A fortnight ago, Moin was beaten to death by his uncle who was the owner of the factory where the 10-year-old worked. Very few would have cared but for television, which brought the horrific images of his battered body into middle-class living rooms. But it&rsquo;s doubtful if anybody would remember Moin&rsquo;s tragedy once the TV cameras shift elsewhere.

Shyamal Majumdar: One less mouth to feed

Business Standard

Merger regulations under the Competition Act, 2002 have always been controversial. Now that the government in its wisdom has announced June 1, 2011 as the date for operationalising them, Indian business has again voiced concerns over whether these norms would be a boon or a bane. They seem to be leaning towards the latter (&ldquo;Hobbled by regulation&rdquo;, Business Standard, April 20). Some concerns are valid while many are not.

Pradeep S Mehta: Merger norms - way to economic democracy

Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention, the inspector asked Sherlock Holmes. &ldquo;To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,&rdquo; said Mr Holmes. &ldquo;The dog did nothing in the night-time,&rdquo; said the inspector. &ldquo;That was the curious incident,&rdquo; replied Mr Holmes. That about sums up the approach of the chairman of Parliament&rsquo;s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) &ndash; Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Murli Manohar Joshi &ndash; in naming the prime minister and his office in its draft report on the Comptroller and Auditor General&rsquo;s (CAG&rsquo;s) report on 2G telecom licences. If this had been the unequivocal opinion of the PAC as a whole, it would have amounted to substantial criticism of the government and the prime minister. But even that would not have implied culpability, much less guilt. That the dog did not bark does not implicate the dog in the crime.

Mr Joshi's draft

With a sizeable part of India&rsquo;s coastline being only marginally higher than the mean sea level, vast tracts of coastal India remain vulnerable to any abnormal fury of the seas. That is why the tsunami of December 2004 took its toll in many parts of coastal India. The ferocious tsunami that hit Japan recently is a reminder of the continued vulnerability of coastal India, including major urban centres like Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi, Surat, Mangalore, Panaji, Vizag and so on, to nature&rsquo;s fury. It is, therefore, only appropriate that the Union environment ministry has begun mapping and demarcating coastal areas that run a major risk of devastation owing to tides, cyclones and even the feared rise in the sea level owing to climate change. After delineating such susceptible areas with the help of stereo digital aerial photography, land markers are proposed to be put up to indicate the flood lines.

Securing the coastline

A whistle-stop five-day tour of three south Indian state capitals (Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad) yielded a variety of impressions but here is my overall verdict: Bangalore is the worst-managed of the three and Hyderabad by far the best.

Sunil Sethi: Rating south India's three capitals

I was fortunate to have had an audience with Sathya Sai Baba on two occasions. The first time was in the winter of 1971, when I was in Bangalore with the prime minister of Poland. Mohan Lal Sukhadia, Karnataka&rsquo;s governor at the time, narrated a few &ldquo;miracles&rdquo; of Baba and later arranged for me to go to Whitefield. I returned with the ashes that Baba had conjured. The second time was at a friend&rsquo;s house in New Delhi. I never became a follower, but always admired and respected this holy man who provided solace to so many people all over the world. It is India&rsquo;s genius to give birth to people with exceptional transcendental powers.

K Natwar Singh: The sublime and the ordinary

Much of the initial comment in the Indian media on the shortlisting of two of the six contenders for a Rs 42,000-crore fighter aircraft has focused (predictably, perhaps) on the elimination of the two American contenders. The US ambassador has made some gratuitous comments: he is &ldquo;respectful&rdquo; of the selection process which, he has been assured at the highest level of the government, is &ldquo;fair and transparent&rdquo; (so what did he expect?).

T N Ninan: Ordering ordinance

The denial earlier this week that the Indian prime minister had used the back channel to contact Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ahead of the match at Mohali had Pakistanis puzzled. Of all the army chiefs Pakistan has had, they said General Kayani is the least interested in politics. Why would anyone want a back channel with him when he has been so open, they asked.

