The stranglehold of Mulayam&rsquo;s family on the party is at the centre of the debate.

Aditi Phadnis: Keeping the SP together

Business Standard

Defence offsets will quicken the pace of India&rsquo;s high-growth aerospace industry.

Toby Simon: A new horizon

The joy of living in a small town is that it allows you time to pursue what your heart desires. And if that object of desire comes with a price tag of Rs 720, you have little option but to grab the opportunity with both hands.

Keya Sarkar: Maupa ... who?

It&rsquo;s only her third day with her personal yoga instructor, but my wife has already learned a lot. She&rsquo;s learned that Padma hasn&rsquo;t really lost seven kilos &mdash; &ldquo;that liar!&rdquo; &mdash; but has taken to wearing a corset at all times so the excess fat isn&rsquo;t toned, merely tucked out of sight. Kanta, the instructor told her, has bad body hygiene, so he sits far from her when doing their pranayams &mdash; middle-age flatulence and early morning lessons have left an indelible scar on the young man. Fatima isn&rsquo;t sticking to her diet; Shanti secretly eats chicken even though her vegetarian husband has forbidden it; and the only reason Uma is punishing her body is because she&rsquo;s set her sights on the boss even though both she and he are married.

Kishore Singh: Weighty matters

Wine tourism is something new in India. Google &ldquo;wine tourism in India&rdquo; and you get 2.98 million results &mdash; one indication of the booming interest in this little-known but fast-growing niche.

On the wine trail

Travelling through cities like Mumbai and Delhi one often sees signs stating &ldquo;My Mumbai Keep It Clean&rdquo; or &ldquo;My Delhi Keep It Green&rdquo;. In Chennai and Kolkata the language changes, but the tone is consistent. The question posed here is not with regard to &ldquo;green and clean&rdquo;, but the word &ldquo;my&rdquo;, which is descriptive of a collective notion of identity with a place &mdash; a sense of belonging that goes beyond economic sustainability.

Meri Dilli, amchi Mumbai

This year feels as if it might be worth dedicating to being antsy rather than angsty, possibly because it&rsquo;s only January and the twelvemonth sprawling before me still seems filled with the buds, rather than the cindered remains, of possibility. Beats me why, especially since decade upon decade of evidence suggests that this optimism is a recurring mass delusion, but I think it&rsquo;s going to be a good year. As I look out at the sunny horizon of 2010 I surprise myself by actually wanting to make and keep this resolution: Every day (or, just to nod at the inevitable slippery slope, five times a week) I&rsquo;d like to do at least one thing that I&rsquo;ve never done before.

Angst is so 2009

For these two or three days I have been much troubled with thoughts how to get money to pay them that I have borrowed money of, by reason of my money being in my uncle&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo; With these rather prosaic words opens Samuel Pepys&rsquo;s diary entry for January 9, 1660. The ninth day of the year is also the ninth day that he is keeping his journal. He kept it for 10 years.

Private life, public view

Inside Pragati Maidan, the capital city&rsquo;s exhibition complex, there is great excitement about new car models and what they testify to: the arrival of India&rsquo;s automobile industry, the creation of a global hub for making small cars, and demonstration of what Indian manufacturing can achieve. Outside the Maidan, in much of the city, the roads are clogged as traffic crawls. Is it possible to have one without the other? If not, we are in for an urban nightmare.

T N Ninan: Public-private disjuncture

A text message from novelist Chetan Bhagat some days ago: &ldquo;Please read my blog and then let&rsquo;s talk...&rdquo; I have been reading his blog which is composed of so much verbiage, self-flagellation and self-glorification in equal parts, that, quite frankly, there&rsquo;s not much room left for talk. Like much of the book-reading, movie-going public, I too have watched the spectacle of the rousing spat between him and filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra and his team.

Sunil Sethi: Welcome to Twitter wars

Even if you raise the poverty line as much as the Expert Group does, it turns out just 11 per cent of Indians are poor, not 37 per cent &mdash; that&rsquo;s a huge poverty of estimation.

Surjit S Bhalla: India's 'real' poverty

With a little political will, issues like disputed boundaries, exchange of enclaves, improved connectivity and sharing of water resources can be resolved.

K L Thapar: Towards more mature India-Bangladesh ties

A roundtable at the National School of Drama examines the limits of creative freedom.

Ban censorship

In a bull market, a higher price-to-earnings in the secondary market justifies higher offer price in an IPO. But sometimes, it leaves very little on the table for the investor.

Be wary of IPOs

Fundamentally, the law and order situation in our country today is under strain. There are a number of sources of this strain: There is terrorism, there is Naxalism-Left wing extremism, there is also regionalism and then communalism.

'Our country's law enforcement is under strain'

There are those who have land and those who don&rsquo;t. Among those who have land, there are those who have title deeds for their land and those who have been assigned land by the government but are yet to get the title deeds.

Sreelatha Menon: Barefoot lawyers

The World Bank defines accountability as &ldquo;the obligation of power-holders (those who hold political, financial or other forms of power) to take responsibility and answer for their actions&rdquo;. It defines social accountability as &ldquo;the broad range of actions and mechanisms (beyond voting) that citizens and their organisations can use to hold societal power-holders (such as the state) to account, as well as actions on the part of government, civil society, media and other societal actors that promote or facilitate these efforts&rdquo;. Therefore, if we argue that the internal audit has social accountability we need to establish that it has societal power and that there is a mechanism by which citizens participate in exacting the accountability.

Social Accountability of Internal Audit significant

The draft of New Direct-taxes Code which is intended to replace the Income-tax Act 1961, was released along with discussion papers on12th August, 2009. It was declared that the Code is not an attempt to amend the Income-tax Act, 1961; nor is it an attempt to &ldquo;improve&rdquo; upon the present Act. In drafting the Code, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has, to the extent possible, started on a clean drafting slate.

When will we see the new direct taxes code?

The Task Force appointed by the Thirteenth Finance Commission, Government of India, had issued a report on December 15, 2009 detailing the recommendations on various issues relating to the design and implementation of the proposed GST in India.

Some more suggestions of GST task force

The New Year gift from the finance ministry is a series of Customs exemption notifications reducing the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on import of goods originating from South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Rules of Origin for imports from South Korea and specified South East Asian Nations have also been notified. These duty reductions are in accordance with the Preferential/Free Trade Agreements signed earlier by the commerce ministry.

Manufacturers need to be more competitive

Last week, when the rupee appreciated to below 46 per dollar, there were reports about the &ldquo;sops&rdquo; expected to be offered to exporters in the next few days (One has always wondered why any procedural simplification or other benefits given to exporters are referred to as &ldquo;sops&rdquo;: The dictionary meaning of the word is &ldquo;conciliatory bribe, gift or concession&rdquo;).

AV Rajwade: It's the rupee, stupid!

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 822 - Opinion Specials