Once again the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has raised the interest rates, with several questioning the wisdom of the decision. Inflation has become the bugbear of our growth story, and in the recent past some of our econocrats have also suggested for lowering the growth rate to curb it. This may be true for an advanced industrialised country like the US where growth and inflation have been generally low. It is certainly not the right prescription to deal with the ills that our economy is facing, nor can we raise interest rates, again and again, as the prescription for curbing inflation. What seems to be sadly missing in this debate is how competition reforms can help growth, improve governance and check unnatural inflation as well, at least in the medium term.

Pradeep S Mehta: How competition reform can check inflation

Business Standard

The Indian rupee has depreciated by more than eight per cent so far this month, after remaining stable for a fairly long period. Naturally, there has been a growing pressure on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to aggressively intervene in the forex market to stem the rupee's decline, since imported inflation rises and risks associated with exchange rate volatility are growing.

RBI has managed exchange rate well

A strange and sombre mood seems to have descended on the establishment as it gets ready to welcome Pakistan&rsquo;s Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim to India on September 26. This is in striking contrast with the upbeat atmosphere that prevailed during Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar&rsquo;s visit a few weeks ago.

Jyoti Malhotra: Open the purse strings to Pak

Favouring auction over revenue sharing seems to have become a test of virginity in policy making. Suggest that there was nothing necessarily wrong with the policy of revenue sharing and opting for continuity of policy on spectrum allocation and telecom licensing and one is bound to be dubbed a sinner and worse. Virtue is on the side of the votaries of auction. This in a country where bidders for various licences and contracts have mastered the art of rigging auctions! The highest bidder in an auction or the lowest bidder in a tender process is no angel. And, in any case, it has been repeatedly pointed out that the methodology for sale or leasing is a function of the market and the objective of such an exercise.

Auctioning nonsense

It would seem from recent policy announcements emanating from the United States that a third round of quantitative easing (QE3) is round the corner. Indeed, given renewed global inflationary pressures, it would seem QE3 has already been unleashed. It reflects both a paucity of options to revive the US domestic economy in the short run and the inability to take the tough decisions that would enable economic revival in the medium to long term. The ramifications of this economic unilateralism are likely to reverberate globally. Commodity prices are likely to head north thanks to an injection of liquidity into a global system already awash with it. Interest rates, already close to zero in the US, will inevitably to lead to capital outflows by investors seeking to arbitrage interest rate differentials. A weak US dollar will reduce imports by making them more expensive, unless the US continues to ignore an increasing trade deficit.

Exporting economic woes

Many market observers are expecting markets to do much better in calendar year 2012. The argument is primarily based on interest rates peaking, with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) moving to reverse the monetary cycle in the first half of 2012. Combine this with hopes of some impending reforms being passed, an easing of commodity prices, valuations near their long-term mean, an acceleration in corporate earnings and the picture is complete.

Akash Prakash: Before it's too late

Since it started back in April 2010, when it was discovered that Goldman Sachs (and its friends) had helped Greece hide its fiscal nakedness, the euro crisis has lurched from Greece to Ireland to Greece to Portugal to Ireland to Greece to Spain to Portugal to Ireland to Greece to Italy to Spain to Greece to Portugal to France to Spain to Greece, rather like a special Euro Collapse Cup, with referees from Germany and Switzerland.

Jamal Mecklai: European football and a dollar rally

A lot of people are exercised over the Planning Commission&rsquo;s definition of poverty &mdash; monthly income in the cities of Rs 965 per head (less in villages). There has been incensed comment about the inadequate provision for the consumption of items like milk and eggs, school fees and medicines.

T N Ninan: Poverty redefined

India needs infrastructure and urbanisation while fragmented and small holdings have rendered agriculture non-remunerative. If the agricultural land was restructured, not only would urbanisation and infrastructure improve, it would also open up job opportunities outside of agriculture. This will go a long way towards making growth inclusive by offering non-farm work, more productive than agriculture work, to the rural Indian youth. The reorganisation of land is an opportunity that, if executed properly, will enable employment growth along with that of the gross domestic product. The current land acquisition Bill can become a grand exercise in equitable distribution of the fruit of growth.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay: Land for growth

Scientific history is replete with wonderful quotes. Circa 1633, Galileo said, &ldquo;Yet, it [the Earth] moves,&rdquo; when pressured to recant helio-centrism.

