Yesterday, I called my regular AC chap to service the air conditioners at home and received a shock. &ldquo;I can pencil you in sometime after a week,&rdquo; said he. Was he going out of town in the interim, I asked? His reply was emphatic: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave town at all this month!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have the time to breathe in March &mdash; everyone gets their ACs serviced at this time&hellip;&rdquo; It turned out that the man was servicing more than 12 air conditioners a day for Rs 400-Rs 450 per unit. I did some maths and realised that for him and other AC service providers, the year was certainly ending with a bang. The outlook for the new fiscal year, he said, looked quite bright too.

Geetanjali Krishna: Blue is the new white collar 

Business Standard

Like everyone else, I was making plans for watching the India-Sri Lanka World Cup final, but my wife did not appear too involved in the proceedings. &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you at all interested in the match?&rdquo; I asked her. &ldquo;Match, no,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;matchmaking yes.&rdquo; I sighed, because we had been through it too many times recently for me not to anticipate what would follow.

Kishore Singh: A match worth fixing

What has shocked me most about the brouhaha over Joseph Lelyveld&rsquo;s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India is that the words &ldquo;bisexuality&rdquo; and &ldquo;racism&rdquo; have been given equal weight and seem to be equally offensive to most people in the ensuing public discussion. I have yet to hear of protests from progressive individuals or interest groups like the LGBT about this implicit and unfair prejudice.

Stray or Great

For three weeks I phoned and waited in vain for LG to come and set up our new washing machine. Fed up at last, I did what I should have done first: folded up my sleeves, took out the screwdriver and cracked open the Owner&rsquo;s Manual.

Adjust legs as shown

The Census Commissioner has put out the provisional population totals as of March 1, 2011, for India and the states on March 31, 2011. There are now 1,210 million of us. The press release highlights some features of this, including the decline in the absolute number of children below six, the small improvement in the sex ratio in some states and the fact that the absolute decadal population growth is less than the previous decade.

What the 2011 Census numbers tell us

All too often dealers have moaned the diminishing magnitude of good quality and historically provenanced art, pointing out that acquisitions in important collections place them out of reach of the market. While this is a valid enough reason for an increase in the valuations of artists who are now considered masters, art-lovers reasonably expect to see some of these collected works come back into the market on secondary sales. Often, though, such sales are privately handled &mdash; because the seller does not want to draw attention for reasons of tax, or embarrassment (selling art, after all, is equivalent to peddling the family silver), which is why sellers have tended to use the argument that collections are sacrosanct to increase the value of those artists&rsquo; works that are in the market.

A one-off sale

Warren Buffett, glided in and out of dining halls and conversations &mdash; real and imagined for three whole days. Anyone looking for the smartest investing tip or hoping he would give corporate India&rsquo;s philanthropic bones a good shake missed the imprint of his visit. His abiding message is something meatier than that. It is about being, quite simply, a happier person. The rest, it seems according to Buffett philosophy, will follow.

In search of happiness

Wherever I meet representatives from our industry and businesses, the question I am most often asked is whether economic reforms will continue. You should have no doubt on this score. The economic reforms of the past have brought us advantages and I can assure you that we will continue travelling on this path. We might do it gradually, and in a manner which builds a consensus for economic and social change. But I assure you that we will persevere.

'Economic reforms will continue'

Demographers are celebrating the dawn of a new era in Uttar Pradesh and so are those who agonise over every child birth in states such as Bihar and Rajasthan, which are low on key human development indicators like health and education.

Sreelatha Menon: Uttar Pradesh's black birthday party

The tragic irony of the latest controversy pertaining to the ban on the sale of a book in India is that no one has actually either explicitly demanded it nor has there been any violence in seeking that demand. Imagine if the book in question (a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Joseph Lelyveld) was in fact about a leader like Ambedkar or Annadurai, or some religious leader, or just about any sectional political leader. Just imagine. Buses would have been stoned, books burnt, the media attacked, and so on and so forth. Mercifully, criticism of or irreverent comment on the Father of the Nation does not ignite such rage. That is the greatness of the Mahatma and his true followers. But this is just one silver lining to the large dark cloud of shame that hangs over India&rsquo;s head every time a book is sought to be banned.

