By any reckoning, the global financial system is once again in turmoil. A couple of years ago, after the sub-prime fiasco, it was the US that was in trouble, and there were serious doubts about the future of the dollar as a reserve currency. Today, it is the euro, the currency of the European Union (EU), that is facing a crisis because of the acute fiscal problems of Greece and some other European countries.

Bimal Jalan: Reform of global financial system

Business Standard

One flower that I associate with the summer is marigold, with its pungent fragrance and yellow hue redolent of the sun. The Portuguese introduced it in India in the 1700s, I&rsquo;m told, and since then this humble flower has become arguably the most popularly used flower in the subcontinent. However, in the language of flowers, where red roses symbolise love and white lilies, chastity and virtue, marigold is often considered too common to symbolise anything specific. Until now.

Geetanjali Krishna: More power to flower power

Having discovered, quite by chance, that our children were taking twice their allowance simply by playing off one parent against the other, my wife and I decided we would take turns doling out their pocket money. The alternate monthly rota suggested itself as the simplest way to monitor their spending, and we shook hands at having bested the petty larceny we had been subjected to over the years.

Kishore Singh: Paying for my sins, and how!

At Soak, Ravi Bajaj&rsquo;s tapas bar in New Delhi&rsquo;s Greater Kailash-1, we&rsquo;re watching as someone celebrates a birthday. Trays of tapas circulate&mdash;liver pate with crisp bread, fish with a coriander and mango salsa, bacon curled around sausages, haloumi, parma ham on thick bread, watermelon and feta salad.

Tapas or not tapas

A government cannot be much better than the sum of its parts. So, one year into the new UPA term, it may be instructive to look at how 15 economic ministers have performed &mdash; starting with the finance minister, who is doing so many things in the government that he is de facto the deputy prime minister, and should probably be called that. But in his role as finance minister, his record is very patchy.

T N Ninan: All the PM's men

Ten days ago, the European Union took bold and necessary decisions to safeguard financial stability in Europe. It was a dual response to the pressing crisis, which had turned into a systemic challenge to the euro. It was a response that I would call a Consolidation Pact: First, we agreed on a European Financial Stability Mechanism that provides backstop for up to 500 billion euros; second, we agreed to accelerate fiscal consolidation in those member states where this is most needed now.

'Good times were not used to reduce public debt'

If a poor villager's daughter or wife is raped, and police don't act, maybe he will turn to those who will let him fight the criminals himself. Same when his land is taken away and he is given a pittance in compensation.

Sreelatha Menon: Needed, special people's offices

It is difficult to recall a previous instance when a nation has been referred to as afflicted with the cancer of terrorism, as President Obama referred to Pakistan in his press briefing along with President Karzai on 12 May, 2010. He could not have done it cynically. He lost his mother and grandmother to cancer and the fight against cancer is one of the major planks in his healthcare programme.

K Subrahmanyam: Pakistan's spreading cancer of terrorism

After the RIL-RNRL judgement, the government has raised the administered gas prices for fields controlled by ONGC and OIL.

Bonanza for PSU gas players

Skidding over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Drill, baby, drill

India has long lived in a difficult neighbourhood, but time was when things seemed to be getting better the farther you travelled from it, especially eastwards. But the instability in Iran and Iraq, on the one side, in Tibet and Xinjiang, on the other, and in Myanmar and now Thailand on the third, shows that one has to travel a long distance from New Delhi before arriving at a place of peace and plenty. Thailand was one of south-east Asia&rsquo;s growth miracles. For the first three decades of the second half of the last century Buddhist Thailand&rsquo;s economy grew no faster than &lsquo;Hindu&rsquo; India&rsquo;s! But just when India moved up from its infamous 3.5 per cent per annum GDP growth to 5 per cent, Thailand moved from its long-term 4 per cent to a whopping 8 per cent. The so called &lsquo;boom years&rsquo; of 1986-97 were notorious for Bangkok&rsquo;s traffic jams and road-building stories.

The Thai red curry

The key fulcrum of the proposed GST is the harmonisation of the Centre and state taxes to remove current distortions and achieve a common market.

