The global crash of 2008 was bad for most people, but like all disasters, it marked an upward turn in the fortunes of some. Prior to the crash, whole seminars were held on the irrelevance of the IMF.

Indira Rajaraman: New tax policy directions

Business Standard

On 15th August, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will address the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. He shall do so for the seventh time. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi spoke from the ramparts 17 and 16 times, respectively. The occasion provides the prime minister to do some stocktaking of what his government has done during the past 12 months. It also is an opportunity to enunciate his vision for the next year. Dr Singh is not given to radioactive verbal incontinence. He is a careful person. He is also a thoughtful realist who has avoided the &ldquo;Dr Feel Good&rdquo; complacency or optimistic vivaciousness.

K Natwar Singh: Bharat before another I-Day

In the morning paper is a news photograph from Kashmir showing two policemen and a young protester. The policemen are restraining the young man from joining the funeral procession of a fellow protester who has died as a result of police firing. The man is shirtless, and the two policemen have placed a hand and a finger, respectively, on his bare chest &mdash; in a gesture more officious than threatening &mdash; to indicate that he and the others with him must go no further.

Between dog and wolf

Till a few years ago, on April 29 every year, a handful of men, some old and stooping, some young and angry, used to gather at the Srinagar home of veteran journalist, communist supporter and Kashmiri Pandit P N Jalali. They would drink tea and toast the first recorded organised demands day in Kashmir&rsquo;s history, the rebellion of the shawl bafs (shawl weavers) that led to the killing of 28 weavers in 1865, well before the Russian Revolution. Shawl bafs were &mdash; and are &mdash; the creators of the wonderfully fine silk or wool lengths that have such fine embroidery; there is not a shawl baf above 35 who does not have something wrong with his eyes. Justly prized, these shawls entailed a lot of labour but shawl bafs earned very little. The regimes of successive Dogra kings used the shawl industry, then exporting to Europe, as a means of augmenting state revenues.

Aditi Phadnis: Hardened by rebellion

Jodhpur is an unlikely venue for wine tasting: a quaint 450-year old city tucked away in western Rajasthan, the city is a delightful (if littered) throwback to the past, dominated as it is by the brooding presence of Mehrangarh Fort and the scalloped ice-cream cake spread of the Umaid Bhavan Palace.

Wining the Rajwara

A few months after he took over as Air India (AI) chairman, Arvind Jadhav&rsquo;s plan to turn the financially crippled state-owned airline around was contingent upon his saving Rs 2,000 crore in 2009-10 &mdash; only then would the government inject fresh equity of a similar amount into the airline. Of this, Rs 800 crore were to come from halving the Performance-Linked Incentive (PLI) part of the airline&rsquo;s Rs 3,100-crore wage bill.

Surajeet Das Gupta: Flight to nowhere

Nothing is quite perfect in this world and certainly not human beings, as the Mahabharata reminds us. Our tendency to latch on to bad news at the expense of good news is unequalled, and we tend to lose all balance in our judgements and miss out on the small victories of the day. Lalit Modi, the creator of the Indian Premier League (IPL), has gone on from being a public hero to becoming a public enemy and this turnabout causes us some discomfort.

Gurcharan Das Dharma in public place

Official: Due to heavy rains, due to which water collected on the floor.

Commonwealth shames

In 1988, a young social work postgraduate student in Mumbai was given a routine assignment. She had to visit a slum and meet a couple of kids who&rsquo;d dropped out of school, so that she could understand what was keeping them from school. &ldquo;If I went to school in the morning, when would I get the time to work?&rdquo; said one kid. One girl had to bunk school to look after her younger brother in the absence of her working parents. Another said his parents didn&rsquo;t have the time to drop him to school. Yet another said that he&rsquo;d recently migrated to Mumbai with his parents, and was yet to find his bearings. The stories were age-old &mdash; these kids were neither the first nor the last to tell them. But that day, when Bina Lashkari listened to those dropouts, a simple solution occurred to her.

Geetanjali Krishna: A school bus with a difference

When my daughter said she would not be able to join us on our annual visit to her grandparents because she had to present a project in college before a panel of very strict professors, I thought little of it beyond the disappointment of my parents at her absence. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll miss seeing them,&rdquo; she saw us off with hugs and kisses, &ldquo;but you guys have a good time.

