As the year draws to a close and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completes yet another of his foreign visits, it is perhaps time to reflect on how peripatetic India&rsquo;s head of government has been in a year he was under unprecedented political pressure at home.

A K Bhattacharya: The PM's 'foreign hand'

Business Standard

There is much more that the government can do to track money hidden abroad.

Indian money gone global

Indian-Russia trade needs to expand beyond traditional sectors of engagement: defence and space.

Earthbound relations

Over recent weeks, reports of frequent and increasingly longer power cuts from across the country have added another layer of serious concern to India&rsquo;s faltering growth story. What is unusual about these power outages is that they have been occurring during the months of October and November, when demand is traditionally low. The immediate causes of the power crunch are well-known.

Shyam Saran: An area of darkness

The 2008 film, The Reader, is about an affair between a teenager and an older woman who, it turns out later, had been a Nazi SS guard. She was one of several who allowed 300 concentration camp prisoners in transit, locked in a church, to be burnt to death rather than open the gates. The woman, played by Kate Winslet, argued in her subsequent trial that they were guards who did not have the authority to let the prisoners out.

Subir Roy: How sick is our private healthcare?

When the public interest litigation movement was in its infancy in the 1980s, two Delhi University professors clipped a letter to the editor of a local daily describing the abominable conditions in the Agra resettlement home for women and sent it to the Supreme Court. The court turned the letter into a writ petition and started passing orders to the authorities (Upendra Baxi vs State of UP). The court specified the number of toilets, water taps, fans, radio and other basic facilities.

M J Antony: Down to the last detail

The Bill doesn&rsquo;t address concerns about the fiscal burden and implementation.

Should the Food Security Bill be scrapped?

The usual metrics for judging the success of a brand is market share. To achieve a dominant market share, conventional wisdom has it, companies must spend loads of money to execute shrewd strategies devised by marketing executives. And loyalty in these days of the chronically fickle consumer demands that marketers must offer scads of freebies and price-offs and plan programmes and so on and so forth. Miss Marcel doesn&rsquo;t fit into any of these paradigms &mdash; but still commands a loyal following.

Kanika Datta: Miss Marcel of Colootola Street

A recent meeting of the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) witnessed some sparring between the developed and developing countries over the issue of pharmaceutical patents and public health. As is the case at other multilateral platforms like the World Trade Organisation, the two sides view the issue of public health differently in the context of patents.

T S Vishwanath: The health of nations

Though free and compulsory education for all children aged six to 14 years is now a constitutional commitment, apart from providing access to school facilities, it is an uphill task to ensure that children stay in school. The dropout rate at primary level is calculated as the ratio of enrolment in Class V to enrolment in Class I.

Indicus Analytics: Hard lessons in education

Many trend-following systems use breakouts to new highs, or lows as entry signals. One popular system involves a long or short entry on a 20-day high or 20-day low, respectively. Other systems use 50-day breakouts.

Benefiting from breakout strategies

The Lok Pal Bill needs more engaged debate. Don&rsquo;t expect Hazare agitation to provide it.

And now to the House

The price of e-governance is careful oversight of cyber security.

Hacking the sarkar

Brace for impact. Next year, 2012, will be extremely difficult. Crucial decisions to get the global economy out of the recession looming ahead are in danger of remaining hostage to political considerations that may not be fully rational. The European summit of December 8-9 was supposed to be the &ldquo;last-chance summit&rdquo;, the one that would at long last deliver a convincing solution to the euro crisis. Instead, when all the rhetoric was peeled away, it appeared that &ndash; like the seven preceding summits this year&ndash; it had failed to provide the solutions that would help recreate a sense of confidence in the markets, and halt the inexorable drift towards a long and painful recession in Europe that would impact the global economy.

Claude Smadja: A 2012 hostage to politics

Moody&rsquo;s upgrade should start a long-overdue correction.

Much to account for

&lsquo;Canalising&rsquo; iron ore exports is not a solution to illegal mining.

Major miner problems

India&rsquo;s economy is in big trouble mainly because its best economic minds are making two basic mistakes. Both are caused by being too wedded to textbook predictions, rather than looking at the data or at the essentials of the theory that gave rise to the predictions. If either failure of comprehension stays uncorrected, 2012 will be a singularly disastrous year.

Mihir S Sharma: Out-of-textbook thinking

The government wants to extend price control in pharmaceuticals. At the moment, prices of 74 bulk drugs are controlled by the government, which brings 300 or so formulations (combinations of bulk drugs) on the &ldquo;essential drugs&rdquo; list also under control. It wants to freeze the prices of these bulk drugs for a period of two years. And eventually, it plans to move from controlling bulk drugs to formulations.

Bhupesh Bhandari: Say goodbye to cheap new drugs

With the &ldquo;uranium irritant&rdquo; out of the way, the year ends on a promising note for Australia-India bilateral relationship, setting the momentum for deeper strategic, defence and economic ties.

Neena Bhandari: Warming up to Oz

If I had even the slightest inclination for research, I would have found out when exactly the Santiniketan Express &ndash; a train dedicated to travellers between Santiniketan and Kolkata &ndash; was introduced. The train has been running for at least 20 years and it was the fastest option of commuting between the two destinations for a long time. Not only that, the train was also a favourite among the elderly since it always departs from and arrives at the same platform at the Bolpur station in Santiniketan, saving them the pain of climbing over bridges.

Keya Sarkar: The 'fight' to information

For various reasons &ndash; the seasonal chill included, but also caused by frequent late nights, and guests at home who expect conversation and company with their tea in the morning &ndash; I&rsquo;ve not been as regular at the gym as the trainers who are in the business of building up my biceps and who continue to believe that the gut will yield to not a six-, not even a four- but at least a two-pack. My son brings messages of encouragement from them, &ldquo;Sir must come.

Kishore Singh: Bringing on the seasonal girth

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