Why has news of Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot being involved in scams surfaced suddenly? On the face of it, the allegations look serious. The Rajasthan government stands accused of giving contracts and assets worth Rs 11,000 crore to firms with financial links to Gehlot&rsquo;s immediate family: his daughter Sonia and son-in-law Gautam; and son Vaibhav and daughter-in-law Himanshi. One of the companies in question has bought space in newspapers to rebut the allegations. But this clarification has gained little traction with the Congress high command, which summoned Gehlot last week to ask him what was going on.

Aditi Phadnis: Gehlot needs a makeover

Business Standard

The major takeaway from the credit policy is that we are taking a chance on growth to bring down inflation. Friedman has triumphed over Keynes and markets know what to expect.

Madan Sabnavis: Will rate hikes work?

Women are from Venus, Men are from&hellip; Delhi. Not the geographical location Delhi but Delhi as a euphemism for power and pelf and all that comes along with it. That grab bag of frantic, ruthless, testosterone-driven, adrenalin-pumping, ulcer-forming ambition to shimmy up the greasy pole, be the top dog, the alpha-male, the big banana.

Sex and the Sensex

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&rsquo;s visit to Kabul this week appears to have unveiled an era of decisive and confident Afghan policy, enough to silence critics, encourage optimists and, most importantly, instill confidence among the Afghans that India is a reliable friend.

Shanthie Mariet D'Souza: The message from Kabul

Baney Trimble, 11, has become a landowner. All he wanted was to ask old Miss Olivia Luke, who owns the tiny valley and the tenant house which Baney&rsquo;s parents rent, for the use of her chicken shed. He wants the shed because Miss Luke has no chickens, and because Baney has so much of what his brother Steve, 15, calls &ldquo;junk&rdquo;.

Trust be drowned

For those coming from west India, the pace of West Bengal can be excruciating. And if Kolkata is slow, mofussil towns or rural Bengal are something else. And in an environment where everything moves only with a push, elections have been an easy excuse for all administrative functions to come to a halt.

Keya Sarkar: Waiting on the election devi

Afghanistan has undergone great trials and tribulations. But we know that the Afghan people are proud, brave and fiercely independent. They are strong and resilient in the face of adversity. These are qualities widely admired in India.

'India, Afghanistan face same challenges'

As Lakshmi sits outside her door and talks, her fingers move fast on a piece of cloth she is sewing with a needle and a coloured thread. The faster she completes stitching, the more the pieces she can finish in the day. These are tiny bits and pieces, which would be joined together later and stuffed with cotton to form decorative elephants. More women in the neighbourhood and in the embroidery centre of Self-Employed Women&rsquo;s Association (SEWA) in New Ashok Nagar, Delhi, where Lakshmi resides, are working on sewing beads and laces to finish decorative elephants for an order from a large export house.

Sreelatha Menon: Home as work place

Even as the world grapples with the threat of global warming and climate change, attention must be paid equally to another atmospheric phenomenon &mdash; the damage to the Earth&rsquo;s ozone layer that shields Earth-dwellers from the Sun&rsquo;s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Depletion of the ozone layer has reached an unprecedented level over the Arctic this spring, reports the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The other threat above

Asia cannot take its success for granted - weak institutional capabilities, ineffective governance and income inequalities could derail the continent&rsquo;s dream run.

Rajeev Anantaram: The Asian Century? There are no guarantees

Laws are necessary, but not sufficient to achieve the goal of corruption control. The key pre-requisites for effectively tackling corruption are a critical mass of political leaders committed to this cause and a significant section of business and civil society that respects the rule of law. While punishing the guilty is important, preventive measures can play a significant role in fighting corruption.

Samuel Paul: Fighting corruption - Beyond the Lokpal Bill

Stick to stop losses as bearishness is likely to continue.

Waiting for price breakouts

Ending a brief spell of pro-incumbency electoral outcomes (Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections in 2009 and Bihar in 2010), the Indian voter returned to the long-standing anti-incumbency posture in four out of the five state Assembly elections last week. For over two decades, the Left Front in West Bengal boasted that it was the only political formation that bucked the national trend. When Bengal finally decided to catch up with the rest of India, the political tsunami that hit the state proved devastating for the Left Front. That Assam stood apart is a tribute to the Tarun Gogoi government and was perhaps also a gift from the people of the state to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has remained loyal to Assam as a member of Parliament. The results of last week&rsquo;s elections reinforce a common message coming from the elections in the past few years that &ldquo;regional&rdquo; or state-level leadership can play a significant role in electoral outcomes.

