Boy, these past couple of weeks have been a riot, with everybody talking about 55, 57, even 60 rupees to the dollar. It&rsquo;s as if the market suddenly woke up and noticed that India has a large and growing current account deficit; that global markets are under severe stress, with the focus primarily on European sovereign debt but, from time to time, switching back to how much US politics is beginning to resemble Indian politics; and, of course, Indian politics.

Jamal Mecklai: Where will the rupee be in six months?

Business Standard

The other day I watched &mdash; for what was perhaps the fifth time &mdash; Jean Renoir&rsquo;s superb 1939 class comedy The Rules of the Game, about the romantic misadventures of a group of French socialites and their domestic staff. It&rsquo;s a film I always think I won&rsquo;t be able to re-watch in its entirety, but then I get so engrossed in its splendid cast of characters that before I know it I&rsquo;m more than halfway &mdash; it&rsquo;s one of the most accessible of classics, a warm and engaging tragi-comedy.

Joint ventures

There&rsquo;s a certain cognitive dissonance in saying that residents of Delhi are among the luckiest in the world. But when temperatures dip and the number of cultural events multiply dizzyingly, presenting options as diverse as mushaira and qawwali, desert tunes from the dunes, jazz, ghazal, stand-up comedy, heritage walks, flamenco dance, Sufi singing, a cappella, 80-piece philharmonic orchestras, Sindhi folk music, Jamaican ska and psy-trance, an Aga Khan Foundation sponsored Apni Basti mela &mdash; and most of them free and accessible to all &mdash; then that dissonance between reality and belief vanishes.

Capital time

Twenty years ago, I worked for a financial services outfit in an old building off Lalbazar Street, in the heart of the Eastern metro. Downstairs, shops sold clocks, umbrellas and musical instruments. On the floor above, there was a shipping agent &amp; chandler, established by an opium smuggler in the 1850s. The courtyard behind was the headquarters of an establishment of negotiable affection.

Devangshu Datta: Shed no tears for Agarwalmart

Partap Sharma, who died this week, was a polymath: author, playwright, documentary filmmaker, anchor, actor, voice-over artist and more. His titles were many, but it is for other qualities that I would like to remember him today.

The real complete man

I thank (Indonesian) President Yudhoyono for his warm hospitality and excellent arrangements made for this summit meeting in Bali. I would like to congratulate the US and the Russian Federation on their formal entry into the East Asia Summit process this year. Their presence will enrich our discussions, while reflecting the growing significance of East Asia in global affairs.

'No country can prosper in isolation to rest of the world'

Kerala&rsquo;s woes of the ageing Mullaperiyar Dam point to the state&rsquo;s irrational water-sharing agreements.

Sreelatha Menon: Quite a dam-age

The 15th Lok Sabha has been the most disrupted in the past 25 years. As of the end of the monsoon session, this Lok Sabha was productive for only 72 per cent of the available time. Contrast this with the earlier Lok Sabhas and the picture starts becoming clearer. The productive time was 87 per cent in the 14th Lok Sabha, 91 per cent in the 13th &mdash; and over 100 per cent in each of the previous five Lok Sabhas.

Rohit Kumar & C V Madhukar: Days of disruption, sessions of despair

If there is one country where the worst fears of classical liberal philosophers, contemporary libertarians, and Western conservatives tend to be confirmed, it is India. The provision in the new Companies Bill to impose corporate social responsibility (CSR) on India Inc is one such exercise in dirigisme.

Ravi Shanker Kapoor: The creeping control that is mandatory CSR

A district judge in New York set a cat among the pigeons last week. He refused to endorse a settlement between the United States&rsquo; Securities Exchange Commission (&ldquo;SEC&rdquo;) and Citigroup, throwing wide open, a debate over whether regulators can extract settlement bargains without proving that a violation indeed took place.

New York court sets a cat among the pigeons

In my previous article I had commented mostly on the drafting of the charging section. There are more aspects which need to be dealt with which I shall do now in this treatise.

Many loose ends in revised concept paper on Negative List

The Supreme Court last week ruled that even if the main contract is terminated, the arbitration clause will survive. This is because the Arbitration and Conciliation Act treats the main contract and the arbitration agreement as separate from each other, the court stated in its judgment, Reva Electric Car Co Ltd vs Green Mobil. In this case, the Indian manufacturer of electric cars had a distribution agreement with the Belgium firm. However, the Indian company terminated it as it was not satisfied with the performance of the foreign distributor. This led to a dispute. The Belgian firm moved a court in that country for damages for terminating the contract. The Indian firm took the arbitration route and named its arbitrator. But the Belgian was not willing to join the arbitration. Reva moved a Bangalore court to restrain the Brussels court from proceeding with the case. Since it was an international dispute, it landed in the Supreme Court.

