Chinese officials and private investors around the world have been worrying aloud about whether their dollar investments are safe. Since the Chinese government holds a large part of its $2 trillion of foreign exchange in dollars, they have good reason to focus on the future value of the greenback.

Martin Feldstein: How safe are your dollars?

Business Standard

Unfortunately, despite having a lot of unique qualities, Visva Bharati is in the news for all the wrong reasons. If it is not for shoot-outs in the students&rsquo; hostel, it is about the university on strike, thanks to some alleged wrongdoings of the vice chancellor. This time around, it was about how the Holi celebrations got marred by student squabbles which turned violent.

Keya Sarkar: Some traditions still endure

I suspect my wife and I may not have been very good with the birds and bees thing, preferring to defer the subject and hoping things would simply resolve themselves as our children grew up. But being slightly more new age than our parents, my wife suggested that I take the lead and sit them down for a frank discussion on the matter &mdash; which is easy to suggest, harder to consummate, so I chose the coward&rsquo;s way out by leaving a few suggestive titles about the house. Sadly, it didn&rsquo;t pique their curiosity, though I did find the domestic staff giggling over some of the illustrations, and was obliged to confiscate the books, and stash them away. No doubt, when we&rsquo;re getting on, or incapacitated, the children will find them secreted in some loft and think their parents were a dirty old couple.

Kishore Singh: Fathers are guys too, right?

Every year, India&rsquo;s policy makers and corporate HR and marketing chiefs appear to rediscover women on March 8, International Women&rsquo;s Day. For opportunistic MPs, the event is considered a useful reminder to revive the long-standing and -opposed Bill to reserve 33 per cent of the seats in the lower House of Parliament. For India Inc, it&rsquo;s an opportunity to launch products and services that are ostensibly targeted at women. Sundry awards for women employees and entrepreneurs are also par for the course. Both responses may be well-intentioned, but do little to further the cause of Indian women and gender equality.

Women's day out

The need for clean energy and sustainable transport will only be addressed successfully if traffic safety is also simultaneously addressed.

Sustainable transport and traffic safety

The President&rsquo;s Address is essentially a report card of the government&rsquo;s activities in the previous year. It also provides a glimpse of the government&rsquo;s plans for the ensuing year. The format of this debate is such that both Houses unanimously vote for the Motion of Thanks.

'Help pvt sector to expand India's defence footprint'

The year has started well for the differently abled in the country. The ball has been set rolling by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, with this year&rsquo;s Budget being hailed as the most disabled-friendly of all times for announcing an 80 per cent increase in Plan outlay for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to Rs 4,500 crore.

Sreelatha Menon: The long wait for rights

The realty sector is tempting for a trader. But it lacks a hedge.

Fraught with risks

Now that we have said so many good things about Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee&rsquo;s Budget, it is time to say some nasty things too. We don&rsquo;t like the idea of the finance minister chairing a Financial Stability and Development Council. Mr Mukherjee&rsquo;s Budget speech said the Council would &ldquo;monitor macro prudential supervision of the economy, including the functioning of large financial conglomerates, and address inter-regulatory coordination issues&rdquo;. He seems to have taken a cue from the Raghuram Rajan Committee report on financial sector reforms that recommended a similar structure. On the face of it, it seems like a sensible idea, given the deep anxieties about financial stability that the global crisis has left in its wake. However, to make this work without diluting the status and authority of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could prove difficult in practice.

Mr Mukherjee's bad idea

Coalition politics in India has for long mocked the Cabinet form of government, weakening the authority of the prime minister and his Council of Ministers. This is not a new phenomenon. All coalitions have been afflicted by this internal division of power and responsibility between party political leaders and the political leadership in government. The communists developed a theory around this by arguing that the party is above government and made the late Jyoti Basu, former chief minister of West Bengal, report to his party boss, the late Pramode Dasgupta, regularly. This practice set a precedent for Mr Bal Thackeray to use a proxy, Mr Manohar Joshi, to run his party-led coalition government in Maharashtra. Mr Lalu Prasad went a step further by getting his wife to sit in the chief minister&rsquo;s chair in Patna, while he ran the show.

Budgeting for politics

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has so far received only three visiting heads of state at the Delhi airport &mdash; President George Bush, President Vladimir Putin and King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. That simple fact should have placed Dr Singh&rsquo;s much-delayed visit to Riyadh last week in perspective.