Part I: Centre-state taxation power - On a path to harmonisation

The Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the establishment of the National Company Law Tribunals (NCLT) has been hailed as a landmark judgment. In so far as the Court has expressed its candour on the dilution of judicial independence, there can be no other views. However, I have reservations whether there will be speedy and fair resolution of all Company law related cases by creation of dedicated Tribunals. Undoubtedly, the Courts have to be decongested, in order to administer justice, social and ameliorative.

SC's NCLT decision welcome, despite concerns on speedy and fair trial

What has brought to fore this issue is that in a very recent judgement in March this year the Allahabad High Court has given stricture to an officer of Revenue Department in relation to a case1 involving stay which was given by the Tribunal in the background of the existing legal provision in the Central Excise Act as in Section 35C(2A). I am not discussing here whether the strictures was to be given or not because there were some other reasons also for the stricture. I am only on the legal point as to whether stay can be extended by the Tribunal beyond the period of 180 days from the date of the stay. The statutory provision is the following: &quot;...and if such an appeal is not disposed of within the 180 days , the stay order shall , on the expiry of that period stand vacated &quot;.

Can extension of stay in appeal be given inspite of specific law to the contrary?

The single-mindedness with which the Direct Taxes Code has been designed to enhance revenue productivity would have been praiseworthy but for the fact that the Code avowedly goes against many time-hallowed and basic concepts on the specious ground that &ldquo;some assumptions which have held the ground for many years have been discarded&rdquo;.

Direct Taxes Code: A wild goose chase taxing offshore transactions?

In 2004, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was a coalition born out of necessity rather than intent, aimed at seizing an opportunity rather than pursue an agenda. Quite unexpectedly, the Indian National Congress led by Sonia Gandhi found itself capable of forming a government provided it could stitch together a coalition. The verdict of 2004 was sufficiently anti-incumbent, as in 1996, and so the ruling National Democratic Alliance conceded defeat. The Left Front was willing to make common cause with its main rival, the Congress party (since it is the Congress and not the Bharatiya Janata Party that the Left has to defeat in Kerala and West Bengal) on the basis of a hurriedly drafted, ill-considered National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP). A new, left-of-centre government was born.

A coalition of rights

There are many places on earth where one could imagine being in the centre of the world. Bahrain is certainly one of them. A small dot of an island in the Persian/Arab Gulf, it lies at the geo-political crossroads between the developed North and the developing South, the declining West and the rising East. There are important exceptions to this binary divide. Russia in the North is not much of an industrial power, while India in the South is becoming one.

Sanjaya Baru: World in Bahrain

I have commented in this column earlier on how fickle the views of the researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over the issue of exchange rates have been over the years. The February 2010 IMF Research Department paper titled &ldquo;Capital flows: the role of controls&rdquo; seems to skirt around the basics, never touching, for instance, on the experience of the balance of payments crises over the last two decades. True, the paper has a disclaimer: &ldquo;The views &hellip; should not be attributed to IMF&rdquo;, but the April 2010 &ldquo;Global Financial Stability Report&rdquo;, which surely represents the IMF&rsquo;s views, also makes some curious points to which I will come back later in an article.

A V Rajwade: Flexible arguments

Against the official savings level of 35 per cent, CMIE survey estimates this to be 40 per cent.

Mahesh Vyas: Official data understate savings

Of all the controversies surrounding the game-changer design of GST, none is as fundamental as the one about the GST rates. A common feature of the successful models of GST in other countries is a single and low rate of tax at the time of its introduction. Japan and Singapore introduced their GST at 3 per cent, and New Zealand and Australia at 10 per cent.

Part II: Single, low rate of tax at the time of rollout is a successful model

The air crash in Mangalore has been the occasion for the media to resurrect dire warnings about the parlous state of aviation safety in India. It is probably right to do so, given the growing crowds in the aviation space and the number of near-misses reported during take-offs and landings. But a quick look at the facts suggests that the criticism may be overdone. Air travel in India has, in fact, become safer, though, as the Mangalore tragedy showed, not safe enough. Consider these numbers. Between 1978 and 1988, there were three air disasters in India in which 354 people died, the worst of which was that of the Dubai-bound Kanishka, which crashed into the Arabian Sea soon after take-off, killing all 213 on board. The 90&rsquo;s &mdash; when air travel in India was liberalised to allow private airlines &mdash; was a particularly bad decade in terms of air accidents. There were four of them, killing 565 people.

Flight to safety

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