Do we want to take the modern convenient bus or celebrate the new hybrid car? That&rsquo;s the choice.

Sunita Narain: Choose your future today

Business Standard

The surprise market these days, when it comes to new telephone connections, is&hellip;Bihar. Vehicle manufacturers also report new buoyancy when it comes to sales in India&rsquo;s poorest state. Such assertions would have been considered scarcely credible till the news broke a couple of weeks ago, that Bihar&rsquo;s economy in the last five years has grown at an annual average rate of more than 11 per cent &mdash; well above the national average, for the first time.

T N Ninan: Why Bihar is poor

When history is written of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis, will it be categorised as a temporary blip on the onward march of capitalism? Or is it likely to be seen, in retrospect, as one of those game-changing churnings in history which transformed the global landscape and the way we perceive that landscape? I believe that it is more likely to be the latter.

Shyam Saran: Sustainable strategies

In cynical circles, corporate ethics are considered an oxymoron and a series of mega-scandals have reinforced this point of view. Minus cynicism, corporate ethics remain complex &mdash; the rights of shareholders and stakeholders must be balanced against larger social imperatives.

Devangshu Datta: Premium on business ethics

It&rsquo;s become a ritual at international conferences to pay obeisance to India&rsquo;s growth and quickly move on to China dazzling &mdash; if not dominating &mdash; the world. I heard Chris Patten do that in Calcutta. I heard it again at the recent Regional Outlook Forum(ROF) 2010 organised by Singapore&rsquo;s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). If a speaker bracketed India with China, it was a token genuflection. India soon faded out of the discussion.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Insouciant diplomacy

Too many world problems get too little press. Since other people seem to have taken charge of climate change and hunger and world peace, I&rsquo;m going to take this opportunity to raise my voice for acne rosacea, the plague of people-who-flush-easily everywhere. Also I have it, and everyone keeps asking me about it.

Acne what?

You never know where you might land up when you start exploring the covered markets (locally called katras) opposite Jaipur&rsquo;s City Palace. Comprising of lanes so narrow that two people standing shoulder to shoulder would cause a traffic jam, the katras are a mass of controlled chaos. That&rsquo;s where I found myself last week, plunging every now and again into one of those many dark alleys that sprouted from both sides of the main katra like the roots of a plant on steroids. Shops selling lac jewellery in the most gorgeous hues kept drawing me in. No wonder then, that when I finally stumbled into the blinding sunlight, I had nary a clue to where I was.

Geetanjali Krishna: The old curiosity shop

Because she can never make up her mind whether she&rsquo;d like a pot of tea, or a cup of coffee, the cook has instructions to keep both ready every time my wife feels like a shot of some warming brew. It&rsquo;s another matter that she doesn&rsquo;t like to drink her beverage hot, so while the coffee cools in a mug in the study, she might decide to clean out her cupboard with a cup of tea in hand, then find herself distracted by the news on television and fix herself yet another cup, only to discard it when a neighbour calls to ask her over for coffee, or tea, laced with gossip.

Kishore Singh: Many a cup between sip and lip

Terrorism in our immediate neighbourhood and cross-border terrorism faced by India are a pivotal security challenge. There is a growing consensus that the increase in terrorist activities in Afghanistan is linked to the support and sanctuaries available in the contiguous areas of Pakistan. Increased terrorist violence in our neighbourhood is a cause for grave concern.

'Anti-India groups receive patronage from within Pak'

Reality TV is increasingly about baring it all. And no one&rsquo;s complaining.

Sex, lies and television

A physics professor has applied science to suggest ways to help the country get rid of its ills and the result is a comprehensive and &ldquo;smart&rdquo; formula for social change.

Sreelatha Menon: Formula for social change

Enema of the state

At a weekend retreat with officials of the union finance ministry, film actor Aamir Khan, now celebrating the resounding success of his latest ouvre, 3 Idiots, was asked to speak on the &lsquo;soft power&rsquo; of Indian cinema going worldwide. One does not know why finance ministry officials were interested in the topic, unless they are presently pouring over files recommending some fiscal concession or incentive for Bollywood exports! Whatever the provocation for suggesting the topic, Mr Khan disappointed his hosts by confessing that he had never given the subject much thought while planning his films. Making an honest confession, he reportedly said that he, like most Indian film makers, makes his films for an &lsquo;Indian&rsquo; audience, not a &lsquo;global&rsquo; audience. Indeed, most of the so-called global market for Bollywood, which is now substantial and growing, is almost entirely comprised of people of Indian origin worldwide.

Soft power and hard currency

As respected Jyoti Babu is approaching the end of his innings, there will be many commentaries and critical reviews of his times and his works. At this juncture, I would like to present a vignette which depicts his capability to think out of the box of past ideologies and action, and be reformist.

Siddharth Shriram: Jyoti Basu - Portrait of a pragmatic comrade

Auto stocks to manoeuvre north

The January 4 yearly outlook carried numeric ranking for 50 Nifty Stocks. The histogram ranked real price performances, pushing the performers to the top and underperformers to the bottom. Sun Pharmaceutical was the top performer, Grasim was the worst and the three technology majors viz. Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro were at rank number 6, 7 and 10 respectively.

Alpha India updated

Central bankers, as a species, are known to dwell between a rock and a hard place. Their remit in setting monetary policy is to balance the conflicting objectives of supporting growth and keeping inflation at bay. This is not an easy trade-off and the monetary policy announcement due on January 29 will not be the exception. High food price inflation and signs of accelerating growth have invited a rising clamour for monetary tightening from some quarters of the economist and policy community. But there seems to be an equally strong demand for restraint. One could argue that the current debate on monetary policy has been bogged down somewhat unnecessarily in the narrow question of whether monetary instruments can be effective in curbing food price inflation.

The usual trade-offs

The market saw practically no change in the major index levels in what is turning into an extended phase of very low volatility. Volumes in derivatives remained very low.

Premiums drop due to low volatility

Last week, the Supreme Court pronounced a landmark ruling in the case of Oracle India holding that the process of duplication of software from master copy tantamount to &lsquo;manufacture&rsquo;. The Apex court allowed Oracle much awaited relief with respect to a tax holiday claim available for new undertakings engaged in manufacture and processing of articles and things.

SC delivers an Oracle to IT

A judicial decision has to state the correct legal position. It is not supposed to waver because revenue would not accrue to the Government. This is one of the fundamental principles because if it is not so, then the decision would be necessarily in favour of Revenue. Why I am bringing up this obviously fundamental issue is because very recently a judgement has come in respect of manufacture and production where the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Arihant Tiles1 has set us thinking about the whole issue once again.

Can judicial decision depend on Revenue consideration?


No country can have better public institutions than it deserves, said Sir Chintaman Dwarkanath Deshmukh, the first Indian to be governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in an address at the Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics, Pune, on March 20, 1948. More than 60 years later, it is a speech that would be read with profit by every staffer of the central bank, every official of the Union ministry of finance and every commentator on India&rsquo;s monetary, fiscal and financial

Sanjaya Baru: RBI - an institution India deserves

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