We were walking along Beach Number Five at Havelock Island. The tide was low and the sea had retreated far into the horizon, leaving little pools teeming with life. Local boats that had been bobbing peacefully on the water only hours earlier were now marooned on the seabed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen the sea recede this far,&rdquo; said I worriedly, &ldquo;Is it normal?&rdquo; Seeing a young fisherman tying his boat to a rock, I went across to ask.

Geetanjali Krishna: The young man and the sea

Business Standard

Shrill at the best of times, our daughter becomes possessed by demons when it comes around to her semester exams. There&rsquo;s a sharper ring to her voice, doors get banged, meals are demanded and rejected at the oddest times, and orders issued to discipline us into adherence to her timetable and manner of things. &ldquo;For two hours, I must not be disturbed,&rdquo; the non-negotiable diktat is curtly delivered from her room.

Kishore Singh: Working at being cool

Many more books come to the office for review than will ever figure on our pages. Those that don&rsquo;t immediately vanish into the hands of reviewers get divided into two lots. One lot consists of books which might make short reviews somewhere down the line. This lot goes into a locked cabinet. The second lot, books which don&rsquo;t seem good enough, sits in a stack on the desk and gathers dust.

Yackety yuck

Upamanyu Chatterjee&rsquo;s 10-year-old novel, The Mammaries of the Welfare State, had a memorable title that is worth recalling today when India&rsquo;s welfare state is finally being born. Cows have four udders, so it is useful to think of four groups at work on those udders &mdash; reformers all of them.

T N Ninan: The mammaries, revisited

India and China marked the 60th anniversary of India&rsquo;s recognition of the People&rsquo;s Republic of China with a visit to Beijing by the Minister for External Affairs S M Krishna. India was the first non-socialist country to recognise the People&rsquo;s Republic. In his speech at the China Institute of International Studies, Krishna said, &ldquo;As rising powers, India and China are often projected to have a competitive relationship. In the final analysis, we all are what we want to be. It is up to us to disprove such scenarios, not through platitudes and wishful thinking, but by concrete examples of cooperation.... But there is more to our prospects than issue-based cooperation. Our rise promises to alter the configurations of the global order as we have known it in a fundamental manner. We cannot accept incremental change in the way the world is currently run. The G-20 represents the first step in a new direction.

K Subrahmanyam: Cooperation, yes but competing with China?

Graduation&rdquo; is the World Bank Group&rsquo;s jargon for ushering a borrower out of eligibility for soft loans or &ldquo;credits&rdquo; from the International Development Association (IDA), and into a new middle-income status as a borrower of only standard-term loans from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The end of aid is the essence of this graduation.

Jason A Kirk: India's painful end-of-aid graduation

By the time we interview Sahil Rizwan, he confesses to being in a bad mood. Manchester United has crashed out of the European Champions League and he is clearly upset (as is this reporter) at the developments in the game.

Click and tell

The next device from Apple should be called iFad.

iPadding to Nirvana

In the 1980s, having overcome initial challenges, India and China saw that rapid economic growth would give them a stronger voice in the international community. Getting our growth strategy right in an ever-changing world has its own challenges. As India and China manage their domestic priorities well, it has huge implications for global prosperity.

'Development in India, China has world-wide effect'

Here is the Tim Berner Lee of medicine. He is right here in India and is the latest hero of science students and drug researchers across the world. Samir Brahmachari, director-general of the Centre for Science and Industrial Research and founder and mentor of the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programme initiated by India, dreams about making drugs for poor man&rsquo;s diseases.

Sreelatha Menon: The gene of sharing

A long-term investor in telecom could bet on all the companies. Winning stocks could generate enough capital gains to cover losses of laggards.

Telecom calling

xWhile investors continue to lap up power sector projects, what&rsquo;s difficult to explain is how they hope things will pan out.

Sunil Jain: High voltage drama

I was disappointed with the contents of the Financial Stability Report released by the Reserve Bank of India in so far as the comments on the exchange rate are concerned. Most of the crises in the developing/emerging markets during the last two decades have had their root in the appreciation of the exchange rate in real terms. This was the case in Mexico (1994-95), east Asia (1997-98), Brazil (1998), Argentina (2002) and, more recently, several east and central European countries and Iceland.

A V Rajwade: A disappointing report

Animal spirits have always haunted the world of finance. Searching for a long-term stable state in the world of finance has, therefore, proved to be an illusory and a daring exercise. Since the last decade of the 20th century, we have had bubbles, currency crises and sovereign defaults leading to one global financial crisis after another every four and a half years, suggesting that financial stability is a myth. It&rsquo;s like looking for a zero-entropy state in a non-isolated system.

Pratip Kar: Drawing lessons from Sebi

It is salutary to have a consolidated document that provides an overview of India&rsquo;s FDI policy. However, rather expectedly, the policy document has initiated an ambig-uity in India&rsquo;s policy position on pricing of FDI.

Misapprehensions dog consolidated FDI policy

Media reports give some indications of the shape of the various aspects of the GST after the Discussion Paper which has outlined the overall limit of its scope. There is still a lot of scope for variation of doing things in different ways. The Finance Commission Report on GST also has given some variations. Many seminars and other experts have also added to the subject various suggestions for the last few months after the Discussion Paper was floated.

Positive list of services in GST will be most negative element

The court passed the order after it was alleged by a person that the DLF had intentionally made a false statement that it had no association with Sudipti Estates Private Limited, one of its subsidiary companies against which a criminal case was filed for duping him of Rs 31 crore.

Sebi told to probe DLF statement

Press Trust of India

Developing-nation stocks climbed, sending the benchmark index to a 20-month high, as emerging-market equity funds had the biggest inflows in six months and investors speculated on a bailout to avert a Greek default. The MSCI Emerging Markets index rose 0.7 per cent to 1,044, bringing its gain this week to 1.5 per cent. Currencies strengthened against the dollar, with the Russian ruble gaining the most this year and Turkey&rsquo;s lira extending its longest rally in three months.

EMs advance to 20-mth high

Incremental gains triggered higher volumes in the derivatives segment. Despite bullish undertones, actual price moves were moderate.

Expectations of range trading

Customs House Agents (CHA) have new responsibilities. They have to follow the &lsquo;Know Your Customer&rsquo; (KYC) guidelines issued by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC). They have to be careful not to employ persons involved in any fraudulent activity. They will also face more competition, as more CHA licences may be issued in future.

Customs agents should follow CBEC guidelines on customers

The central government has set the stage for a further tightening of monetary policy by the central bank and has, very correctly, reached out to state governments to become active partners in the battle against inflation. New Delhi believes the economy is over-heating and views the renewed surge in food prices as a symptom of that process. It is now clear that next week the Reserve Bank of India will be expected to raise policy rates and hike cash reserve ratio (CRR).

Getting prices right

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

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