The issue of corruption has been dominating public discourse over the last few months. The winter session of Parliament was paralysed on this issue. While the prime minister has made it one of his priorities, a Group of Ministers (GoM) has been constituted and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been making dramatic arrests. The public expects quick punishment of those who are guilty but is highly skeptical, and rightly so.

Ajay Shankar: Commonsense on tackling corruption

Business Standard

Corruption is not the problem. Rather, corruption, nepotism and special interests are the symptoms of a deep-rooted malaise in our government system that is threatening to dismantle democracy.

'Unfettered discretion causes corruption in the government'

An anganwadi centre to feed children and to sing them rhymes is the only pre-school that millions of children in rural India have. Many of those who manage to go to anganwadi centres (the coverage in Bihar was just 1.5 per cent five years ago) may have benefited from the twists and turns in the programme introduced by funding bodies such as Unicef, USAID and the World Bank.

Sreelatha Menon: Growing up with Jack and Jill

Having worked on drafting infallible arbitration clau-ses, on the one hand, and seeking to interpret arbitration clauses to either establish or demolish the arbitra-bility of a reference of dispute under an extant contract, on the other, like most lawyers, I have often pondered on what are the ingredients of a perfect arbitration clause and how should it be structured. At the same time I have wondered why is it that the arbitration clause is so neglected; with a standard language cut-copy-paste job from the first available template being inserted in a hurry, usually at a point of time when energy and concentration levels are both at a low ebb.

Taking resolution of disputes seriously

A recent decision of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has once again underlined the prin-ciple that the power of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to issue directions under Section 11B of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 (SEBI Act) cannot be used to impose penalties.

Section 11B is not punitive in nature

While presenting the Budget for 2011-12, the Finance Minister has announced some important measures which will help in tackling the problem of black money kept by Indians outside India. The measures cover change in substantive law as well as in the procedure for assessment.

Measures to curb black money: Budget 2011

In the Budget Speech the Finance Minister has announced that steps have been taken for modifying the provisions of the Cenvat Credit Scheme to achieve a more realistic balance between input credit and out put tax and harmonising the provisions of the Scheme across goods and services.

2011 Budget has not achieved comprehensive goods tax

The status of labourers employed by contractors in industries in Maharashtra has again become a point of deep differences among various benches of the Bombay high court and therefore the Supreme Court (SC) last week referred three questions to a larger bench of the apex court for an authoritative decision. The case involved workers of Raymond Ltd in Mumbai. When one of them moved the industrial court under the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Union and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act, the company denied any relationship with the labourer. Various benches of the high court have taken different stands on the issue of relationship between the employer and such workers. Therefore, the SC framed three questions for the larger bench.

Maharashtra contract labour issue goes to SC bench

The Securities and Exchange Board of India&rsquo;s (SEBI) latest circular on mutual funds has helped rationalise the usage of accumulated and unspent entry load of the mutual funds. Whether this is a &ldquo;UK Sinha effect&rdquo; or just institutional rethink is not clear but mutual funds have begun reading the tea leaves and drawing some solace! It would be comforting for them to believe that the regulatory pendulum could now swing away from the Bhave era. This is a matter of management of rational expectation on the part of the regulator and the regulated. If the Indian mutual funds could have their way, the date 30 June, 2009 would not exist. It was the day on which the market regulator, in fulfilment of its responsibility of investor protection, abolished entry loads for all mutual fund schemes, and left it to the investors to pay directly the mutual fund distributors based on an investor&rsquo;s assessment of their services.

Mr Sinha's sweetener

You don&rsquo;t have to travel very far from the epicentre of power in India to grasp the challenge of urban governance. Take a walk to Delhi&rsquo;s hip and happening Khan Market.

Sanjaya Baru: Private wealth public squalor

If the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has its way, Parliament will approve the Union Budget for 2011-12 by March 25, in less than a month of its presentation on February 28. This will be both unusual and unprecedented. Worse, it will deal a blow to the time-honoured tradition of subjecting the government&rsquo;s annual Budget to elaborate scrutiny and discussion by members of Parliament, before the final assent by the president.

