Indiraji&rsquo;s call for &ldquo;Growth with Social Justice&rdquo; defined the concept of social democracy for my generation. We understood that the two must go together &ndash; the search for growth and the search of social justice. That a developing economy like India needs resources and revenues to be able to distribute them equitably. This calls for both resurgent growth and prudent management of our public finances.

Our economic, social transformation is unparalleled

Business Standard

Fluid situations call for a close watch on stock market prices and premiums. Positions may have to be switched at a moment's notice.

Trading on politics

The growth of the country may well be riding on the frail shoulders of the ubiquitous contract worker who is increasingly being favoured over regular workers. Contract workers now form a quarter of the workforce in the country. The number seems to be increasing daily if quarterly labour surveys of the government to assess the impact of the recession are to be believed.

Sreelatha Menon: Contract of denials

The synonyms for the word &lsquo;omission&rsquo; are more than for &lsquo;commission&rsquo;, but the range of interpretations of the word &lsquo;commission&rsquo; is wider than for &lsquo;omission&rsquo;. An omission, says the dictionary, can be an oversight, lapse, slip, error, blunder, faux pas, something deliberately or accidentally left out or not done, something neglected, involving apathy toward or neglect of duty.

Omission and Commission

From the days of dirigisme, when the Controller of Capital Issues condescended to allow a small premium grudgingly on the face value of shares on offer, we had long ago swung to the other extreme &mdash; free pricing under the 100 per cent book building norm, which almost every company making an IPO or offering shares plumps for. Though book building is touted to be a price discovery process, the truth is that Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) participating in the exercise are presented with a fait accompli, which is what asking them to discover the price within a narrow band of say Rs 400 to Rs 450 amounts to. With the floor being set and the ceiling pretty close to the floor, there is very little room for price discovery.

S Murlidharan: IPO reforms are key to reining in greed

Several reports have been published in the press regarding the dismissal of Vodafone International Holdings BV&rsquo;S (VIH) Writ Petition by the Bombay High Court. In the wake of these reports, many acquaintances and friends have accosted me to find out what exactly was decided by the High Court. I was, therefore, sufficiently intrigued to obtain a copy of the decision and to study in order to satisfactorily answer the queries addressed to me.

Vodafone case: What the HC really decided

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued stiff guidelines for settlement of export-related receipts through Online Payment Gateways (OPG) and decided to allow Authorised Dealers Category -1 banks to handle repatriation of export-related receipts by entering into standing arrangements with Online Payment Gateway Service Providers (OPGSP).

RBI goes strict on settling export orders through online payment

Securities regulators worldwide are taking a closer look at the private equity industry. The Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has published an incisive report earlier this month on conflicts of interest in the private equity industry.

Regulators moving in on private equity

In the context of impending GST there have been many discussions as to whether double taxation will be eliminated once the GST comes. In order to appreciate the issue it is necessary that we go into the fundamentals of double taxation in respect of both direct and indirect taxes.

Double taxation cannot be introduced by interpretation

Every year India adds more to the world population than any other country does. The positive aspect of India&rsquo;s population growth is that it is accompanied with an increase in the proportion of working age component. The dependency ratio in India has fallen to 56 per cent in 2010 versus 65 per cent a decade ago, and is expected to go below 50 per cent over the next decade. This would lead to higher savings underpinning investments and rapid economic growth.

Reap the gains from India's demographic dividend

Politicians, business persons, civil servants, a range of professionals, including doctors and organisers of sports events, and even the judiciary have been in the media spotlight on charges of corruption, nepotism, sleaze and worse. It was to be only a matter of time before the media and media professionals came under public scrutiny for similar acts of omission and commission. The expose on paid news content in the media was the first important investigation into corruption within the media. If that was about the greed of media barons, selling space and time to those who were happy to buy publicity for themselves, the recent expose on the nexus between media professionals and corporate lobbyists shows professional journalists in poor light. It is true that a journalist has to meet all manner of people as part of her professional work. A journalist must go where the news is, and often news comes from unsavoury sources.

