Not very long ago, in a small village in Bundelkhand, where women remain largely illiterate and downtrodden even today, she beat a policeman when he abused her. Some time later, when more power was being cut than supplied to her village, she locked the electricity department officials concerned in a room till they cried for mercy. When she saw a ticket collector asking for bribes on a train, she made such a fuss that he was forced to back off, red faced.

Geetanjali Krishna: The power of pink

Business Standard

Time was when the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) would look with mild disdain at an India that could not seem to get its act together, while the many Tiger economies of the region recorded transformational economic growth and commendable social progress. From India&rsquo;s perspective, Asean&rsquo;s success on multiple fronts made it a sufficiently attractive prize to prompt the announcement of a &ldquo;look East&rdquo; policy in the early 1990s.

T N Ninan: After 7 years of 8.3%

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though encouraged by signs of global economic recovery, recognised that the recovery was fragile and required sustained international support, including thorough concerted efforts by G-20 countries and continuing openness in trade policies and promoting innovation and growth. They looked forward to the next meeting of the G-20 in Canada.

'Recovery fragile, sustained global support required'

The &lsquo;not-for-profit&rsquo; concept is not such a good thing if it means that an enterprise does not intend to improve itself financially. Profits attract more investments and, thus, its utility to its users grows. That is the lesson from the gurus of microfinance in India.

Sreelatha Menon: Creating capital at bottom of pyramid

Any object or activity can be rendered alluring, exotic and downright dashing with the right infusion of foreign words.

I'll have the au lait

When William Burns, the United States under-secretary of state, told a Washington DC audience last week, on the eve of the India-US strategic and economic dialogue, that &ldquo;India&rsquo;s strength and progress on the world stage is deeply in the strategic interest of the US&rdquo;, he was echoing the decade-old words of former US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice. Ms Rice had famously written in Foreign Affairs in 2000 that the time had come for the US to invest in India and favour its rise. That view defined the Bush doctrine on India and shaped the India-US civil nuclear energy agreement. If the Indian economy has to grow at upwards of 8 or 9 per cent per year over the next decade and more, India needs access to new and non-conventional sources of energy and so opening India up to normal trade in nuclear power became the lynchpin of that strategy. The Democratic Party was never convinced.

Obama digests Rice

In its eighth report submitted in August 1998, the Disinvestment Commission examined various options for dealing with the problems of Air India (AI). Its basic recommendations are valid even today. Four options were examined.

G V Ramakrishna: Resolving the AI crisis

India&rsquo;s current physical infrastructure deficit is alarming. In 2009, India spent 6.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure, compared to 11 per cent by China. While the demand for infrastructure investment in India is enormous at the current GDP growth rate, the public and private supply of investment has been dismally low.

Amarendu Nandy: Bridging the gaps in infra financing

The fate of real estate is dependent on the economy&rsquo;s recovery. But setting price targets is an exercise in futility.

Real estate blues

A positive borne out of the recent global crisis has revealed the level of interdependence among nations, risks of unregulated and indisciplined globalisation and a need for transparent governance for cross-border transcations. The revelation has laid out a path for renewed global mission to ensure transparency in tax matters lead by the Organization of Economic Co-operation &amp; Development; an institution which traces its roots to the economic crisis post World War II period.

Tax information exchange champions transparency

Cross-border share transfers have been hit by a new wave of inexplicable regulatory ambiguity. This time, the source is policy framed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which administers exchange controls in India.

RBI cuts sorry figure over norms for share transfers

An issue that has come to focus is whether the representative of Revenue Department can concede some points (while arguing a case before a Tribunal or a Court) which he considers as not in favour of the Revenue. In a recent judgement (1) the Tribunal has passed stricture on the Departmental representative due to reason that he himself conceded two grounds and admitted that these two grounds for filing appeal on behalf of the Department was baseless. The stricture was, however, also for the reason that the officer was not well prepared. Here I am not writing about the justifiability of the stricture on the ground that he was not well prepared. I am only on the point whether a Revenue Officer can be chastised for going against the view of the Department for which the appeal was filed before the Tribunal. My view is not limited to the particular judgement here but is on the general issue.

Can an official go against Revenue in court?

The Supreme Court (SC) has quashed the judgment of the Uttaranchal high court and upheld the withdrawal of certain tariff benefits in electricity charges to industrial units in the state. The units were earlier in the undivided Uttar Pradesh state. After the new state of Uttaranchal came into being, the benefits in tariff were withdrawn. M/s Kashi Vishwanath Steels Ltd, a steel rolling mill, challenged the government action in the high court. It decided the case in favour of the company. The Uttaranchal Power Corporation therefore moved the Supreme Court, arguing that it had not made any promise to the industry that the benefits given by the Uttar Pradesh authorities would continue in the new state. The Supreme Court accepted the contention and allowed the appeal.

