The Union Cabinet&rsquo;s decision to refer Vedanta&rsquo;s proposed buyout of Cairn India to a group of ministers (GoM) after months of inter-ministerial consultation is yet another example of the government&rsquo;s indecisiveness. The contentious issues of royalty and cess referred to the GoM headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee are not new. They have been in existence ever since Cairn India began pumping crude oil from its Barmer block in August 2009, and even when Cairn Energy informed the petroleum ministry about the deal (August 16, 2010). It took the petroleum ministry a month to write to Cairn that a formal consent was required for clearance. And when Cairn applied, the ministry responded nearly two months later saying that an application for pre-New Exploration Licensing Policy (Nelp) contracts would also be required.

Group of minders

Business Standard

Earlier this week a two-member bench of the Supreme Court decided that illegitimate children, born out of wedlock, have the same rights to ancestral property as legitimate children, born to married parents. The country&rsquo;s higher judiciary deserves full marks for this progressive verdict, which is a step forward in empowering innocent offspring of unwed parents. The growing maturity of judicial opinion on such matters is reflected in the honourable judges&rsquo; observation that once live-in relationships are recognised by law, it is natural that &ldquo;illegitimate&rdquo; children must also be recognised in the same way as other children. That is consistency &mdash; a trait of maturity in a society. The advantage of the common law system is evident in the fact that by passing this judgment the court has written into law an important element of a just society.

Empowering the illegitimate

Historically, equities have always wobbled around the first Fed rate hike, after a recession. In the process, they have demonstrated a clear setback in prices, while avoiding a bear market. The first rate increase would also normally trigger a bout of sector rotation, with cyclicals and banks underperforming and giving way to the more defensive sectors in the market.

Akash Prakash: Beyond quantitative easing-II

The fiscal year 2011 witnessed a faster and broader recovery in the Indian economy. While real GDP was expected to gather significant momentum during FY11, the robust growth of 8.9% during H1 FY11 was a positive surprise. While the long-term growth prospects of the economy seem bright given the strong fundamentals of the economy, the short-term outlook needs to be assessed in context of the emerging macroeconomic dynamics that might support or limit India&rsquo;s economic growth. Therefore, before looking at the outlook of the Indian economy during FY12, analysing current macroeconomic developments is crucial in determining the prospect of the Indian economy over the span of next one year.

India's long-term growth prospects seem bright

Chennai and Kolkata, where I equally divided my school days, are two of my favourite places. I like to recall them as Madras and Calcutta, with their unique cultures, habits, beliefs and practices. Calcutta&rsquo;s Park Street lined up Peking, Waldorf, Skyroom, Flurys, Kwality and others where we would be hauled once a month; the adults also had the option of Mocambo and Trincas, made famous by novelist Sarat Chandra Chatterjee&rsquo;s Parineeta.

Parthasarathi Shome: West Bengal vs Tamil Nadu 

Yesterday, when I opened my doors and windows to let in some fresh air, all I let in was smoke. From the balcony, I saw the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) sweeper had lit a bonfire of fallen leaves on the road. &ldquo;Put that out!&rdquo; I shouted, &ldquo;why don&rsquo;t you throw garbage into the MCD dump instead?&rdquo; The sweeper replied: &ldquo;look at this huge heap &mdash; how do you expect me to cart it all the way to the dump?&rdquo; He said that not just him, but all the sweepers in the colony burned leaves. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the most convenient way to get rid of them!&rdquo; he said. Poking into the noxious bonfire, I also found plastic bags, bits of rubber and other unmentionables smouldering within. &ldquo;Do you know how harmful burning all this is?&rdquo; I asked.

Geetanjali Krishna: The burning issue of waste 

As I write this on Thursday afternoon, the Anna Hazare movement appears to be gaining ground.

A second wave?

It was Sarla&rsquo;s idea to rustle up a support party for Anna Hazare &mdash; the key word being, of course, party. &ldquo;Nothing elaborate,&rdquo; she said, it had to be a simple affair, and seeing that it was about joint participation, she decided in favour of a pool party, giggling when Sujata wanted to know whether she could bring the kids over too, they&rsquo;d been so keen to start swimming again. &ldquo;Not a swimming pool party, you fool,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;but a pooling in party &mdash; you, for instance,&rdquo; she told her, &ldquo;can probably bring the caviar.

