly (to whom?) rate hikes by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)? It seems to echo the days of the global meltdown when a puzzled foreign investor asked me how it was that all the companies he had met, collectively said things were in a bad way, but individually and privately said things weren&rsquo;t too bad. Maybe it&rsquo;s just the business media that doesn&rsquo;t seem to have a handle on things! Thursday&rsquo;s headlines in one paper was about such a collective view of bankers about bad times , but Friday&rsquo;s interview by the head of HDFC Bank &ndash; a balanced and mature high-performing organisation &ndash; by any yardstick was very calm. He said, &ldquo;Bad debts come when you have a tremendous fall in growth rate that is unexpected. Half per cent reduction in growth is not anything to be so worried about.

Rama Bijapurkar: Spooking ourselves into a slowdown

Why London? Is it a colonial hangover? Or because, despite her change in name and frequent attempts to deny her past, Kolkata still feels like a woman scorned? Shunned by her colonial masters after almost 300 years of being their prime abode for the sandstone skirts of the new capitol in Delhi.

Emotionally yours... Kolkata  

Acouple of weeks ago, we awoke to the raucous sounds of clapping and jeering outside. &ldquo;Haay Haay!&rdquo; a loud voice cried, &ldquo;Haay come outside and show us the new scion of the house! We&rsquo;re here to bless him!&rdquo; It was the eunuchs, who had come around to check out my brother&rsquo;s newborn. Immediately, the household went into a tizzy. My mother began frantically looking for things to give them. The new mother and baby were sent off to the farthest bedroom.

Geetanjali Krishna: Close encounter of the third kind

With everyone packed up and gone for the summers to cooler climes, those of us who&rsquo;re left behind in the city have to make do with whatever entertainment comes our way. For some of us, it seems to consist entirely of flipping the pages of the dailies to see who&rsquo;s been throwing pool parties for which the invitation seems to extend only to those who (a) have abs, or (b) can model a bikini, but never the two together.

Kishore Singh: Twisting by the pool

As soon as the obits for M F Husain started coming in, I knew that the cringe-making moment when we&rsquo;d have to read that he was &ldquo;India&rsquo;s Picasso&rdquo; would not be far behind.

What's in a name?

Some time last year, at one of Business Standard&rsquo;s regular Monday morning editorial conferences, a distinguished columnist suggested an editorial comment by the paper on Greece. There was stupefied silence in the room, followed by the sounds of suppressed amusement. Greece?! But the thought that a small European economy, with one-third of 1 per cent of the world&rsquo;s GDP, should worry this paper&rsquo;s readers is no longer outlandish.

T N Ninan: A Greek lesson

India is all set to unfurl its ambitious New Manufacturing Policy (NMP), a 15-year vision document that seeks to raise the share of manufacturing to 25 per cent of GDP by 2025, creating 100 million new jobs in the process. The policy&rsquo;s goals are laudable.

Rajeev Anantaram: A pragmatic policy for manufacturing

Nuclear power is often referred to as a &lsquo;clean&rsquo;, safe, economically cost-effective and environmentally benign source of electric power. This is incorrect. It is not &lsquo;clean&rsquo; because it generates large quantities of highly radioactive solid and liquid wastes. The liquid wastes can be treated to bring them to set levels and then discharged into the environment.

Ashok Parthasarathi: Renewable energy is the future, not nuclear

Ensuring equitable development of all sections of society, particularly the weaker ones, is central to the government&rsquo;s agenda of inclusive growth.

'Access to education will empower weak'

Scarecrows are effective most times, though they are toothless, even lifeless.

Sreelatha Menon: A global Lok Pal on labour standards

While the Indian legal fraternity remains resolute in resisting reforms, including entry of foreign law firms, the profession in the UK is undergoing a sea change in permitting organisational structures having non lawyer ownership. The legal profession, at least in Common Law Jurisdictions is regarded as a self regulated profession, and not &lsquo;a trade, nor merchandise&rsquo;, as described by the Indian Supreme Court. In India, Lawyers continue to be barred from advertising, as the profession is a &lsquo;noble&rsquo; calling, and under the Advocates&rsquo; Act, lawyers are officers of the Courts. Rule 36 of the Bar Council Rules under Section 49(1), is in denial of changes in technologies, competition and innovations that have transformed legal services in most common law jurisdictions.

The legal profession - shifts in the market place - UK reforms

Our readers who turn 20 this year should track the news coming out of Greece to get a feel of what India was like in the year of their birth.

Sanjaya Baru: Greece In India

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has adopted an inexplicably combative stance against put and call options in shares.&nbsp; First, Sebi directed Vedanta and Cairn Plc. to delete put and call options over shares of Cairn India Ltd. from a share purchase agreement.&nbsp; Now, Sebi has refused to process an application for informal guidance on interpreting the takeover regulations on the basis that the facts in the query showed that a put option had been contracted.

Sebi tilts at the windmill with share options

In hindsight, ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption (my last fortnight column) appears a well-timed move by India, given flurry of announcements which followed the recently concluded conference seminar on &lsquo;tax policy in the New Global Environment&rsquo;, jointly organized by the Ministry of Finance and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Time ripe to walk the 'talk'

The Supreme Court has stated that the rule that lawyers cannot appear before a labour court/industrial tribunal under the Industrial Disputes Act without the consent of the workman and the leave of the court is unconstitutional as it violated the equality provision, Article 14 of the Constitution, and the freedom to pursue any profession in Article 19(1)(g). The court therefore took suo motu notice of the prohibition under Section 36(4) of the Industrial Disputes Act and has asked the Attorney General to assist it in examining the legality of the provision. It also requested senior lawyer F S Nariman to assist it in the effort and he has consented to do so. According to the order in M/s Hygienic Foods vs Jasbir Singh, &ldquo;industrial law has become so complex that a layman cannot possibly present his case properly before the labour court/industrial tribunal.

Govt, SC for lawyers' access to all tribunals

In the next few weeks, the Union government will have to fill four key secretarial posts that will fall vacant following the incumbents&rsquo; retirement or completion of tenure. Home Secretary Gopal Pillai and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar will complete their two-year tenures by the end of June and July, respectively.

A K Bhattacharya: Fill in the blanks

There is still more than a year left for former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Congress party General Secretary Digvijay Singh&rsquo;s self-imposed ten-year exile from political power to end. So, no one can accuse Mr Singh of harbouring personal ambition when he routinely criticises his own party&rsquo;s ministers for their acts of omission and commission. The Congress party has perfected the art of hunting with the hounds and running with the hares, but its too-clever-by-half strategy of playing the role of both ruling party and Opposition can sometimes go awry. There is a difference between a party leader criticising a minister in her own party&rsquo;s government on policy issues, as Mr Singh did when he upbraided Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and in flying kites about whether it is time for a new leader to head the government.

Decoding Digvijay

Shortages, outages, load shedding, poor-quality supply and transmission and distribution (T&amp;D) losses continue to haunt India&rsquo;s power sector. Despite these problems, India has now acquired the capacity and capability to add at least 15,000 Mw a year, having demonstrated the ability to add 12,000 Mw a year in the past five years. This still compares poorly with China&rsquo;s ability to add 100,000 Mw every year.

Power problems

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