A bonfire of vanities

As with almost any government-run company, political interference has been a perpetual source of Air India&rsquo;s problems. The induction of four representatives from the private sector as independent directors to oversee the national carrier&rsquo;s turnaround was supposed to leaven the weaknesses associated with political control with wise and disinterested counsel.

Same difference at Air India

The SKS IPO and the Andhra Pradesh ordinance have suddenly changed everything. Will it be the death knell or will it usher in a reformed and healthy industry? There are three basic facts about micro-finance in India. First, most of what is described as micro-finance industry is actually micro-loans. There is hardly any provision of micro-savings, micro-investments, micro-insurance or micro-pensions. This is mostly because of regulatory reasons, i.e.

Ajit Ranade: Black swan in micro-finance

Rarely do the orders of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) go beyond redressing the grievances brought before it by employees of the government or other state-controlled organisations. However, the order passed by the Patna bench of CAT in the middle of this year is an exception. It has revived the dormant debate over reforming the Indian Railways with arguments with which few can disagree. It has also sent alarm signals to Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee. For, if the finance ministry pursues the CAT order to its logical conclusion and the government agrees with the CAT perspective, Banerjee may not be able to present a Railway Budget next year.

A K Bhattacharya: A budget off the track

At the height of Stalin&rsquo;s rule, Mikhail Bulgakov was learning an aspect of the craft of writing that is rarely taught in creative writing courses today: the art of outwitting the censor. This practice, well known to all writers who live under dictatorships, could lead to bizarre leaps of creativity.

Nilanjana S Roy: Burma's blank pages

The decision to shift Bigg Boss, Rakhi Ka Insaaf and other such TV shows to late-night slots is shocking. Not because it is either good or bad, but because it is a &ldquo;decision&rdquo;.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The shocking truth about Bigg Boss

Graham Greene once remarked: &ldquo;Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

Does the media need public relations?

The idea of a new international airport for Mumbai is almost as old as the present name for Bombay! Responding to suggestions made in the mid-1990s, the civil aviation ministry began the search for a site for the proposed new international airport in 1997. Thirteen years and several hurdles later, the plan has finally got a new &ldquo;estimated time of departure&rdquo; (ETD). The original project proposal of 2007, under which the first phase of the new airport was to have been completed by year 2012 and the last phase by year 2028, had estimated the total cost to be Rs 9,968 crore. (Rs 4,200 crore in the first phase, Rs 1,896 crore for the second phase, Rs 1,600 crore in the third phase and Rs 2,272 crore for the fourth and final phase). With the project now likely to take off sometime in 2011, it remains to be seen what kind of cost escalation there would be and how much would be the slippage on time targets.

New ETD for Navi Mumbai

All is not well with agricultural credit in India. The numbers on paper are impressive. There has been a steady rise in institutional finance to the sector since 2003-04, and in 2009-10, the agricultural credit target of Rs 3,25,000 crore was even exceeded, with actual disbursement being around Rs 3,66,919 crore. But nearly half the public and private banks failed to meet their respective targets in the year. It is worth noting that the slippage is solely in meeting the goals of direct agricultural lending, where the loans go straight to the farmers for crop production and other farming-related activities. Indirect lending for supportive infrastructure, such as warehouses, cold stores, irrigation, rural electrification and the like, which is also treated as agricultural credit, is seldom a problem for the banks and this is what has gone up. Separating out direct and indirect lending tells a clearer tale.

Credit for farmers

The Sebi (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 1997 (Takeover Regulations) have been drafted by Sebi under its mandate to protect the interest of investors, promote the development of the securities market and regulate substantial acquisitions of shares and takeovers.

Nizam Pasha: Putting Trac report under scanner

Indian public life is currently in the grip of one of its periodic corruption fevers which have in the past determined the outcome of major elections. Congress governments have been particularly vulnerable to attacks on this score. While Bofors was the single howitzer that felled Rajv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao fell victim to a spray of bullets &mdash; securities (Harshad Mehta), sugar (Kalpnath Rai), urea and Chandraswamy.

Subir Roy: It's not the same old corruption

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