Back in 1991, just before Manmohan Singh kicked off his economic reforms, Business Standard&rsquo;s annual ranking of India&rsquo;s corporate giants had a list that can be compared, very instructively, with the list released earlier this week, in the latest BS 1000. Only six of the Top 25 back then remain in the Top 25 today (Tata Steel, Reliance, Tata Motors, L&amp;T, Mahindra &amp; Mahindra and Hindalco). Further, just 11 of the Top 50 remain in that category.

T N Ninan: Incorporating change

Business Standard

It took India&rsquo;s IT-BPO sector just over a decade to grow more than 12 times, from $4 billion in 1998 to a shade under $50 billion in 2009. Admittedly, the target set by the software service providers&rsquo; body Nasscom was off by a year. But given that the period saw two significant global economic recessions, this is no mean achievement. By contrast the outlook for 2020 is almost modest: a mere four-fold growth to $175 billion. No one doubts the industry&rsquo;s ability to hit or even exceed those numbers; the bigger issue to consider is what this will mean for India and whether the policy environment is prepared for it.

Sustaining new white collar jobs

The forthcoming Union Budget now just two weeks away, will be presented at an extraordinarily interesting moment.

Suman Bery: Anatomy of resilience - Implications for 'exit'

The reported affirmative reply of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Fareed Zakaria&rsquo;s question whether India would be willing to sign the NPT (Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty) as a nuclear weapon state (NWS) has evoked some debate amongst the Indian security analyst community about the wisdom of such a move.

G Balachandran: India, the NPT and N-weapon status

A combination of quantitative and fundamental models can give higher returns with lower risks.

Alpha returns with stability

Other states would do well to follow Bareilly&rsquo;s unique theatre model.

What drama

In India, February 14 is celebrated as a team sport.

My funny Valentine

In the case of other errors pointed out, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is even less at fault. The UK&rsquo;s Sunday Times carried a tendentious story titled &lsquo;IPCC Wrongly Linked Global Warming to Natural Disasters&rsquo;. The story was splashed by several other media outlets, including Indian newspapers.

'There has been an effort to discredit science, scientists'

While there is no move to set up day-care centres for children of poor women, the rural jobs Act remains the only law to recognise it is a woman&rsquo;s right to have an ayah to take care of her children.

Sreelatha Menon: Behind every successful woman

Cold December seems to have been heated up by the sharp rise in the index of industrial production (IIP). The IIP grew at an annual rate of 16.8 per cent during December, which is higher than the previous business cycle peak recorded four years ago. Indeed, this monthly rate is the highest in 15 years, and is partly because of the extremely low base of 12 months ago. The manufacturing sector, which makes up 80 per cent of the IIP grew at a China-type rate of 18.5 per cent. Even if you discount the low-base effect, the trend since April is unmistakable and upward. The IIP growth rate has climbed steadily for several months, and the cumulative growth rate is 9 per cent. Industrial growth might be four times higher this year as compared to last fiscal. This growth is spreading to all sub-sectors, with especially strong in consumer durables (46 per cent) and capital goods (39 per cent). The former was anticipated due to the exceptionally strong showing of the auto sector.

Buoyed up by business

Merger among public sector banks, on the government&rsquo;s agenda ever since reforms began, now seems to be off the priority list. The idea was given a special push in P Chidambaram&rsquo;s 2005 Budget Speech and bank chairmen thereafter picked it up on cue. Equally on cue, bank trade unions vehemently protested and moved those political parties which would give them a hearing. With Mr Chidambaram no longer shepherding the finance ministry, the idea has now lost some of its backers. The last nail seems to have been driven into the coffin of the idea, for the time being at least, by the Reserve Bank of India downgrading its priority and instead declaring financial inclusion to be very important.

Big no longer beautiful

Bliss it must have been in that dawn to be alive, but to be an economist working for Jawaharlal Nehru must have been heaven (with apologies to Wordsworth)! No retired bureaucrat around to say you are too young to be advising the prime minister! A 26-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears economist writing the opening chapter of the most important document of the day that the government of a new India was putting out.

Sanjaya Baru: The uniqueness of Professor Raj

In the Budget 2010-11, to be presented towards the end of this month, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee should aim for rationalisation of the Customs tariff, unification of the central excise and service tax rates and simplification of the indirect tax laws.

FM should aim for rationalising Customs tariff in Budget

If State Bank of India (SBI) announcing its grand plans of nearly quadrupling its existing branch network in the next decade at a fantastic laser show in the Brabourne cricket stadium in Mumbai had the banking world abuzz, its ability to bring another 50,000 un-banked villages under its fold by the end of last month (it did 50,000 in 2008-09) set pulses racing in the mobile banking community. For there&rsquo;s no way SBI, or any other bank for that matter, can hope to achieve this audacious growth (India has over 6 lakh villages) in the conventional branch network manner &mdash; if maintaining a village branch costs Rs 5 lakh per annum in just salaries, covering this requires an annual business of Rs 2 crore per village at current levels of net interest margins! The only way this can be achieved is through the Banking Correspondent (BC) network that, in turn, will largely operate through a mobile phone network.

Sunil Jain: SMS the money

Capital market vision is important as it tells us where we want our markets to head tomorrow.

Risk and innovation

In an article on regulation in the financial sector, which appeared recently in this paper, C Rangarajan, chairman, Prime Minister&rsquo;s Economic Advisory Council, wrote, &ldquo;The policy-makers must strike an appropriate balance between the need for financial innovations and the need for regulation to ensure stability.&rdquo; While the point made is unexceptionable, it also raises certain issues.

AV Rajwade: Regulation vs innovation

Madam Speaker, I now turn to the crucial aspect of infrastructure development. If India is to take its rightful place among the world&rsquo;s top nations in terms of economic prowess, the engines of growth, viz. manufacturing, services and agriculture have to operate in a globally competitive environment and the Indian people have to have access to basic utilities. We have no choice but to provide a set of unique facilitative policy measures and interventions for infrastructure.

Vinayak Chatterjee: Hon'ble finance minister...

It appears that the current month premiums are under-estimating the likely volatility ahead of the Budget.

Attractive risk-reward ratios

For most professionals, including business lawyers, client engagements always provide for, if not preceded by confidentiality agreements.&nbsp;While secrecy and nondisclosure are integral and apply to all players in a commercial relationship, the attorney client privilege was recognised under common law as far back as in Elizabethan England, and introduced in India under Sections 126 to 129 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1885, which provides that the lawyer is bound not to disclose any communication made to him, state the contents or conditions of any document with which he has become acquainted, or disclose any advise provided to his client in the course and for the purpose of his professional engagement.

Privilege has become critical in context of outsourcing of legal or paralegal work

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (&ldquo;SEBI&rdquo;) has constituted a committee to review the role of market infrastructure institutions in the securities market.&nbsp; To be chaired by former Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan, the committee is tasked with reviewing the ownership and governance structure of market infrastructure institutions in the context of their evolving role.

Remove role ambiguity for market intermediaries

The situation prevailing before the next 2010-11 Budget is considerably different from the earlier one on two important respects. First ,the last time the concern was about fighting the recession but now the concern is also about fighting the fiscal deficit without injuring the fledgling recovery.

What Budget 2010 should do for advancement of GST

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 814 - Opinion Specials