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

Business Standard

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

The devastating fire at the Dhakuria (Kolkata) unit of the Advanced Medicare &amp; Research Institute (AMRI) Hospital, which broke out on December 9, 2011 and killed 93 people, has led to the arrest of the members of the board of directors, who represent the two companies, which have significant shareholding in AMRI. All of them have been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligence under the Indian Penal Code. The stories being published in media, based on police investigation, which is yet to be concluded, have thrown open many corporate governance issues.

AMRI hospital fire: Corporate governance under scanner

In a recent interesting case of Groupe Industrial Marcel Dassault, in AAR no 847 of 2009 the shares of an Indian company, namely, Shantha were owned and controlled by a French company, namely, ShanH. The shares of ShanH were held by two French Companies. The shareholders of ShanH proposed to sell the shares of Shan H to another French company called Sanofi.

Capital gain on transfer of controlling interest

As India gets on way to make significant changes to her government contracting frameworks, it may be worthwhile to survey international practices on two important aspects of domestic preferences in public procurement, namely: (a) the participation of foreign bidders in domestic public procurement markets; and (b) the treatment of non-government actors such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) - or PSUs as we know them in India - under national government procurement laws.

Domestic preferences in public procurement

The Supreme Court has stated that in the modern commercial world, executives are engaged on account of their expertise in a particular field and those who are so employed are free to leave or be asked to leave by the employer. Setting aside the judgment of the Orissa high court in the case, GRIDCO Ltd vs Sri Sadananda, the court observed: &ldquo;Contractual appointments work only if the same are mutually beneficial to both the contracting parties.&rdquo; It stated so while upholding the termination of a manager in the state-owned company. He was employed for three years. Later it was extended several times. Though he pressed for further extension, his contract was terminated. He moved the high court which quashed the termination by the company. The company appealed to the Supreme Court. It ruled that it was a contractual matter and courts cannot exercise their power of judicial review in contracts which are of a private nature.

Job contracts of executives

How many public distribution system (PDS) recipients are there today? That depends on who you ask. A recent multi-department report of the &ldquo;task force on an IT strategy for PDS&rdquo; chaired by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani says: &ldquo;With a network of more than 4.62 lakh fair price shops (FPS) distributing commodities worth more than Rs 30,000 crore annually to about 180 million families, the PDS in India is perhaps the largest distribution network of its kind in the world.

Do we know whose food is secured?

For exporters, 2011 started on a cheerful note but is coming to an end on a rather sombre note. During most of the year, exports rose significantly. But operating costs also rose significantly in the domestic economy, eroding the competitiveness of many exporters, who found it difficult to sustain the growth momentum.

Waiting for the year to be over

Khesari dal (grass pea) &ndash; a valuable pulse that earned disrepute because of its toxin content and has been barred from being marketed &ndash; can now hope to be rehabilitated thanks to some well-conceived technological and promotional interventions. Farmers, in any case, have not stopped growing it and using it as food as well as livestock feed. This is chiefly because it survives and yields grains even when other crops succumb to drought or flood. Besides, it grows practically without any input other than the seeds.

Surinder Sud: Khesari pulsates with new life

Instead of allowing firms to avoid marking foreign-exchange losses to market, regulators must increase clarity.

Costly accounting

Digitisation of cable TV should not be derailed. If it hurts operators, increased FDI is the way out.

Subscribing to digital

There is perhaps no other pair of major world powers whose strategic interests overlap as much as they differ from each other socio-culturally as India and Japan. Japan is a capital-rich country with an ageing and declining population. India is a capital-poor country poised to reap a major demographic dividend in the next few decades. Indians are as argumentative as the Japanese are polite.

Devesh Kapur: Tangoing with Tokyo

Even sceptics of Imran Khan Niazi admit that the former playboy cricketer is now a serious contender for prime minister in Pakistan&rsquo;s 2013 elections, if not sooner. The massive turnout at his Christmas Day rally in Karachi highlights not just deep-rooted, Anna-style, public outrage at corruption, but also seething anger at Islamabad&rsquo;s spinelessness in the face of repeated violations of Pakistan&rsquo;s sovereignty by America. Sensing political change, malcontents like former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and Javed Hashmi, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), have already joined Imran&rsquo;s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (&ldquo;Movement for Justice&rdquo;, abbreviated PTI). Others, including Musharraf&rsquo;s former information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed &ndash; always a reliable political bellwether &ndash; are looking to follow suit.

Ajai Shukla: Imran's second innings 

From the biography of a killer disease to a tale of three lovers and one murder, the Opium Wars to the life of a woman who found madness instead of God, this year&rsquo;s non-fiction by Indians or set in Asia took a wide view of the world. What follows is a highly eclectic selection.

Nilanjana S Roy: 2011 - The best of Asian non-fiction

Its own report should remind the RBI there&rsquo;s no room for complacency about the stability of India&rsquo;s financial system.

Fearing financial feedback

Pakistan establishment is more polarised than ever, making it less likely that the state&rsquo;s problems will be addressed.

Divide and fail 

The important and interesting question in India is not necessarily the absence of major economic policy reforms.

Arvind Subramanian: Reform, even if by stealth

It is customary at this time of the year to look back and assess how the year set to end in a few days went by. For the government&rsquo;s economic policy makers, one word should describe 2011 quite aptly: overestimation. Indeed, government leaders &ndash; ministers and their senior secretaries &ndash; should have no difficulty in putting together a long list of overestimations that caused no end of surprises to the nation during the year.

A K Bhattacharya: Making a mess of estimation 

Though Supreme Court judges are accustomed to adjudicate on tons of money, the highlight of the year that is coming to a close was that they had to handle figures that were too long to be pronounced. The riddles of undetermined but astronomical losses to the exchequer in the 2G scam and the hordes in tiny spots on the world map are yet to be unscrambled. Sums involved in the mega swindles could surpass multiplujillion or bsquatumatillion (that is how Scrooge, &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s second richest duck&rdquo;, counted his wealth).

M J Antony: Lowlights of the year 2011

The step is retrograde and will not curb illegal mining; but a government-nominated agency could ensure accountability in exports.

Should iron ore exports be canalised?

The passage of the Lok Pal Bill in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday night was a sign of Parliament reasserting its authority. The Bill&rsquo;s fate in the Rajya Sabha is uncertain, but there were many points of note raised during the Lok Sabha debate by the members who spoke, some with great eloquence. The attention, therefore, was focused on the House.

All eyes on the Bill

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