Investors continue to pour money into the EM asset class. Weekly inflows into EM equity funds remain strong with no sign of let-up. Just look at India, we have already received $23 billion of FII inflows, the highest level ever. Coal India has received a great response, with the institutional portion subscribed 15x, FIIs are scrambling to get an allocation and the money continues to pour in.

Akash Prakash: Emerging markets and liquidity

Business Standard

So, Honda has decided to exit Hero Honda. The 26-26 joint venture between the Munjals and Honda dates back to the 1980s when the first wave of liberalisation took place. Apart from Honda, two other Japanese motorcycle makers had come to India at that time: Suzuki with TVS and Yamaha with Escorts. In the past, there has been talk, more than once, that the two partners will go their separate ways.

Bhupesh Bhandari: Business model of JV - RIP

While &ldquo;hot&rdquo; capital inflows, especially portfolio investments surging into India&rsquo;s economy, have triggered serious concerns of late, remittances or private transfers from the vast diaspora are still welcome. For starters, the latter inflows are more stable than portfolio investments that are pro-cyclical in nature, rising in good times and falling in bad times. &ldquo;They are less likely to suffer the sharp withdrawal or euphoric surges that characterise portfolio flows to emerging economies,&rdquo; argues Dilip Ratha, lead economist and manager of the migration and remittances team at the World Bank.

N Chandra Mohan: 'Remitting' economic development

Indian women are being celebrated in the country as a result of the mark they have made at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games. Of the 101 medals that the country won, it was the ladies who brought home 22 scoring wins in almost all of the disciplines in the competition.

Neha Chowdhry: Stumbling on the gender gap

There has been a fair amount of discussion in the media on whether India needs to control, tax or otherwise discourage excessive foreign capital inflows. The policy dilemmas on whether such flows need to be reduced and, if so, how to do so without affecting growth have become more intense in view of high inflation. If the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intervenes in the market to buy excess dollars, rupee liquidity increases, which, in turn, contributes to inflationary pressures. If the RBI does not intervene, the rupee appreciates making exports uncompetitive.

Bimal Jalan: Policy options for capital flows

Picture an operation theatre. A team of dental surgeons is performing a root canal surgery. An air of nervousness hangs above them. They finally emerge in triumph from the operation theatre, exchanging congratulatory high-fives and relieved smiles. All this, some readers might wonder, for something as mundane as a root canal surgery? But this was no standard dental procedure. This team of intrepid doctors from Bangalore had just operated upon, believe it or not, a rather ill-tempered tigress. After the six-hour surgery that entailed the extraction of her canine, the patient, Menaka, resident of the Bannerghatta National Park &mdash; and the team of doctors &mdash; were both fine.

Geetanjali Krishna: Dentistry gone wild

The Indian cricket team has always been a bad traveller. Not merely because of our results overseas &mdash; and these have admittedly improved sharply in the last decade or so &mdash; but also by the manner of those results. On many tours, we start very badly, often losing the first Test or just escaping narrowly to a draw. This invariably happens in countries where the playing conditions are very different from ours.

Is this a new era of BCCI?

As my wife&rsquo;s occasional and unacknowledged secretary, I couldn&rsquo;t help but laugh. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re getting a lot of spam mail,&rdquo; I told her, &ldquo;with people addressing you as &lsquo;Your Royal Highness&rsquo;.&rdquo; &ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been expecting those emails, I hope you haven&rsquo;t deleted them from Our folder.&rdquo; &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason to get into a royal lather, Your Highness,&rdquo; I joked, &ldquo;but isn&rsquo;t this whole nostalgia thing just a little bit pretentious?&rdquo; &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t wish to speak to you,&rdquo; she said grandly, &ldquo;but you must let us know the moment there are more such mails so We can take action,&rdquo; effectively putting me in my subordinate place.

Kishore Singh: Your Not-So-Royal Highness

It&rsquo;s considered very impolite to refer to India as a land of snake-charmers (oh no, we&rsquo;re all about the slumdog millionaires these days), but this hasn&rsquo;t prevented movie producers from commenting on the social and sartorial habits of the famed ichadhaari naag (a snake that can transform itself into a human and back again).