Defending liberalism

High food inflation has been the source of major concern in India for more than a year. Soaring food prices have been the cause of unease internationally as well.

Anwarul Hoda: Taming international food inflation

Barack Obama was in Brazil last week to make friends with Dilma Rousseff. They apparently got off to a good start, even though he took time off from chatting with her to order the bombing of Libya, and her government was drafting a statement reiterating its opposition to this course of action even before she had waved him goodbye.

Anjali Mody: US-Brazil relations - Agreeing to disagree

Technical analysis involves a concept of &ldquo;traps&rdquo;. A bull-trap is an upmove that sucks in optimists. Then the trend suddenly collapses. Similarly a bear-trap is a downmove that gets shorters into action, just as the trend turns sharply North.

Bull-trap or sustainable upmove?

The Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) deals with a number of schemes that deal with exemption or refund of excise or customs duties. The Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) advises the commerce ministry on the formulation of the policy and is responsible for its implementation. The ministry notifies the policy and, whenever necessary, amends it through notifications and the DGFT through public notices prescribes the procedures for implementing the policy. The Handbook of Procedures (HBP) is a compilation of procedures that is amended, whenever necessary, through public notices.

Deemed exports scheme has problems at the ground level

Ministry of Corporate Affairs continues to demonstrate that it is committed to adhere to the road map issued earlier for the implementation of Indian Accounting Standards fully convergent with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It has notified 35 such accounting standards (Ind-AS) on February 25, 2011. It has issued revised schedule VI to the Companies Act, which is consistent with Ind-AS.

IFRS: India inc awaiting guidance from finance ministry

The previous articles in this column had examined the various proposals relating to indirect taxes in Budget 2011, ranging from changes in excise duties to the major changes proposed in the CENVAT Credit Rules as well as those proposed in service taxes, including on the point of taxation of services. The articles had highlighted the several inconsistencies and ambiguities inherent in these proposals.

Modified proposals in Budget 2011

Transfer Pricing Provisions were introduced in India by the Finance Act 2001 so as to protect India's rights to collect fair share of tax in respect of cross border transactions. In simpler terms, TP Provisions were introduced to ensure that an international transaction between two associated enterprises is made at arm's length price (ALP) so that both the countries involved get proper share of profits in their respective jurisdiction.

Amendments in TP provisions: Budget 2011

When Pakistan&rsquo;s former President Pervez Musharraf first met India&rsquo;s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004, he declared that the two could resolve long-standing differences between their countries within minutes if they applied their mind to it in right earnest. Dr Singh smiled and cautioned the General, &ldquo;I am not a soldier, General Saheb, and I am much older.

Sanjaya Baru: From dialogue to conversation

In Kerala, where paddy cultivation is going out of favour because of labour problems and high costs, the novel System of Rice Intensification&rsquo; (SRI) has shown the potential to rehabilitate this crop.

Surinder Sud: A new lease of rice

The Indian cricket team deserves all the accolades, the love and affection, the wild enthusiasm and all the money it made for winning the World Cup for the country. This was a historic and well-deserved victory for, clearly, one of the world&rsquo;s best cricket teams today. The dancing and revelry across the country showed that the entire nation rejoiced together and felt a shared sense of pride in this great victory. India&rsquo;s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team played brilliantly in the finals against an equally good team from Sri Lanka. Mr Dhoni has shown exemplary maturity in the style of his captaincy. Cricket has become a sport of prima donnas and with all-time greats like Sachin Tendulkar playing, and playing well, it would have been difficult for Mr Dhoni to provide the kind of leadership he did. His low-key response to the exciting victory says it all.

Sport and nation

There was no reason why the Union finance ministry should have messed up succession planning at the country&rsquo;s premier bank, State Bank of India (SBI). If the idea was to allow the incumbent managing director, R Sridharan, a limited tenure in the top job, as a consolation since he missed out being considered for the job given the existing rules on age and eligibility, it is understandable. No harm done if you allow a senior person a brief term, before the regular appointment is made. In the past, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had such interim governors. However, if the reason for the present situation was lack of proper paper work by those responsible for the selection process, then it reflects poorly on the Union government and the Union finance ministry. Also, it is unfair to whoever finally gets the top job at the country&rsquo;s biggest bank.

Messing up succession

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