Arbitration clause survives even if the main contract lapses

Companies Bill 2011- assessments in the public domain indicate discord.

The govt in a control mode

The furore over the possibility of a rollback of a Union Cabinet decision on allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail is understandable. An executive decision once taken is usually implemented. If it is not implemented because of political opposition from within the government's alliance partners and outside, it is a danger signal for many reasons.

A K Bhattacharya: A rollback roster

While people in West Asia are laying down their lives to bring in democracy, two of the largest and among the most durable democracies in the world, the US and India, are having to live with dysfunctional politics. This is negating what is perhaps the greatest gift their founding fathers have left them &mdash; functioning democratic systems that have enhanced well-being in a way no other political system in history has.

Subir Roy: Democratic paradox hits US and India

As December 16 approaches, the date the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is due to release its mid-quarterly review of monetary policy, there are two recent numbers that loom ever larger. The first is 6.9 per cent. That is the rate at which the Indian economy grew in the quarter between July and September, according to figures the Central Statistical Organisation released last week; the dip below seven per cent could have been expected, but still served as a stiff reminder. The second is eight per cent, the most recent year-on-year estimate from the commerce ministry of how much food prices have been growing. After a long stretch of double-digit numbers for food inflation leading into November, its sharp decline &ndash; a percentage point a week since Diwali &ndash; should perhaps cause the RBI to look anew at its resolutely hawkish policy stance.

Change policy stance

Recent developments on the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) front suggest that the Indian banking system could be under more stress than the official numbers for non-performing assets (NPAs) seem to indicate. In the first half of the current fiscal year, requests for CDR jumped. According to a report by IDBI Capital, there were 35 CDR requests in the first half of 2011-12, versus 22 in the same period of 2010-11 &mdash; and the amount of new debt under CDR consideration shot up to Rs 34,560 crore from Rs 5,180 crore. That&rsquo;s the highest since recast CDR norms were announced in 2005. This also excludes the mega-liabilities of Air India and Kingfisher, which are known unknowns lurking within the system. The CDR requests are cross-sectoral, reflecting a generic slowdown, coupled to difficulties in servicing loans as rates rise. It is certainly a useful mechanism, allowing creditors and debtors to renegotiate relationships in difficult times.

A market for CDRs

&ldquo;The pass-through from exchange rate to inflation is small and statistically insignificant.

Should RBI intervene in the forex market? 

The past few sessions have seen the stock market stage a partial recovery on hopes of policy reversal by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). There is some logic for easing. Inflation appears to have peaked. Second quarter corporate results indicate margins are being squeezed and every indicator signals the slowing of macro-economic growth. So, easier money could offer some relief for companies, and, perhaps, help keep consumer demand buoyant.

Smart money (FIIs) is long-term bearish

The Union ministry for information technology has reportedly directed websites, including social media behemoths Google and Facebook, to &ldquo;screen user content&rdquo; for material that is insulting or &ldquo;offensive&rdquo;. Unsurprisingly, this has set off a storm of protest online, as users of the internet view it as a location where their freedom of speech is largely unconstrained. The government and the ruling party are standing firm, while simultaneously insisting that &ldquo;there cannot be any other [political party] which believes in transparency, openness and free speech more than [does] the Congress&rdquo;. Even if that were true, it would reflect poorly not just on other parties, but on the Congress, too &mdash; since it seems to have been moved to action mainly by fears that its own leaders were the subject of offensive material.

No longer Facebook's friend

The row between Kerala and Tamil Nadu over the Mullaperiyar dam is essentially about the safety of the 116-year-old structure and how much water it can safely hold. Both these are technical issues &mdash; but they are, unfortunately, being politicised. The fact that there is no proper technical assessment of the dam&rsquo;s strength, combined with a perceived risk of its giving way due to either an increased water load or natural disasters like earthquakes, has allowed for the issue&rsquo;s politicisation. The plea by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to both states to refrain from whipping up sentiment until an experts&rsquo; panel examines the issue, therefore, makes immense sense.

Two states and a dam

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