Your academic credentials are impeccable and your track record in the organisations you have worked so far is brilliant &mdash; in short, you are one of the &ldquo;listers&rdquo;, jargon used by companies for somebody who is already on the elevator to the floor where the corner office is located.

Shyamal Majumdar: Looking for a coach?

Business Standard

The key lesson that emerged from the collective soul-searching by the many central bankers who attended the RBI&rsquo;s conference (Challenges to central banking in the wake of the financial crisis) in Mumbai last weekend is that yesterday&rsquo;s heresies are fast becoming the new orthodoxy .For one, the financial crisis (that incidentally struck during a period of considerable price stability across economies) has shown that the narrow focus on inflation that underpinned monetary policy for more than a couple of decades does not necessarily guarantee financial stability. Policy-makers thus appear willing to jettison the minimalist &ldquo;single-target single-instrument&rdquo; approach of concentrating solely on checking headline inflation with variations in a short-term interest rate. The new orthodoxy demands constant vigil on a number of fronts and the nimble use of a variety of policy instruments.

New orthodoxy

The reported plea by the fertiliser and chemicals ministry to put on hold the Cabinet&rsquo;s recent decision to increase the level of mandatory mixing of ethanol with petrol seems reasonable and the government should accept it. The country&rsquo;s total production of ethanol, largely from the by-products of the sugar industry, is inadequate to meet the demand of the chemical industry. Besides, ethanol production also keeps fluctuating in tandem with the production of sugarcane and sugar. Now that the sugar output has been on the downturn since last year, the availability of ethanol has dipped, causing hardships for the industry. Even between 2006 and 2008, when the country reaped a bumper harvest of sugarcane, the sugar industry frequently defaulted on honouring its contracts for the supply of ethanol to the oil marketing companies for 5 per cent doping with petrol.

Time to quit doping

In the past year, many suggestions have been made on how to strike the right balance between efficient use of capital and systemic risk. More recently, Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, has proposed that deposit-taking banks should be prohibited from engaging in proprietary trading. The so-called Volcker Rule is advocating the segregation of &ldquo;utility&rdquo; banking from &ldquo;casino&rdquo; banking.

Jaimini Bhagwati: Using Capital well vs Systemic Risk

Indian banks are healthier than they have ever been. With average NPAs under 2 per cent, they have been posting strong profits and steady profit growth over the past four or five years. This is further evidenced by how well they weathered the recent global crisis, albeit with the mothering of RBI&rsquo;s conservative policies.

Jamal Mecklai: Time for more aggressive regulation

A NIFT graduate becomes the toast of New York Fashion Week.

Shining star

When AK Antony was appointed as the country&rsquo;s defence minister, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh commented to a colleague in a flash of dry humour: &ldquo;The finance minister should be happy. Now the defence ministry won&rsquo;t spend a single rupee and the finance ministry will save lots of money.

Aditi Phadnis: In defence of Antony

India Inc&rsquo;s renewed gung-ho attitude to consumer demand is worrying. Consumer demand in India is like the curate&rsquo;s egg &mdash; always good but only in parts.

Rama Bijapurkar: Drunken man's walk

Small spaces are greater design challenges than their larger counterparts. The smaller the space, the greater the need to maximise storage, mood and even style.

Ten ways to make small big

After some dithering, US President Barack Obama has accepted the advice of his generals to add to the number of US troops in Afghanistan to drive the Taliban out of Helmand province. Once secured, the troops would maintain a presence whilst the police and development agencies moved in to restore the authority of the Afghan government, and provide the means for the economic reconstruction of the region.

Deepak Lal: Afghan, Taliban and drugs

After many years of silence on the reorganisation of states, the Telangana issue has blown up in our face. There are arguments pro and anti and there are agitations pro and anti. The various governments at the Centre and in the states continue to lurch from one extreme to the other, and demands for creation of new states have come to the surface.

Dorab R Sopariwala: Power to the people

Valentine&rsquo;s Day is celebrated all over the world on February 14, but in India, romance happens whenever the astrologers say so. Every year, there are a couple of days that the star-gazers deem &ldquo;auspicious&rdquo;, when tens of thousands of people tie the knot. In Delhi, over the years, there&rsquo;s been a growing perception that what&rsquo;s a good time for matrimony is a bad time for everything else. Last week, when we found ourselves in Agra for a family wedding, we experienced wedding madness way beyond what we&rsquo;d seen before... and lived to tell the tale.

Geetanjali Krishna: A 'good' time for love...

Parked on a rocky cliff 400 feet above Jodhpur&rsquo;s skyline is the magnificent 15th century Meherangarh Fort, the city&rsquo;s crowning glory and the biggest tourist attraction. Perhaps because it is managed by a private museum trust in the hands of professionals, Meherangarh is a model of cleanliness, efficiency and judicious restoration.

Sunil Sethi: A new beginning in Jodhpur

Now that the children are in college, my wife has been suffering &ldquo;saving things for them&rdquo; pangs. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not like those women who deny themselves the good things of life so they can give their children a dowry,&rdquo; she would crow every time her sibling carried a scruffy handbag to go shopping for her son&rsquo;s forthcoming nuptials.

Kishore Singh: Father of the bride, at some point

Life is a journey without maps. So is diplomacy. No diplomatic pharmacopoeia exists. One has to proceed empirically. Diplomacy does not promise moksha. It provides hope. Even modest progress is worthy of respect.

K Natwar Singh: Diplomacy provides hope

If you&rsquo;re in Melbourne on February 24, Mia Northrop would like you to eat at a local Indian restaurant&mdash;and many Australians have pledged to do so. Northrop started Vindaloo Against Violence to show support for the beleaguered Indian community in Australia.

Eating for Unity

I could be doing cleverer things with my money instead of sending it up in smoke.

Lighting up my life

Mention agriculture and most people immediately think of wheat and rice. That is to be expected, since these two crops dominate the airwaves and policy pronouncements, account for the bulk of the subsidies going into agriculture as well as the bulk of what is pushed through the public distribution system, and of course define food security (the promise of 25 kg per head of wheat/rice to every poor family at Rs 3 per kg). So, the statistics make for interesting reading.

T N Ninan: Stuck in a wheat field

The week Vikrant Tambe, a final-year student of MGM Medical College in Mumbai, spent with policemen in Mumbai&rsquo;s police stations will perhaps remain the most defining time of his entire medical education.

Sreelatha Menon: The prisoners of classrooms

At 23 price-to-earning, the tech story is no longer compelling.

Reduce IT now

Discovery Channel showcases a new documentary on King Khan.

SRK, superstar

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 816 - Opinion Specials