Aditi Phadnis: Man behind the uniform

For someone who plays so little sport, I&rsquo;ve sat across from a surprisingly large number of sports physicians, especially while living in California &mdash; it&rsquo;s the standing joke in my family. However, the tables were turned recently, when a skiing accident finally caught up with the real sportsperson in our house, and I found myself sitting outside the operation theatre in an Indian hospital, waiting for news about a finger surgery under general anaesthesia.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare: A keen eye on healthcare

The critical state of India&rsquo;s food security is only getting worse each year. Besides, the cost of food items is rapidly increasing beyond affordability to a majority of people. Added to these woes are the short supply of pulses and edible oils that the central government is forced to import.

Lux Lakshmanan: Pulse of the nation

The other day, when I was buying vegetables from an itinerant vendor, he started to sort out my purchases into different plastic bags. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give me plastic bags,&rdquo; I said, producing a cloth tote.

Geetanjali Krishna: Cloth to wipe out plastic 

My wife&rsquo;s friend Sarla never really needed to join a catty &ndash; er, kitty &ndash; party, because she was a one-woman act who could out-gossip, out-drink and out-dress everyone, and still do a headstand to round it off, a given at our neighbourhood parties after everyone was a few drinks down. It was a feat she performed till she turned 50, but it was her ability to spill secrets that turned her into a terrible ing&eacute;nue. &ldquo;You do know your son-in-law eats beef,&rdquo; she would tell a horrified vegetarian octogenarian, or &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard your daughter is secretly seeing the boy across the landing?&rdquo; to conservative parents, loudly wonder whether random friends were &ldquo;gay&rdquo; or their wives having &ldquo;scenes&rdquo; behind their backs &mdash; following each up with &ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t mind, I thought everyone knew.

Kishore Singh: New kittys on the block

The key issues for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its upcoming monetary policy review for 2011-12 will likely be dissecting the growth-inflation trade-off, taking a closer look at demand- versus supply-driven factors affecting inflation, and deciding whether to raise the policy rates by 25 or 50 basis points (bps).

Rajeev Malik: Right approach, wrong yardstick

Sachin Tendulkar, the nation&rsquo;s most potent symbol of strength, breaking down and weeping at Sai Baba&rsquo;s funeral may have been an &lsquo; awww&rsquo; moment for the media, but it got me revisiting a subject I&rsquo;ve been fascinated by for some time now: the business of men crying.

Men who cry

During the cricket World Cup there was a nice article in another newspaper about Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. For this tournament the shell and stands had been completely rebuilt. After the building material was finally moved off the pitch, the groundsmen began the race to perfect the playing surface.

Big game

If the heated prices at Pundole&rsquo;s debut auction in Mumbai were any reason to start making predictions of a hardening art market, a recent survey has shown precisely how insignificant India is in the global stack-up. Compared, of course, with China, which in just a few years is in sight of grabbing top slot by value.

Reason for cheer

The mammoth Ludlum novel of the year is India&rsquo;s telecom spectrum scam. Ludlum novels revolve around a group of crusading individuals stacked up against powerful adversaries who are hell-bent on using all means to thwart efforts at exposure. Suicide, subterfuge, damaged reputations and dramatic twists all race to a nail-biting end.

Of committees and chaos

On the eve of budget day, the Economic Survey revealed encouraging macro-economic data, barring the inflation barometer, which remains a huge worry for the economy at large and potential challenge for sustaining the growth momentum. The finance minister (FM) in his speech confirmed growth forecasts in the Economic Survey that the economy is likely to grow at 8.6 per cent during the current fiscal.

Mukesh Butani: FM combines reforms with fiscal discipline

First, some arithmetic. On paper, the government&rsquo;s FY12 budget targets a consolidation not achieved in the past two decades. The fiscal outturn for FY11 came at 5.1 per cent of GDP, which contained 1.3 per cent of GDP in spectrum sales and 0.3 per cent of GDP in disinvestment. Excluding these (as it is done in almost every other country) the outturn is 6.7 per cent of GDP.

Jehangir Aziz: Consolidation without pain! What am I missing?

The Budget is pro-stability, but is not prepared for implementing GST next year.

Short on GST readiness

Poor allocation of funds to key social sectors shows the government&rsquo;s lacklustre approach to inclusive growth.

Marginalising the marginalised

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