Great snakes of our time

My theory about airport novels is that they are designed to make buyers aspire to fly first class, stay in fancy hotels and hire limousines. What should be a fast and forgettable time-pass is bogged down by descriptions of gold watches and excess horsepower. I had put Robert Ludlum in that category and picked up his novels only after I saw the Bourne movies. In those movies, Jason Bourne parkours his way in and out of deep water, foreign embassies and bomb explosions, and covers every longitude and latitude in about three days. In a medium-size backpack he carries enough passports, clothes, hair dye, cash and safety deposit keys to create any number of identities. When does he charge his cellphone? Or buy fresh bullets? Never mind, the movies were fast and fun, and not so forgettable. If you blinked you&rsquo;d miss an entire plot thread, and they had just enough dark psychological angst to make me pick up the books.

The Ludlum franchise

China is not only on the path to Great Power status, it also means to exercise its newfound muscle. What is difficult to understand is why it wants to behave like a rogue power when the world would want it to be a responsible force in global affairs. Consider the evidence, starting with its choice of friends &mdash; including two countries whom you would consider as a part of the &ldquo;axis of evil&rdquo;, Pakistan and North Korea. China has not only ignored its own treaty obligations and nuclear-enabled a known proliferator like Pakistan, it has also lent its tacit support to North Korea even as that country has been busy violating its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which China is a signatory.

T N Ninan: Temptations of power

Of course, like in the recently concluded Games, Australia would win such a competition, if production was the criteria, and the UK would lead hands down if it came to consumption.

After Games, a wine contest?

There is s quiet revolution happening in the Indian higher education system. It started in the South many years ago, with the mushrooming of private engineering, medical and business schools. The profits made by these institutions encouraged others in the rest of the country to do the same. However, the real revolution is happening now with established business houses planning &ldquo;world-class&rdquo; universities in various parts of the country. While the success of ISB encouraged the growth of business schools in the country, the spectacular success of Manipal University has shown how private universities can be good business as well as serve an important social cause.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay: Education revolution

    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states something is impossible, he is probably wrong.

Devangshu Datta: Governance defies prediction

In eternal India, as much today, good rains bring bountiful crops and good cheer. If to that you add the surge forward of an emerging market, then few corners of the earth should be able to offer a more exciting life. Well, yes and no.

Subir Roy: The curse of progress gone awry

All that the Shiv Sena had to do was to get one its youngest pups to bare his milk teeth and let out a couple of tentative yips, and Mumbai University fell to its knees, gibbering with fear. My chest is fairly swelling with pride at the efficiency of that institution: the Vice Chancellor took Rohinton Mistry&rsquo;s book, Such A Long Journey, off the syllabus within twenty-four hours of being yipped at about how it is offensive to Marathis and the Shiv Sena.

Off the books

It seemed as if the London taxi driver was eyeing me suspiciously in the mirror. He had good reason to, I felt, with the spotlight focused on three prominent Indians.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: South Asia's peer pressures

This newspaper has not often taken political sides. Indeed, Indian journalism has not had the western tradition of the media declaring its political preferences. In the state of Bihar, however, which has now entered a month-long election period, the choice is clear and preferences should be stated. Bihar&rsquo;s voters have to choose between five more years of a government led by Nitish Kumar, or five years or less of confusion created by an uncertain and split verdict, or five years of some nameless politician serving his tenure in Patna at Delhi&rsquo;s beck and call.

Bihar needs Nitish Kumar

China and India, muscular economies whose emergence is re-orientalising the world, may be neighbours, but they are beasts of a different temperament. This divergence was pithily symbolised by the differential nature and outcome of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and its poor relation, the recently held Delhi Commonwealth Games.

Pallavi Aiyar: A tale of two Games

It seems to me that the changes we see in world politics and the effects of technology are the two factors that have most affected the strategic calculus of those in the international system who might seek to use force for political purposes. Consider the global political situation first.

Technology has given non-state actors lethal power

When Verghese Kurien pioneered the dairy cooperative movement, millions of poor women in Gujarat became owners of a billion dollar brand. A similar model of giving milk providers the ownership of the brand has emerged in Punjab under the label of Tru milk. However, it raises questions related to profit-sharing and unpaid labour.

Sreelatha Menon: Self-help groups or helpless groups?

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 700 - Opinion Specials