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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Thanks to Youtube I was able to watch an interesting discussion at the recently concluded Goa Arts &amp; Literary Festival 2011 on &ldquo;The curse of Paid news&rsquo;.

Paid news no news

Christmas is special for all sorts of reasons: in the British days, the Burra Sahibs celebrated this day as the &ldquo;burra din&rdquo; (as well they should) with a grand dance and party, which tradition continues in the many clubs started by them around the country. In college (St Stephen&rsquo;s Delhi), all of us in &lsquo;res&rsquo; (residence) used to go round singing carols, regardless of religion or affiliation (it was national integration at its best), and I am sure this, too, continues in the many good institutions from those days.

A toast to the season

Have you ever wondered how it is that vast numbers of books are scanned and digitised in order to be served up on the Internet? I&rsquo;ve always assumed it is a low-tech process that begins with low-paid humans slamming books onto scanner beds, hitting the button, waiting, turning the page, hitting the button, waiting... There were pages visible on Google Books that proved this to be so. One famous image showed a woman&rsquo;s hand captured in front of a page. The hand had red-painted fingernails.

Data CAPTCHA

As the countdown to 2012 begins, there is very little to set the party rolling. Indian industry is caught in a stasis, Indian bureaucrats are paralysed, the Indian economy is looking wobbly and India&rsquo;s political class has already slipped into election mode. Trouble is we may have to brace for not just one party-pooping year ahead but several &mdash; at least until the next general election.

It's all about 2014

Santa&rsquo;s kitty was somewhat sparse for Indian artists who, in 2011, found no new records to gloat over. While that was good news for collectors at least on the surface, prices held up well for, especially, senior artists, while predictably hardening following the deaths of four of the country's prominent artists.

Kishore Singh: Price rise

Virtually all of the last year has been hostage to the euro crisis, while in the US there was talk till recently of a double-dip recession. As a troubled year draws to a close, and while Corporate India believes that 2011 has been worse than 2008, the global news may already have become more cheerful. That means 2012 could end up being much better for the world economy than anyone could have hoped. Consider the straws in the wind.

T N Ninan: A world on the mend

I was present at an interesting discussion held at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi Centre (ISID) the other day. The event was organised by the International Growth Centre, housed in the Institute, and the panel and audience discussed the role of researchers in policymaking. The discussion was not only topical but also very rich as there were both Indian policymakers and national and international researchers.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay: An outward-focused research culture

The year 2011 wasn&rsquo;t as good as 2010 for originality of subject and style in storytelling. There was a hand-me-down feeling when compared to the year before, which saw remarkable debuts by new Indian voices: Sonia Faleiro&rsquo;s zealously pursued, carefully crafted investigation in Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay&rsquo;s Dance Bars; the brevity and wit of Samanth Subramanian&rsquo;s fishy tales in Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast; and, in fiction, Rahul Bhattacharya&rsquo;s The Sly Company of People Who Care, a love story set in Guyana, written in prose of controlled, mesmeric melody. All three went on to win critical applause or prizes.

Sunil sethi: Twelve months of reading

The rambling transport department office in Bangalore&rsquo;s Indiranagar, where you go to get your driving licence renewed or get something done for your car registration, arouses mixed feelings. Its processes appear convoluted, its staff are as perfunctory as those in other sarkari offices, and the queues before many counters are often forbidding. But on top of this sit several attempts to be citizen-friendly. The reception has many signs making it easy to get started on your business; those at its counter appear helpful; and extensive computerisation of records must have revolutionised data retrieval and the ease of transacting.

Subir Roy: India is changing, but for whom?

The narrator of Julian Barnes&rsquo;s acclaimed novel The Sense of an Ending is told by Veronica, a girlfriend from his university days, that he just doesn&rsquo;t get it. Then, after more clues have come his way, she tells him that he still doesn&rsquo;t get it. There are so many things he doesn&rsquo;t get that he even considers using the line as his epitaph: &ldquo;Tony Webster &mdash; He Never Got It.

Geoff Dyer: The shrinking English novel

A recent visit to Patna reinforced this impression: it is the most happening city in India. True, it is still dirty and unplanned. Traffic pretty much does as it likes. There is no sense of civic responsibility or ownership.

Aditi Phadnis: From Bimaru to booming?

Anna Hazare believes that the long-awaited national institution to tackle corruption will help reduce the problem by 60 to 65 per cent. At a recent interaction with the media in Chennai he pointed out that he had never claimed that the creation of the Lok Pal would result in a 100 per cent eradication of the scourge. Indeed, even back in May he had estimated that the proposed anti-corruption ombudsman would curb graft by 60 to 70 per cent.

Ammu Joseph: Lok Pal - Barking up the wrong tree?

The Dow Olympic sponsorship controversy tests the level of ethics in the big-bucks sports industry.

No logo 

The World Trade Organisation, or WTO, wrapped up its ministerial meeting without deciding how to revive global trade talks, focusing instead on welcoming Russia to the fold and securing a government-procurement accord. But the talks started on a sour note when China slapped punitive duties on large cars and SUVs imported from the US, the latest in a tit-for-tat trade spat.

P K Vasudeva: In Geneva, the door to a deal on the Doha Round stays open

&ldquo;Few of you would be able to tell me why we picked April 6, even though the date was chosen for its significance to India,&rdquo; he challenged.

Suhasini Haidar: The Arab Spring faces its winter

Chairman, Sir, I would not like to go into the merits of the debate (Interruptions). I would not like to go into the merits of various points, which the honourable members have referred to. During the course of the discussion, these will be covered.

'Many govts have tried to bring an effective Lok Pal'

The government sets out to do the right thing and then cancels it out. Take, for instance, the idea of automatic inclusion in the Below Poverty Line category. It could have been an opportunity to support all home-based workers, or rather to reward them, especially if they are weavers, potters, bangle makers, etc. It could have been an opportunity to support landless villagers. It is another matter that none of these is among categories listed for automatic inclusion.

Sreelatha Menon: Threads of penury

Increase investments when prices drop substantially.

Three quarters before returns turn positive

On Friday, at the annual meeting of a chamber of commerce in New Delhi, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke sharply of what he implied was Indian industry&rsquo;s unhelpful attitude. Complaining about government inaction was getting to be too much, he said: &ldquo;If we have problems, it is for us to solve them. Merely reiterating the distressed condition is not going to help us.

Shooting the messenger

The previous article in this column had discussed briefly the Communication on the future of VAT in the EU (&lsquo;Communication&rsquo;), recently adopted by the European Commission (&lsquo;EC&rsquo;), and the need for India to closely follow these developments so as to seek incorporate the best in class thinking while approaching the dual GST. This article and the next one will discuss in detail the priority areas for further action, keeping in mind the overriding objectives of the reform process.

Reforms in EU VAT: Lessons for the Indian GST

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