Gujarat has been in the news for three reasons this month. The first is, of course, the Vibrant Gujarat investment festival coinciding with the Makar Sankranti season in the state. With the exception of Infosys and Wipro &ndash; for which Gujarat is readying a different kind of entrepreneur and Chief Minister Narendra Modi is confident that given time, they will be in Gujarat too &ndash; everyone who is anyone in industry was in the state networking, raising money and investing. Investment amounting to lakhs of crores has been promised. The accent is on &ldquo;promised&rdquo;, the Opposition points out. Industry, on the other hand, is clear. One BJP-minded investor compared Modi to the third in the trinity of &ldquo;Vivekanand and Gandhi&rdquo;. Poverty of philosophy? Maybe. But industry thinks so.

Aditi Phadnis: A Modi-fied Gujarat

Business Standard

Inflation has become the buzzword in recent times both globally and in India. In India, as a political weapon in the hands of opposition parties, it has attained the same status as corruption to beat up the party in power. Relentless media coverage about Inflation as a public enemy only added to the confusion about the phenomenon being described, the causes being attributed and the policy actions being suggested.

Gangadhar Darbha: The anatomy of inflation

Henry David Thoreau, who argued widely for civil disobedience, said about letters that he seldom got more than one or two in his life that were worth the postage. On Monday, a group of India&rsquo;s eminent &ldquo;like-minded&rdquo; citizens, mostly businessmen, former regulators and members of the judiciary, wrote a letter to India&rsquo;s leaders that also wasted, in great measure, paper and postage.

Return to sender

Even seven years ago when I moved to Santiniketan, the peace and quiet of the area in which I am lucky enough to live would be disturbed only very occasionally. The sound of a passing train (the train tracks are close to our boundary), a few bus horns from those plying on the other side of the train tracks and the occasional purr of a passing car were all I heard, except, of course, the birds.

Keya Sarkar: Facing the music

The admonition on most invitations these days &ndash; &ldquo;Please carry this card with you for reasons of security&rdquo; &ndash; appears a little intimidating. Security, really? Are our friends expecting terrorists to disrupt their daughter&rsquo;s pheras? Will snipers be lined up at the book launch? &ldquo;I&rsquo;m carrying my fruit knife with me in my purse,&rdquo; my wife insists, till I tell her that far from making her feel secure, she could be turned into a security risk for carrying an instrument capable of doing some violence to an apple, or guava, but which would be useless on people.

Kishore Singh: First come, first served

Last week, I attended a production called 100 Charmers. Director Roysten Abel had gathered five score saperas (snake charmers) from in and around Delhi to perform in an ensemble that was mostly music but presented with fine, dramatic flair. Set against the medieval Taramati Baradari on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the musicians lifted their beens to play an impressive repertoire.

Music without boundaries

In 1999-2000, at the height of the internet hoopla, every web business was projected to grow at amazing rates. Totting them all up, it seemed the internet sector would soon grow larger than overall US GDP.

Seeking method in madness

Net profit is the surplus for the period available for distribution after payment of return on the debt capital (interest) and government&rsquo;s share in surplus (income tax). Conceptually, surplus is the amount that can be withdrawn from the business without impairing the capital at the beginning of the period. Ideally, surplus should be measured comparing the physical capital at the end and that at the beginning of the period. Practically, measuring capital in physical terms is very difficult, if not impossible. The next best method is to measure capital in monetary terms using a monetary unit adjusted for change in the purchasing power. But the contemporary accounting practice is to measure capital in monetary terms without adjusting the monetary unit for the change in the purchasing power.

Use of profit or Loss a/c sans adjustments can mislead

The Government of India has signed a Protocol with the Government of Switzerland in August 2010 for the purpose of amending the Tax Treaty between the Swiss Confederation and the Republic of India. The protocol has been signed with the intent to enable the Government of India to access the accounts maintained in the Swiss banks by the Indian tax evaders and to gather such other informations as may be necessary to tax the unaccounted money stashed in Switzerland.

Unearthing Indian black money in Switzerland

As a run up to Budget 2011, the previous article in this column had addressed the expectations with respect to the service tax rate and the resolution of the several complexities in service tax law which continue to bedevil companies. This article examines certain other service tax related issues which need to be addressed as well as the possible extension of the service tax to certain new services.