SC upholds withdrawal of power tariff benefits

The exporters of non-dutiable products will henceforth not be able to clear their goods for export under bond or undertaking (UT1) in accordance with the latest amendment dated May 26, 2010 to notification number 42/2001-CE(NT) dated June 26, 2001 (issued under Rule 19 of the Central Excise Rules, 2002 (CER)). Consequently, they will not be able to avail Cenvat (Central Value Added Tax) Credit of the duty paid in respect of inputs used in the manufacture of such exempted goods or claim refund of such unutilised credit on account of export under bond/UT1 [through notification number 5/2006-CE(NT) dated March 14, 2006 issued under Rule 5 of the Cenvat credit Rules, 2004 (CCR)]. Thus, a very convenient option available to exporters has been taken away.

Exporters of non-dutiable products face clearance problem

The IMF doesn&rsquo;t make a dispassionate analysis of the risks and rewards of capital flows.

A V Rajwade: Vicious circles

The wildcat strike by the Air India Employees last month, ostensibly over a gag order imposed by the management, followed by derecognition of the two staff unions, was reminiscent of the &rsquo;70s and &rsquo;80s, when militant trade unions wiped out industries from Bengal and Maharashtra. Massive legal battles were waged between unions and management, but in recent years, these have lost media prominence to matters like IPL wars. From the legal perspective, on being faced with queries on legality of recognition of trade unions, I delved into the Trade Unions Act, 1926 to find no statutory provisions to that effect. Fortunately, having more than a nodding acquaintance with certain state laws proved to be productive, and recent cases provided interesting insights on the different positions taken by the Courts.

As member of ILO, India has to recognise unions

Even though 25 years have already elapsed after the Bhopal gas tragedy, which claimed over 10,000 lives and left around five lakh affected, yesterday&rsquo;s minimalist verdict convicting eight accused doesn&rsquo;t represent anything near closure. While activists have been correct in labelling the verdict a betrayal since the maximum jail sentence is two years and the fine a mere Rs 1 lakh for the worst industrial disaster India has ever seen (Rs 5 lakh for Union Carbide), the accused, who include the then Chairman of Union Carbide Keshub Mahindra, will appeal against the ruling. So, it will go to the high court, possibly to a division bench after that, and finally, to the Supreme Court. In other words, it&rsquo;s safe to assume another couple of decades will go by in the judicial process.

Bhopal's ongoing tragedy

When Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept the polls last year, political analysts dubbed his victory a &ldquo;regime change&rdquo;. Defeating Japan&rsquo;s long-standing ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Mr Hatoyama promised fundamental change in Japan&rsquo;s domestic and external policies. Japan and the world heaved a sigh of relief in the hope that this fundamental shift in Japan&rsquo;s political equilibrium would begin the process of Japan&rsquo;s economic recovery. More than a decade&rsquo;s economic stagnation had virtually paralysed Japan. While remaining the world&rsquo;s second-largest economy, it watched China&rsquo;s rise with part anxiety and part greed. In hoping to revive its own economic fortunes by trading and investing in China, Japan, in fact, contributed to China&rsquo;s rise and its own growing marginalisation in Asia.

Land of a setting sun?

The world is on the threshold of a transformational energy revolution. Established patterns of energy resource extraction and use are changing rapidly. The cumulative impact of these as-yet-incipient developments will result in very different structures of production and consumption as well as lifestyle.

Shyam Saran: India and the new Energy Revolution

Why don&rsquo;t we see more mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;As) in media? According to VCCEdge, a financial research platform of VCCircle.com, 22 (or 5 per cent of 449) M&amp;A deals in corporate India came from media and entertainment in 2009. This is down from 37 (or 6 per cent of 542) in 2008. On value, the share of media and entertainment is even lower &mdash; 1.24 per cent (of $16.2 billion) in 2009, down from 2.2 per cent (of $27.8 billion) in the previous year.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The mystery of missing media mergers

A few months ago, Norberto Fuentes wrote an autobiography of Fidel Castro, a book that starts and ends in Castro&rsquo;s voice, where by page 150 the reader has forgotten that this is a fictional creation. Fuentes&rsquo; relationship with Fidel was a dark and troubled one; he was once one of Castro&rsquo;s supporters, then one of Castro&rsquo;s prisoners, and finally one of Cuba&rsquo;s exiles.

Nilanjana S Roy: Saint Sonia - Sari seems to be the hardest word

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