More than 80 per cent of India&rsquo;s 4,700-odd dams are over 20 years old and suffer from structural and mechanical deficiencies. They are in urgent need of repair and maintenance. The risk of dam failures in India is far greater than elsewhere because of a monsoon-driven seasonal heavy water inflow into the reservoirs. The increased frequency of weather extremes owing to climate change has added to the problem. The threat of earthquakes hangs like the sword of Damocles over many of these dams. The country has already gone through at least 18 dreadful instances of dam collapse in the past, the recent ones being those of Jamunia dam in Madhya Pradesh in 2002 and the Lawa-ka-bas dam in Rajasthan in 2003. These apart, the memories of devastation in Bihar owing to a breach in the Kosi embankment near Indo-Nepal border (at Kusha in Nepal) in 2008 are still fresh.

Securing dam safety

Business Standard

Jairam Ramesh&rsquo;s departure from the environment ministry is being seen as a victory by some industrialists and commentators. Presumably, they are hoping that India will get back to the old system of lax, opportunistic and often corrupt implementation of laws for protecting the environment and natural wealth of the country. They may be disappointed.

Nitin Desai: Growing pains

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) concluded the Trade Policy Review (TPR) of the European Union (EU) in early July. The TPR provides some interesting insights on the state of trade liberalisation in the EU. These insights are important to understand in the context of the on-going negotiations for a bilateral trade and investment agreement (BITA) that India is proposing with the 27-nation EU.

T S Vishwanath: 'BITA' testing the EU

The disparity in wealth and income across India has been widely discussed in growth and development debates using various estimates. The District Level Household Survey data captures the distribution of population through a wealth index derived by combining household amenities, assets and durable goods at the national level. Households are categorised from the poorest to the richest groups corresponding to the lowest to the highest quintiles at the national level.

Indicus Analytics: Bridging the wealth gap

To pause or not to pause? That is the question the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) faces in the run-up to next week&rsquo;s monetary policy statement. While professional opinion is sharply divided, and not just between the traditional monetary policy sceptics and loyalists but also across a wider spectrum of professional opinion, business opinion is united in its opposition to a rate increase at this time. Business persons in the manufacturing and services sectors, including the financial and banking sector, are urging a pause on the grounds that further hike in interest rates would have a debilitating impact on an already slowing growth rate. While the government&rsquo;s macroeconomic authorities still hope to see fiscal 2011-12 deliver a growth rate of eight to 8.5 per cent, many others see growth slipping well below eight per cent.

No time to pause

One of the most important ideas in economics of the last century that we owe to John Maynard Keynes is that expectations play a central role in shaping the animal spirits of enterprise and decisions about investment and consumption by households and firms. Expectations are often shaped more by sentiment than by hard facts. Herd mentality, a phenomenon with which investors are all too familiar, is nothing more than shared sentiment, but it has tangible consequences for the economy. The sentiment in and on India at the moment is more bearish than bullish, and is being shaped by the view that in the realm of economic policy the Union government is rudderless and leaderless. It is, therefore, reassuring that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee chose to take the bull by the horns and respond to such a perception by engaging financial journalists.

The tangible intangibles

Central banking is an important but thankless job, especially when it has to navigate, as in India&rsquo;s case, through unnecessary challenges created by a government that appears to have become a question mark.

Rajeev Malik: Inside RBI's mind

When it was under scrutiny for selling spectrum cheap to new operators in 2008, the department of telecommunications or DoT submitted in its defence that the policy directives were to improve telecom services in the country and not to maximise revenue. Low-priced spectrum would keep the cost of business low, and more players in the market would keep prices under check and improve the efficiency of spectrum usage, the argument went.

Bhupesh Bhandari: Not-so-cheap spectrum

It was admittedly the most humbling moment of Rupert Murdoch&rsquo;s life. In a three-hour questioning session in the UK parliament, the media moghul denied any knowledge of the phone-hacking fiasco that has shuttered the News of the World. As the scandal spatters uncontrollably, Murdoch, by abdicating responsibility, has demonstrated he is no longer the person for the job. Neither are his trusted lieutenants.

The trust deficit

If you answered Wendi Murdoch you belong irrevocably to the Twitter generation and there&rsquo;s no hope for you. The correct answer to that is: Jackie Kennedy.

The Fierce Wives' Club

Last month I had written about the similarity between the Singur land acquisition case and something that happened in the US more than 20 years before the West Bengal fiasco (&ldquo;Whose land is it anyway?&rdquo; June 25). In the US, the court finally took a stand; in India, a spate of recent judgments by the Supreme Court has forced a reversal of ownership rights to the original owners of the land acquired by the state of Uttar Pradesh. The Supreme Court disallowed the acquisition on the grounds that the state had used the &ldquo;emergency clause&rdquo; to summarily acquire land for a specific purpose but is using the land for an entirely different purpose. This has created a mess that can become as big as the one in Singur. The government has paid the farmers for the land, developers have paid the government to get this land and an unsuspecting group of people has paid the developers to book residential plots and premises.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay: How about a land transfer code?

