In a last-minute settlement between the Finance Minister and the Home Minister, over what has come to be known as &lsquo;India&rsquo;s Chewingate&rsquo;, both leaders have jointly issued a statement that seeks to put the matter to rest. &ldquo;We are concerned that the media has been reporting news of a rift between the two ministries, and of a growing distance between the leaders of the cabinet. To allay such stories, we would like to announce that we have the highest regard for each other, seek each other&rsquo;s guidance on important matters, and only yesterday shared a lollipop and a candy bar while we rode our tri-cycles around North Block.

Aching news

Business Standard

Twenty years ago, Manmohan Singh was a man with a mission. After his first Budget as finance minister, he barged into a post-Budget press conference called by his officials, to personally explain what he was doing. He gave lengthy interviews; he spoke from virtually every available platform, to get across the need for change.

T N Ninan: PM-in-hiding

Back in the summer holidays of 1990, not yet 13 years old, I sat down to write a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev. He was then still General Secretary and head of state, and beloved of Time and Newsweek, which came regularly to my school reading room.

Before the fall

The West Bengal government has passed a new legislation that transfers the land back to those who refused to accept the compensation that they were offered during the acquisition of their lands for the Tata Nano factory. The Tata group has promptly gone to court claiming that this is an unconstitutional Act. Surely one will hear a lot more about this and, hopefully, this issue will be resolved sooner or later. The real question one needs to ask is how we got into this royal mess.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay: Whose land is it anyway?

A virtually unheard-of occurrence for college admissions in Delhi University made headlines and unleashed shock waves this summer: a leading college demanded a score of 96 to 100 per cent for entrance to an honours degree in commerce.

Sunil Sethi: Marking up the mark sheets

In death, as in life, M F Husain overshadowed his peers. As news of his demise made headlines across India, most people missed the news that on June 10, an Untitled work by Tyeb Mehta was auctioned by Christie&rsquo;s London for a record Rs 14.5 crore &mdash; his highest, and the second-highest price for a work of Indian modern art after S H Raza&rsquo;s massive Saurashtra fetched Rs 16.5 crore last year. Bought by a European collector, Untitled (Figure on a Rickshaw) was estimated at $1.3-1.95 million; its gavel price at $3.24 million is a pointer not just to the rare quality of his art but a nod also to its rarer availability.

He's worth it

Much has been written about the Lok Pal Bill. I shall not add to the endless confusion. Both sides seem to be addicted to unedifying cachinnation. Amid all this, one fact does stand out. Anna Hazare has succeeded in highlighting the decay of personal and political values.

K Natwar Singh: Is the government listening?

It is now more than a month since Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress-Congress-I alliance government assumed power in West Bengal.

Aditi Phadnis: A question of answers

In the past year that I&rsquo;ve been away, I&rsquo;d forgotten the brilliance of the Bay Area sunshine &mdash; and the energy and passion of its people, most of whom are, were, or going to be entrepreneurs. But the brief week that I&rsquo;ve spent back here this month brings it all back with vivid clarity.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare: To hatch a business idea

France recently implemented the ban of the niqab, or face veil. A few days later Syria overturned its ban on teachers wearing the niqab because of pressure from Muslim clerics following the protests in the country.

Ali Khan Mahmudabad: Beyond the burqa and the bikini

With a population of about 1.2 billion, in 2010 India consumed some 250 million cases of spirits, 215 million cases of beer, and 1.5 million cases of wine. Despite this disparity, the popular perception is that &ldquo;wines are doing really well&rdquo;, which indicates that there are many more labels now available than, say, 10 years back &mdash; and all those society photographs on Page 3 depicting all those people with wine glasses in their hands no doubt contribute to the image of wine &lsquo;being everywhere&rsquo;.

Size does matter

The young girl paused when she reached the open door of the plane.

Geetanjali Krishna: Babita's African sojourn

Our friends haven&rsquo;t had a party in months, blaming it on the weather. True, it has been a little hot, and though you can have everything from the bar services to the main course catered, the thought of being in a room with only elbow-space between guests as they start to perspire after their third whiskies, is too awful to envision.

Kishore Singh: Our parties, their parties

Remember the food riots of 2008? Is the world heading towards another food crisis? That, worryingly, seems to be the conclusion that a new publication on food prices and availability in the next decade (2011-20), issued jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), arrives at. The OECD-FAO report forecasts agricultural commodity prices, in real terms, remaining higher over the next 10 years than the price levels registered over the previous decade. This would put poor consumers at a higher risk of malnutrition. Cereal prices are forecast to swell, on an average, by 20 per cent and meat prices by 30 per cent. Worse, the world&rsquo;s food production is foreseen to grow annually between 2011 and 2020 only by 1.7 per cent, compared with 2.6 per cent in the previous decade. The slowdown in crop productivity growth will, obviously, exert pressure on international prices.

A spoonful of policy

With a downgraded growth forecast, rising inflationary pressure, and an alarming dip in foreign investment, short- to medium-term prospects for the economy are looking bleaker than they have for some time.

Vivek H Dehejia: Triumph of opportunism over principle 

The central banker of an emerging economy has the unenviable task of striking a balance between growth and inflation. They must not kill growth in the war on inflation. RBI Governor D Subbarao is one such governor. He represents the central bank of a leading emerging economy, where inflation is crawling up while growth is decelerating.

Hari Shankar Singhania: Taming inflation, protecting growth 

Nearly 10 years ago, America suffered the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor. This mass murder was planned by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and signalled a new threat to our security &mdash; one in which the targets were no longer soldiers on a battlefield, but innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives.

'No terrorist tax havens will be allowed'

Last week, an enterprising resident welfare association in Ghaziabad organised a registration camp for unique identification (UID) numbers. It found people queuing up till midnight for a week with infants, grandmothers and some with domestic workers in tow.

Sreelatha Menon: Who will catch the cop?

In early 1993 the late Mahbub ul Haq, Pakistan&rsquo;s finance minister in the first Benazir Bhutto government and by then the famous architect of the United Nations Development Programme&rsquo;s (UNDP&rsquo;s) Human Development Report, called me and asked me to defend the economic record of democracies in the developing world at a UNDP conference.

Sanjaya Baru: The geoeconomics of 1991

When Dr.Manmohan Singh joined Mr. Narasimha Rao&rsquo;s Cabinet on 21st June 1991, India was facing severe economic crisis, with fiscal deficit close to 8.5 per cent of the gross domestic product, huge balance of payments crisis, the current account deficit close to 3.5 percent of India's GDP, and India's foreign exchange reserves barely amounting to USD$1 billion, just enough to pay for a few weeks of imports.

India awaits new wave of reforms

There are a few differences between Ind AS-1, Presentation of Financial Statements, and IAS-1, which is the corresponding IFRS issued by the IASB. We shall discuss some of those differences.

Presentation of financial statements

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