Sanjaya Baru: Look west policy

It hardly needs to be stated that the safety and sanctity of sovereign debt are the underpinnings of the entire debt market in a country.

A V Rajwade: Deficits and financial innovations

Some time ago, the pink papers carried headlines lamenting that the follow on public offer (FPO) of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), for the divestment of 5 per cent of NTPC&rsquo;s shares, by the president acting through the ministry of power, had met with a lukewarm response from retail and foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

Pratip Kar: Primary market and PSU disinvestment

A financial instrument is any contract that gives rise to a financial asset of one entity and a financial liability or equity instrument of another entity. Financial asset is cash, equity shares issued by another entity, and a contractual right to receive cash or another financial asset. A derivative instrument is recognised either as an asset or a liability depending on whether the price of the instrument is favourable or unfavourable to the entity. Today we shall not discuss accounting for derivatives.

IFRS will change accounting practice for Financial Assets

As per Memorandum on Finance Bill, 2010 a source rule was inser-ted in section 9 of Income-tax Act in 1976 with an intention of bringing to tax fees for Tec-hnical Services by creating a deeming fiction that even in cases where services are provided by a non-resident outs-ide India, consideration for such services will be taxable in India so long as services are utilised in India. The source rule effectively means that the situs of the rendering of ser-vices is not relevant.

Technical services rendered abroad now under tax net

The issue of the imposition of service tax on construction and sale of residential property has long been a matter of concern for the real estate and construction industry as well as for buyers of such residential property. Before coming to the Budget 2010 proposals in this regard, it would be worthwhile to briefly understand the background in relation to the levy of service tax on such activities.

Service tax on housing projects may prove tricky

The Supreme Court has asked the Uttar Pradesh trade tax authorities to reopen the cases of more than 130 industrial units in the state which had been issued show cause notices asking them to explain why concessional rates for high speed diesel (HSD) given to them should not be withdrawn. The Allahabad high court had quashed the show cause notices to Vam Organic Chemicals Ltd and a large number of other units which have been getting concessional rates from oil companies. The beneficial rates were given to them under the central sales tax law and the UP trade tax law. However, the state government took a decision later that those who have been using HSD for generating electricity should not be given the beneficial rates. When the high court set aside the show cause notices, the government appealed to the Supreme Court. It stated that the high court had not gone into certain aspects of the dispute, like the discretion granted on the assessing authority for bestowing concessions.

Uttar Pradesh told to reopen cases of units using high speed diesel

When a telecom company is asked to stop operations on security grounds, it&rsquo;s time to sit up and introspect, more so if the company in question has a case against the government in the Supreme Court. In the STel case, the government appealed to the apex court after a division bench of the Delhi High Court upheld an earlier judgment in favour of STel, which had in 2008 filed a case against the government&rsquo;s arbitrary policy on granting mobile phone licences.

Taking cover

India has done well to reiterate its commitment to peace, reconstruction, relief and development in Afghanistan. Given the long history of India&rsquo;s friendship with Afghanistan, and the affection that the ordinary people of Afghanistan have for India and the Indian people, India has no option but to stay the course, despite the dastardly attacks on Indians. India&rsquo;s ambassador in Kabul, Jayant Prasad, his brave band of diplomats and officials, and the army of civilians engaged in humanitarian relief, reconstruction effort, healing, educating, training and building infrastructure in Afghanistan deserve the highest praise, support and sympathy. Equally, they deserve security. Both the governments of Afghanistan and India owe it to the Indians, who are engaged in helping Afghanistan, to ensure their safety and security, one way or another.

The options in Afghanistan

In his Budget speech on February 26, the finance minister articulated the three important challenges confronting him in preparing this year&rsquo;s Budget.

Suman Bery: Debt and exit

The February 26 gunning down of Indian workers in Kabul, followed by the stoppage of work by Indian doctors at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, is a tragic step towards what this column has long predicted: that, as the Taliban inexorably extend its influence, India will thin out in Afghanistan; and pull out entirely when a Taliban takeover appears imminent (Planning for doomsday, July 15, 2008; and The Indian ant in the Afghan flood, October 6, 2009).

Ajai Shukla: Managing India's image in Af-Pak

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