Devangshu Datta: Breaking the speed limit

The evening could not be more pleasant. The near-incessant rains this year have kept temperatures down in Bangalore to a most salubrious cool. Plus we were at our club which rests in one corner of Cubbon Park, an oasis in the heart of the town where temperatures are an additional degree or two lower. Result: it not only felt like hill station weather but was actually so.

Subir Roy: Jobless and happy

Basant Kumar Birla was born to a great father, Ghanshyamdas, had an illustrious son, Aditya, and has an even better-known grandson, Kumar Mangalam. In the lineage, he is perhaps the least famous. So Rashme Sehgal&rsquo;s book on Birla and his wife, Sarla, called Life has no full stops (Amaryliis, 2011) ought to be an interesting read. And it won&rsquo;t disappoint you &mdash; it will take you from his childhood in Kolkata to his marriage, Independence, years in business, Aditya&rsquo;s death and beyond. No less interesting than the text are the pictures &mdash; most in black &amp; white and a few in colour.

More than words

It&rsquo;s not the lurid scams that prompt suspicion but ordinary events. Look at the figures of taxpayers. With 311 million people, the US has 144 million (46.3 per cent of the total) assessees. Only 2.5 per cent (25 million) of a billion Indians file returns.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Chasing the evasive tax payer

I recently discovered that my hyper-intelligent, uber-cool 21-year-old nephew who has been in lifelong training to become a full-time hedonist is actually a closet idealist. He just returned from an uncomfortably hot, intense summer, learning innovative ways to teach underprivileged children to bring them to beyond grade-level literacy. He now teaches 34 third-graders between ages seven-11, full-time, at an under-resourced municipal school in Delhi, where one of his earliest challenges has been to get one of the little girls to stop biting his hand every day. His bigger challenge remains his goal to make education interesting and fun for these children, awaken their curiosity, ambition and sense of possibility, and put them on an entirely different life trajectory. And oh, he&rsquo;s committed two years of his life to this.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Teaching for Bharat

Picture this: a small vineyard, set amidst rolling hills, with the vines sloping down to a gleaming lake. At one end of the property is the winery, located at the base of a forested small hill; a short distance away is the homestead, a cottage with a sloping red-tiled roof and gleaming rough-finished walls, built in the hacienda style, with a large courtyard that gives air and light to the rooms.

Time traveller's museum

There is resentment building up in the &ldquo;aam janta&rdquo; in urban India that the government and policy-makers need to understand better. If for nothing else, at least to promote more empathy and to handle the situation more sensitively to prevent the anger from spilling over onto the streets. In India, big waves are often caused by confluences of little ripples, and there is one brewing that needs to be diffused.

Rama Bijapurkar: Urban India's rising resentment

When a director helms a film that grows into a phenomenon, he can become so closely associated with it that his other movies might get downgraded or overlooked. But in the long run, enthusiastic movie buffs might revisit those less popular works and find unexpected points of interest in them. This often leads to critical reassessment; there are numerous examples through film history of a lower-profile work by a director eventually rising to supplant his acknowledged &ldquo;masterpiece&rdquo;.

Masks and mirrors

Sometimes I wonder about the modern Indian propensity of rushing to provide every possible opportunity to the younger generation. Will they ever have fire in their bellies, that drive and ambition to forge their own paths when they&rsquo;re older if everything is provided to them on a platter? It worries me. So whenever I feel my children are beginning to look even vaguely complacent, I tell them the story of Harish Singh, of village Thalli, district Almora.

Geetanjali Krishna: Harish and his Herculean efforts

Some men build empires and some men write poems, but two men have nurtured young India&rsquo;s dreams for education between them like a parenthesis. Indoo Shivdasani, the reclusive Cambridge-educated, London-based billionaire son of an ICS officer, set up the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation way back in 1976 and more or less singlehandedly created the elite core of modern India&rsquo;s intelligentsia.

Poets of hope

I have,&rdquo; I said to my wife, &ldquo;a confession to make.&rdquo; &ldquo;What did you do,&rdquo; my wife&rsquo;s tone was mocking, &ldquo;pinch the office stationery?&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; I was shocked that she could imagine such a thing, &ldquo;all I did was proposition some women I didn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; &ldquo;Good for you lad,&rdquo; she responded, &ldquo;though you don&rsquo;t look like you&rsquo;ve been beaten black and blue.

Kishore Singh: A corny proposition

After overlooking India&rsquo;s natural partner Bangladesh for so long, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has finally walked the walk. With a successful visit to Dhaka, he has shown his commitment to making this developmental process enduring.

Delhi-Dhaka ties: A new beginning

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