Kishore Singh: Party to a cause

Swraj Paul&rsquo;s significance in India&rsquo;s corporate history cannot be overstated. Before him, businessmen were comfortable with low stakes in their companies. In a crisis, the government-owned banks and financial institutions, which held large stakes in their companies, could be persuaded to take their side, given the considerable influence they wielded in the corridors of power. Those were the days of unbridled crony capitalism. When Paul mounted a takeover bid for Escorts and DCM in the mid-1980s it was perhaps the first time that businessmen realised how vulnerable they were to predators.

Sitting ducks

Recently we learnt Bristol Palin was paid $330,000 for promoting an (anti) teen pregnancy charity, Candie&rsquo;s Foundation. The 20-year-old daughter of Sarah was a teen mother, as anybody who followed the last US presidential campaign will recall.

Devangshu Datta: Perverse incentives in gender bias

Choto Babu &ndash; the special name by which I call my little grand-nephew, not so little considering he is in class two going on to three &ndash; cannot decide what was greater fun: India winning the cricket World Cup or his father taking the impromptu decision to take the family out to M G Road to celebrate right after Dhoni hit the six.

Subir Roy: Invasion from the north east

Sprawled like a massive white elephant in the heart of Delhi's diplomatic zone, the Ashok resembles no other five-star in the capital. Walk in through the banquet entrance of this massive government-run hotel, if you really want a touch of strange.

Surrealissimo

Seeing my astonishment at the judge&rsquo;s peon who rushed up to ask for baksheesh because my family had won a property suit, my lawyer said loudly for everyone to hear, &ldquo;In a few years the judge sahib himself will come running for a tip!&rdquo; I recounted this anecdote at a recent meeting in a high court to enthusiastic applause while senior advocates and judges on the platform sat in stony disapproval.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: The leaning pillars of democracy

There are some films so bad that they are just plain bad, and there are some films so bad they are awesome. Somewhere in the large wasteland between these two extremes (but no one knows exactly where) falls Red Rose, a 1980 movie about a psychotic, woman-hating killer.

The best of the worst

In case you didn&rsquo;t know, the largest volume of wines imported into India are from Australia, selling an estimated 75,000 cases (30 per cent of the total) of all imported wine sales in India in 2010-11, having narrowly overtaken French wines.

Australian avalanche

Tracking the risks to the Indian macro is like monitoring a shifting wall of worries. Late last year, the risks centred on the adverse impact of rising crude oil prices and capital outflows, and the potential fallout from a combination of India-specific factors such as corruption-related scandals, policy paralysis, high inflation, worsening current account (CA) deficit, a spending-heavy fiscal policy and monetary tightening. Some of the outcomes, such as those for the CA deficit, portfolio flows, fiscal consolidation and the rupee&rsquo;s resilience, have been better than expected although in some cases the initial concerns themselves had been played up. However, others, such as rising crude oil prices and high inflation, remain worrying.

Rajeev Malik: Navigating macro pitfalls

To say that no one has elected Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and the rest to speak for ordinary citizens is to say the obvious. The mostly middle-class people and the chatteratti (film stars, celebrity cops and so on) who have rallied to Mr Hazare&rsquo;s cause remind one of the people who held hands and lit candles after the November 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, saying, &ldquo;Enough is enough&rdquo;.

T N Ninan: Our Tahrir Square

It is our duty to compensate those we have wronged.

Dorab R Sopariwala: Bhopal gas tragedy - Justice at our cost

Once upon a time, and not too long back, the rage of the tiger lover was louder than the roar of all of India&rsquo;s tigers. Tiger lovers like Valmik Thapar and Sunita Narain roared against each other trying to prove to the country&rsquo;s bewildered prime minister that each was more worried about the threat to India&rsquo;s tiger population than the other! Both stepped in with ideas and the government implemented many of them.

The tiger roars again

Germany has always been at the heart of the European project. A nation that came to represent the continent&rsquo;s deepest psychological scars, it was also the motor driving European integration.

Pallavi Aiyar: Europe's schizophrenia over Germany

Public private partnerships (PPP) in water supply projects had their first application to the urban water sector in India nearly 230 years ago! Fort St. George was the first settlement of the East India Company (EIC) in South India. It was already growing in size in the mid-1700s, but by this time the Anglo-French war spread to India.

Gautam Pingle: 18th century Madras - A study in BOOT

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