Kishore Singh: A project called partying

I am delighted to be here today to listen to my school friend Amartya Sen. I am glad that Pratichi Trust, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna and the National Literacy Mission have jointly hosted this unique event.

'Literacy must be our immediate priority'

Momin, till a few months ago, used to weave carpets in a village in Hardoi till he and his friends decided to leave for the city. Orders had stopped coming. So, he is now peddling his stuff in Delhi&rsquo;s suburbs in a rented cycle rickshaw. While he earned a mere Rs 1,600 a carpet and barely survived, today he earns Rs 12,000 a month.

Sreelatha Menon: The dream of a Hardoi weaver

Rejected ad designs find their way onto winning office bags.

Laptoppings

So is it the size of Sikkim (just six lakh residents, only a tenth of which live in cities) or the distance from the seat of power (the distance from New Delhi to Gangtok is 1,598 km) that makes it so irrelevant? How else can you explain the judicial system posting Justice P Dinakaran to the Sikkim High Court as its chief justice even while a three-member committee set up by Rajya Sabha Chairman and India&rsquo;s Vice President Hamid Ansari is still finalising a charge sheet against him? The lawyers in the court are so incensed with the step-motherly treatment that they have threatened to boycott his oath-taking ceremony next week. It is true that the charges against Justice Dinakaran have not been proved &mdash; the three members met at the residence of Justice V S Sirpurkar of the Supreme Court earlier in the week and decided that they needed some more time to study the bulky documents.

Caesar's wife

China&rsquo;s &lsquo;go west&rsquo; strategy or xibu da kaifa commenced in 2000, promulgated by the then President Jiang Zemin, amidst much fanfare at the ancient capital of Xian.

Anurag Viswanath: Disparity underlies prosperity in China

Recent events concerning the holding of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi once again raise the issue of the government&rsquo;s competence in hosting such mega events. The government under the existing dispensation is just not equipped to do so. One may argue that the Asian Games were indeed successfully organised in 1982 and that the Commonwealth Military Games, as also the Youth Games, were recently held in Hyderabad and Pune respectively.

Suresh Bangara: Needed - Authority with accountability

The phrase &lsquo;dream-like&rsquo; is often misleading in cinema.

Films and dreams

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Goldman Sachs in April, alleging that the firm committed securities fraud, made misleading statements, and failed to disclose material facts to investors while marketing a highly complex collateralised debt obligation (CDO).

A V Rajwade: Complex derivatives

The conditions for grant of excise duty exemption for goods supplied to mega power projects have been amended. Now, the project developers, instead of the manufacturers, have been made liable to pay the duty in case they do not ensure that exempted goods are used only in their projects. Besides, the power to attest the list of goods required for setting up the projects has been given to the chief engineer of the Central Electricity Authority.

Goods for mega power projects can be imported duty-free

The Companies Act requires that every balance sheet of a company should give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company as at the end of the financial year and every profit and loss of a company should give a true and fair view of the profit or loss of the company for the financial year. Thus, &lsquo;true and fair view&rsquo; is a legal requirement. Therefore, it is the Court to decide whether a set of financial statements present the true and fair view of the financial position and performance of the company. In deciding the question, the Court relies on accounting standards and accounting practices adopted by accountants. Compliance with accounting standards is prima facie evidence that financial statements provide true and fair view. A deviation from accounting standards is prima facie evidence that financial statements do not provide true and fair view. However, preparation of financial statements is not a mechanical exercise.

True and fair is a legal need

Arbitration in international taxation, though a historical subject, has begun to find relevance in the context of international tax disputes. Article 25 of OECD Model Convention does not oblige the treaty states to reach an agreement under a Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP), an alternate dispute resolution mechanism, but only to use their best efforts to resolve a tax dispute. Treaty countries in certain circumstances do reach a stalemate in their MAP negotiations; limitation of MAP therefore logically paves the way for arbitration as an alternate mechanism for resolving cross-border disputes.

Arbitration has relevance in international taxation!

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 752 - Opinion Specials