Many of us who rejoice in India&rsquo;s current record as one of the fastest growing economies would have perhaps forgotten that soon after Independence, India had an equally roaring start. It was a pioneer in development planning, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most admired figures of the 20th century.

Bimal Jalan: India then and now - What has changed?

Business Standard

You know those people who walk around in 30-40&deg;C temperatures with 80 per cent humidity and never seem to perspire? The ones who live in Kolkata, or Kerala, or Jakarta, or Singapore or Mumbai and spend the day tramping around the streets but never have their shirts stick to their backs, or a single dainty droplet trickle from their temples? The ones who look fresh as a daisy no matter how long they&rsquo;ve been in the sun? I hate those people. It&rsquo;s people like me, who sweat like a tap at the slightest hint of heat, or humidity, or deadline, that take up the slack for people like them who don&rsquo;t pull their weight in the sweat gland department.

Wet blankets

There are no shortcuts to success in the wine market.

Words of wine wisdom

Social conversation in Santiniketan for the past month or so has centred on pretty much one subject: the wall. &ldquo;Is it blocking your gate completely?&rdquo; &ldquo;Have they started digging on your side?&rdquo; &ldquo;How high is it now?&rdquo;, and so on.

Keya Sarkar: Between a wall and a fence

The other day, at a panel discussion, the young minister Jyotiraditya Scindia used the term &ldquo;chiaroscuro&rdquo; leaving me dumbfounded.

Kishore Singh: Dysfunctional surrealism

Of all the places in which a thriller strands you, the hospital is the only one you are likely to see in real life. It is easy to stay out of a gothic mansion or the underside of a bridge at night. But at some point most mortals will experience the gloom of white walls, a cold antiseptic smell, long corridors and unmarked, unexplained, forbidden doors.

Health scare

At a dinner in one of South Mumbai&rsquo;s luxury hotels, two weeks ago, everyone around the table was full of sympathy for Keshub Mahindra. Those present, well-known figures from the corporate, financial and legal worlds, trotted out a series of arguments: He is in his 80&rsquo;s, and has been such a fine business figure. He has stood for principle all his life, and turned down a Padma Bhushan because Bhopal hung over his head. He was only the non-executive chairman of Union Carbide India; all he got was Rs 250 as sitting fees; how did he know all the technical stuff about risks and safety issues? You know what it was like in those days, an international company wanted a respected local figure to be chairman, and Mr Mahindra was just obliging Carbide... .

T N Ninan: Board seat, anyone?

Though the Chinese Navy&rsquo;s operating doctrine has changed from &lsquo;near sea defence&rsquo; to &lsquo;far seas operations&rsquo;, China has a long way to go in becoming a real maritime power.

Premvir Das: The great Chinese quest

Kiss&rsquo;n&rsquo;tell accounts emanating from publishers&rsquo; offices are usually about other people, not about themselves. Which alone could be the reason why the reading public beyond the bookish world is taking an undue interest in the soured romance between David Davidar, former CEO of Penguin International, and his junior Lisa Rundle in Toronto. This seemingly discreet liaison, conducted for three years via email, text messages and kisses in foreign hotels, against a background of tennis games, love poems and gifts of cream-filled cookies, would have gone the way of many such adulterous associations (they either fizzle out or result in a reordering of domestic arrangements) except for one fact. Kiss&rsquo;n&rsquo;tell has now become kiss&rsquo;n&rsquo;sue.

Sunil Sethi: Kiss'n'tell is now kiss'n'sue

It is no surprise that 27 per cent of the entire population of this country resides in a handful of cities that collectively contribute 60 per cent of the entire GDP of the nation. A peek outside your airplane window as you land in any Indian metropolis is confirmation of the fact that 26 per cent of Mumbai and an astounding 60 per cent of New Delhi lives in slums or substandard housing. This after decades of government intervention in public housing &mdash; through state boards and quasi-financial organisations like HUDCO, and even through the new National Housing Policy.