A K Bhattacharya: Budget on the back burner


All eyes are on the Reserve Bank of India&rsquo;s (RBI) mid-quarter monetary policy review on March 17. It has so far been aggressive in its actions, having raised policy rates seven times, and effectively increasing rates by 325 basis points (bps) since early 2010. The actual monetary transmission has been even more potent since market rates have been well above the repo rate owing to tighter liquidity conditions, even if we discount the fact that banks woke up late to transmit the hikes in

Rajeev Malik: RBI policy review - Navigating on the curve

Assume for a moment that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did not have to come forward with any press release on monetary policy this coming Thursday. After all, there was a time when the central bank took a view on monetary policy only twice a year and it was not long ago that it yielded to the market&rsquo;s Q-culture. RBI Governor Duvvuri Subbarao, a half marathon runner himself, chose to become more quick footed in his responses and decided to come forward with a mid-quarter statement. While he did say in a recent speech that &ldquo;Notwithstanding the scheduled quarterly and mid-quarterly reviews, we (RBI) reserve the right to alter our policy stance at any time to respond to the evolving macro-economic situation,&rdquo; the fact is that once a date for making a statement gets fixed, the RBI comes under pressure, from public expectations, to say something or the other.

Subbarao's date

It may be too early to say that Europe is completely out of the woods as far as economic growth and stability are concerned, but there seems no doubt that the Euro has risen like Phoenix from the ashes of the region&rsquo;s sovereign debt crisis. In June last year, when Greece was on the verge of defaulting on its sovereign obligations, it was trading at 1.19 to the dollar. Most analysts had predicted that it would remain stuck there and perhaps drift lower. The doomsayers predicted a collapse of the currency claiming that the interests of the relatively stable &lsquo;core&rsquo; including Germany and France conflicted with the fiscally overstretched periphery, particularly the PIIGs (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). However, the currency bounced back as Greece was bailed out. Some of these anxieties resurfaced during Ireland&rsquo;s sovereign debt crisis in November but could not push the Euro below 1.29 to the greenback.

The Euro redux

In January this year, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) publicly released a report on &ldquo;IMF Performance in the Run-Up to the Financial and Economic Crisis&rdquo;. The IEO is a relatively small unit, which operates independently of IMF Management and at arm&rsquo;s length from the IMF&rsquo;s Executive Board.

Suman Bery: The fund of the future

For instance, there are over 200 odd million people who can read and write in Hindi. But Hindi doesn&rsquo;t figure in any listing of the top ten languages used on the internet globally. Japanese, a cussedly difficult language to read or write, makes it to the top five. This, from a country with less than one-tenth the population of India.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The mystery of missing Indian languages

As the only nation to be devastated by the consequences of a nuclear attack, the people of Japan can be expected to be particularly anxious about the fallout from a nuclear meltdown in the Fukushima-Daiichi complex in northern Japan. The two reactors owned and operated by the Tokyo Electric Company, Asia&rsquo;s largest utility, are among the largest in the world and have been built to meet stringent safety standards.

Fukushima's fallout

Successive chief justices in recent times have pointed out the neglect of the legal system in budgetary provisions. However, it had little impact on the allocation of funds in Budget 2011 for administration of justice. The increase is marginal, just enough to upset the inflationary factor.

M J Antony: Unfair allocations

The recently concluded 15th Indian National Census is an exercise of staggering magnitude &mdash; by any standard. For perspective: the decennial Census covered an area of 3.27 million sq. kms, that included 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and over 600 villages. Primary data on 1.2 billion people would be collected by over 2 million enumerators, specially trained for the purpose. The total cost of the exercise is conservatively estimated at Rs 2,200 crore, while the subsequent National Public Register project would cost an additional Rs 3,500 crore. The sheer magnitude aside, the latest census includes some novel features as well. The houselisting and housing Census, carried out in the first phase, was designed to provide comprehensive data on the condition of human settlements and housing shortages to assist in the formulation of appropriate housing policies.

Estimating India

Open access to infrastructure for supplying electricity will create value. But the issue must be seen in view of the impact of competition on the poor and vulnerable sections of the society.

Should electricity regulators promote competition?

The recent explosions at the Japanese nuclear power plant at Fukushima, resulting from Tsunami devastation during the past few days and with more bad news likely to follow, are bound to have a major impact on the global nuclear power industry, including India. At the turn of the century, analysts had begun to talk of a possible &ldquo;nuclear renaissance&rsquo;.

Shyam Saran: Is nuclear renaissance dead?

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