The return of anti-incumbency

For a government that is entering its eighth year in office next week, last week&rsquo;s state Assembly elections sent mixed signals. While the ruling Indian National Congress has reasons to worry about its long-term future, the coalition government of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by it has consolidated itself for the near term. Neither Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s Trinamool Congress (TMC) nor the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) would want to part ways with the Congress party.

Sanjaya Baru: Reinventing UPA-II

The previous article in this column had discussed the recent developments in the EU in relation to the VAT, by way of publication of the Green Paper on the future of VAT. That article discussed the background to the Green Paper and as to how and why the Green Paper had been prepared. This article is focused on the two broad areas for discussion that have been highlighted in the Green Paper as follows:-.

GST In India : Recent Developments in the EU

The law is settled that when a foreign company holding shares in an Indian company, sells the shares of the Indian company to another non-resident, the capital gains on such sale will be chargeable to tax in India. In such a situation, the transfer of shares would take place outside India. The transfer deed would also be executed outside India and the consideration for transfer would also arise outside India. Nevertheless, since the transaction would involve the transfer of shares of an Indian company, the resulting income shall be deemed to accrue or arise in India by virtue of Section 9(1)(i) of the I-T Act. Hence the same would be taxable as capital gains in India.

No capital gains tax on re-organisation

Assignment of overheads to cost units, that is each unit of products or service produced, is a complex issue. It is complex particularly for organisations, which produce variety of products using the same facility or has assets and other resources located in different geographical locations. By definition overheads cannot be tracked directly to cost units. Therefore, they are aggregated and averaged using some equitable basis and then assigned to cost units. Overheads, which are not attributable to current production activities, are not included in the product cost. Administrative and marketing overhead are not included in the product cost. Similarly costs, which can be assigned to cost units only arbitrarily, are also excluded from product cost. Managers choose the method for overheads accounting based on the degree of accuracy required in determining the product cost, which is used for decision-making.

CA standards should prescribe contemporary methods for accounting  overheads

The Supreme Court last week ruled that the criminal trial of directors of a company accused of forging documents to get loan from a bank could not be quashed merely because the loan has been repaid with interest. In this case, Sushil Suri vs CBI, some directors of a pharmaceutical firm, Morpen Laboratories Ltd of Delhi, were charge-sheeted for fabricating false invoices to obtain a hire purchase loan from Punjab &amp; Sind Bank.

Trial of directors for fraud on bank to go on despite repayment

Honeybees, dreaded for their sting but valued for their honey, should be treasured more as pollinators. They transmit pollen from male to female flowers for fertilisation, which is essential for plants to bear seeds and fruit. The commercial importance of bees as pollinating agents is, thus, far greater than that of the products extracted from beehives such as honey and bee&rsquo;s wax. Much of the grains, oilseeds, pulses, fruit and vegetables that we consume would not be there if honeybees and other pollinators were missing.

Surinder Sud: India's bee2bee advantage

Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was being economical with the truth when he said that last Saturday&rsquo;s petrol price hike decision was entirely that of oil marketing companies (OMCs). True, the government correctly but belatedly deregulated petrol pricing several months ago, but it is clear that despite a sharp increase in global crude oil prices in the past six months, the OMCs restrained themselves from increasing domestic fuel prices owing to political sensitivities on account of elections to state assemblies. To that extent the delayed hike in petrol prices, despite their surge globally, was owing to political interference rather than corporate inertia. Brent crude oil price has in fact come down to less than US$110 per barrel in the past few weeks after the sustained rise from less than US$80 per barrel six months ago to almost US$125 a barrel a month ago.

Price of delay

The industrial output roller-coaster that India has been on, reflected by the volatile index of industrial production (IIP), is still going up and down. Thankfully, though in March 2011 it went up by 7.3 per cent. This compares unfavourably with the 15.5 per cent year-on-year growth registered in March 2010, but offers some cheer. Clearly, Indian manufacturing (that constitutes 80 per cent of the IIP) is facing a structural constraint, with the year-on-year growth at 7.9 per cent in March 2011 compared to 16.4 per cent in March 2010. Corresponding figures for mining and power were 0.2 (12.3 per cent in March 2010) and 7.2 per cent (8.3 per cent in March 2010), respectively.

Manufacturing growth

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