Where reason drives action

In &lsquo;hydraulic societies&rsquo; state power, suggested Karl Wittfogel, flows from the control of water. His thesis on &lsquo;oriental despotism&rsquo; was based on the observation that in many Asian societies rain water had to be collected and made available for irrigation and consumption, often using human and animal power to collect, store and draw such water. Wittfogel believed hydraulic societies, as Max Weber dubbed them, tend to produce powerful bureaucratic and despotic states.

Another lake dries and dies

Doubts whether the global recovery will continue has become the central question following the events of the past six weeks. We have had financial contagion-type developments in the eurozone. There have been fears of a China slowdown consequent to the crackdown on the housing market. Economic data in the US has hit a soft patch, and the pace of job creation is disappointing. An overload of unusual events and headlines has undermined confidence.

Rajinder Sabherwal: Which way is the global recovery shaping up?

In my blogs this month, I have been consciously trying to recall the happenings of the Emergency inflicted on the country on June 26, 1975. Two events that took place on June 12, 1975 led to the Emergency.

When the kernel of democracy had to be maintained...

Day-to-day multilateral negotiations remain an important issue of international policy. They have to pave the way for a global, formal and quantified agreement which is needed to fight climate change in the long run. But in actual terms, fighting climate change, both mitigation as well as adaptation, will rely on programmes initiated by governments, companies and civil society, which need to be intensified, whatever be the global framework. And today, India and the French Development Agency (AFD) are signing the first loans which are part of this effort.

Pierre Jacquet: Developing India's climate change goals

Green jobs are being talked about a lot. However, they are getting replaced by blue jobs.

Sreelatha Menon: The blue businesses

Any actor worth his salt will tell you that light comedy requires a lot of skill. Yet it&rsquo;s a well-chronicled phenomenon that such performances rarely get the respect they deserve. The Oscars, for instance, are famous for overlooking high-quality comedy in favour of middling dramatic films &mdash; probably a byproduct of the idea that tragedy and drama are inherently more &ldquo;meaningful&rdquo; modes of expression than humour is.

The cult of respectability

Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai?

While consumers will, of course, be unhappy and the country&rsquo;s opposition political parties will exploit this unhappiness, the Union government had no option but to move away from the ancien regime of administered prices for petrol and return to the path of deregulation that the National Democratic Alliance government had, in fact, first opted for. Sooner rather than later, it must also deregulate the prices of other petroleum products, including kerosene and diesel. Before moving to deregulation of the latter, it must at least take the steps it is now beginning to take of raising administered prices to more realistic levels. There is no convincing case for subsidising petrol, even if there can still be some case for subsidising diesel and kerosene. These are all old arguments that have been gone through for over a decade now.

Pricing scarce resources

Turf wars are distinct from informed debates. The episode between the two regulators, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), on the unit-linked insurance policies (Ulips) issue was in large part a turf war but in essence also one of differing perceptions. The end of such turf wars is not to be celebrated with congratulations and jubilations, but with a sigh of relief and a few lessons learnt. First of the lessons is that such disputes must not be allowed to brew so long that it turns toxic and necessitates a remedial action through the court. It is alright to say that settlement of regulatory disputes through courts helps establish the jurisprudence. It may even be argued that one salutary outcome of the unseeming publicity of the dispute is that changes are now being made in Ulips to benefit those who invest in the instrument.

No winners in this battle

Since the pronouncement of the judgment in the Bhopal gas leak case a couple of weeks ago, and after 26 long years, the people and the media have been righteously indignant about the way the whole Bhopal tragedy has been handled and are angry about the way Warren Anderson was allowed to go back to the US. While the anger is understandable, there surely are many other lessons to be learnt from the case.

A V Rajwade: Sins of omission

With the increase in outbound investments from India, the Government is concerned about the ability of such companies to park profits outside India in low or no tax jurisdictions. Until a dividend is declared by the overseas company, no tax liability arises in India.

Tax planning through foreign entities under cloud

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