Scotland not only looks and feels like a different country from the rest of Britain, it sounds different. The soft, Scottish drawl with its sing-song lilt is an accent born to woo &ldquo;bonnie lassies&rdquo; and imbibe &ldquo;wee drams&rdquo; of whisky. A sip too many of its prized single malts could make you lose your way: place names like Kirkcaldy, Kirkcudbright and Glamis are respectively pronounced &ldquo;kircoddy&rdquo;, &ldquo;kircoobree&rdquo; and &ldquo;glahms&rdquo;. Islay, where a well-known whisky is produced, is definitely &ldquo;eye-la&rdquo;. Glenburn, a country house we stayed in, is a seat by the river &mdash; &ldquo;glen&rdquo; being valley and &ldquo;burn&rdquo; a stream. And Scotch refers to a race or people, not a drink. Don&rsquo;t ever ask for a &ldquo;full English breakfast&rdquo; &mdash; the bagpiper may drop his kilt.

Sunil Sethi: Try some Scotch

We are living in the midst of a mess, a muddle, melancholy and extended political chicanery. Hence, I am leaving this cesspool and writing about the lesser known side of Jawaharlal Nehru.

K Natwar Singh: Remembering Nehru


A few days from now photographer Avinash Pasricha will turn 75. He&rsquo;s spent a large chunk of those years taking pictures of classical artistes in performance &mdash; his iconic image of the Carnatic singer M S Subbulakshmi is as close to a spiritual experience as you&rsquo;re likely to encounter &mdash; and yet: what happens to those photographs in another decade? Will they too hit the dung heap of history?
There&rsquo;s a collecting ennui when it comes to a body of work that needs to

Preserve or perish

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Young Ficci Ladies Organisation (YFLO) in Delhi last week. His message to young mothers and professional women entrepreneurs was not that Hindu women are born better Indian citizens than Muslim women. It was that women must be made to feel wanted by society.

Aditi Phadnis: From iron man to ladies' man

The official response to the sustained spell of inflation is like treating patient A for tuberculosis to cure B of cholera, even if A has no illness since A is the only patient under its control and the medicine to treat tuberculosis is all it has in its stock. If anyone thought this genie is going back into the bottle anytime soon, they are deluding themselves.

V Kumaraswamy: How to feed inflation

Nowhere in the world do rains impact life as much as the monsoons in the Indian subcontinent, bringing life-giving water for the parched land and replacing the searingly hot &ldquo;loo&rdquo; that blows in Delhi and the north Indian plains in the summer with cool winds. In the semi-arid Deccan plateau area, the transformation is almost magical: overnight the landscape changes, from browns to greens, from dry and hot to wet and cool.

Wines to go with the rains

&ldquo;We live in this peculiar world where three per cent inflation is stability but a half per cent decline in the price index is deflation. I am not quite up with modern nomenclature.

A Seshan: The myth of the 'new normal'

Last week, there were media reports of a record 10,074 people challaned for violating traffic rules in Delhi in one day. The list of transgressions showed why Delhi&rsquo;s roads are among the world&rsquo;s worst &mdash; 743 people were booked for driving dangerously; 2,915 for jumping red lights; 1,085 two-wheeler drivers for not wearing helmets; 185 for driving against the flow of traffic; 168 for defective number plates and 62 for driving without a valid driving licence. Reading the papers in my balcony, I overheard some neighbourhood drivers discussing the news. They were unanimously derisive of the notes of surprise and amazement the newspaper articles adopted: &ldquo;People on the road break traffic rules all the time, and most escape the eagle eyes of the police!&rdquo; said one.

Geetanjali Krishna: Driving our roads crazy

On Monday, this is what my wife said to me, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been invited for a drink to my friend Sarla&rsquo;s house so hurry up and get ready, but please remember that we&rsquo;re not talking to her because she did not acknowledge that I&rsquo;ve lost weight and dropped two dress sizes while she has put on weight.&rdquo; &ldquo;But if we&rsquo;re not talking to her, what is the point of going there?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand anything, do you,&rdquo; said my wife, &ldquo;I will show our other friends there the pictures of my visit to London, which, I know, will upset her.

Kishore Singh: Look who's talking

Bacchus is a strange deity who doesn&rsquo;t seem to have enough of his devotees. The more he is worshiped the more he wants to possess his inebriated worshippers. Drunkenness seems to be the only normal state as they get trapped in what is called alcoholism. Not all drunkards suffer from alcoholism, which is a state of uncontrollable craving for liquor that finally consumes the drinker, mentally and physically.

Sreelatha Menon: The angels of Bacchus

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