Expectations from Budget 2011 - service tax

Micro-finance institutions (MFIs) registered as non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and self-help groups (SHGs) linked to banks, both answerable to the banking regulator Reserve Bank of India (RBI), between themselves account for 92 per cent of the micro-finance space. So, when the Yezdi Malegam Committee, set up by RBI, recommends that a separate category of NBFC-MFIs (they make up 58 per cent of the sector) be created and RBI regulate them, it is clearly upbraiding RBI for not ensuring better and more comprehensive regulation earlier. If that had been done, the whole crisis of the past several months could possibly have been avoided. Now that a comprehensive set of recommendations is available, there is a need to act on them speedily so that further crisis is avoided and growth is smooth and healthy.

Mr Malegam's rap

Just as education and food have been the focus of public policy concern in recent months, thanks to the Manmohan Singh government&rsquo;s agenda of &ldquo;inclusive growth&rdquo;, public health too must come into the focus of national policy sooner rather than later. Education, food and health are all State subjects in India&rsquo;s federal system. Yet, the central government can play, and has done so from time to time, a leadership role in guiding policy. It is a pity that some of these concerns come to the fore in India only when foreign funding agencies and foreign journals choose to focus on them. There is a wealth of research and experience available in different parts of the country on which public policy can draw without having to look for either funding or approval from western donors and institutions. Ironically, at a time when private for-profit health care is booming, the neglect of public health continues.

Health of a nation

Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa&rsquo;s days appear to be numbered irrespective of whatever counter-strategies and theatricals he and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may choose to engage in to challenge the decision of state Governor H R Bharadwaj to allow two lawyers to initiate prosecution against him on grounds of corruption and criminal misconduct.

Mr Yeddyurappa in the dock

There was a time when anyone who mattered in New Delhi&rsquo;s economic policymaking circles and Mumbai&rsquo;s financial and business circles considered it a privilege and fashionable to spend the last few days of January in a snow-bound Swiss village, rubbing shoulders with business, political and thought leaders from around the world. No longer. By opting to opt out of leading the Indian delegation to Davos this year, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has made a telling point. Not showing up at Davos won&rsquo;t make a difference.

Does Davos matter?

Which country is the biggest foreign investor in the United States? It is a tricky question, and don&rsquo;t look for FDI data. The answer is China. With almost a trillion dollars invested in US government securities, the Chinese have become the largest foreign stakeholders in the US economy even though this may not be in FDI terms. This is just one more aspect of the strange embrace of the world&rsquo;s two largest economies. Their relationship is one of dependence and also of suspicion.

Ajit Ranade: A cat that catches mice

China has unquestionably boxed India into a corner in their boundary dispute. Hardening its position on the status of J&amp;K, Beijing now treats that state as a part of Pakistan until determined otherwise. It is time for India to recalibrate its Tibet policy based on a harder-nosed appreciation of happenings in the Land of the Snows.

Ajai Shukla: Er? by the way, Tibet!

It&rsquo;s 1 pm on the front lawns at the Diggi Palace, and we&rsquo;re waiting for Mr Coetzee. The crowds spiralled out of control this year, as the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) became part carnival, part another roadside attraction.

Nilanjana S Roy: Waiting for Mr Coetzee - the JLF

The recent spike in vegetable prices, due partly to erratic supplies, could well have been averted if the novel concept of &ldquo;relay cropping&rdquo; in vegetable farming had become popular.

Surinder Sud: Relay solutions for food prices

Any vehicle that has one person&rsquo;s leg on the accelerator and another&rsquo;s on the brake can only move in jumps and starts. That is probably what is beginning to happen, with New Delhi&rsquo;s leg on the spending accelerator and RBI&rsquo;s leg on the monetary brake. The burden of the January 25 policy statement is that RBI is telling North Block to go easy on the accelerator, if it has to resist slamming the brakes.

Mumbai warns Delhi

The Right to Information (RTI) Act has done a lot of good things for Indian democracy, but it seems to have done some bad things too. For example, making public the list of 1,300 nominations for this year&rsquo;s annual Padma awards, the final list being announced by the government on the eve of the Republic Day, takes a large part of the shine and mystique off the awards. Time was when recipients of the awards and their family, friends and admirers would all celebrate the award and rejoice in the national acclaim. Today, however, the procedure has been made so transparently bureaucratic that it must feel like being selected for a government job! To a great extent, this state of affairs has been brought upon the Padma by its dilution over the years. It was always the case that while these awards were given in large part to distinguished persons, the sycophants of the dispensation in power and an assortment of wheelers and dealers also managed to get their names listed.

The wilting Padma

The report of the Bimal Jalan Committee, constituted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January 2010, on changes in ownership and governance of Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs), such as stock exchanges, clearing houses and depositories, has sparked an intense debate.

Gangadhar Darbha: Financial market design dilemmas

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