As you read this, a deal is possibly being signed at Copenhagen to save the world from climate change. But be very clear. The agreement which the world has waited for is not going to be either an effective deal or a fair deal to reduce emissions in the world. The reason is clear: The industrialised world needs to cut emissions drastically, and this is not easy or cheap. So, it is looking for easy answers and, most of all, in Copenhagen it is looking for ways to blame the failure of the conference on someone.

Sunita Narain: Copenhagen's non-deal

Business Standard

Roopa Kudva took over as Region Head, Standard and Poor&rsquo;s (South Asia) last August, and continues to be MD and CEO of Crisil, India&rsquo;s first credit rating agency. After last year&rsquo;s financial crisis, rating agencies have been under fire from regulators in the developed world. India started regulating credit agencies in 1999 but the regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), is tightening these regulations further.

'Climate change is a big area of business'

The best way to learn a language is to have a love affair with a native speaker; the best way to learn a country is to spend time in its markets, restaurants and homes, until you have it on your palate.

Culinary bibles

A contentious statement on Indian poverty, put out some years ago by Arjun Sengupta, said that 78 per cent of Indians lived on less than Rs 20 a day. That figure always looked problematic, but has become a favourite statistical weapon in the hands of the Left. So it is just as well that the Suresh Tendulkar report on poverty has effectively nailed that number. The Tendulkar report says that 25.7 per cent of urban residents are below the new definition of the poverty line, because they spend less than Rs 578.80 per month. That is Rs 19/day, close to the Sengupta benchmark. Given the urban-rural mix of 28:72, if the Sengupta claim of 78 per cent for the country as a whole (urban and rural) is correct, then 92 per cent of all rural residents would have to be consuming less than Rs 20/day.

Many poverties

Reorganisation of states should not hurt cosmopolitan India.

SL Rao: Big city, small politics

Well, we&rsquo;ve hit what Americans call &ldquo;the holiday season&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s a time for conviviality and cheer as people bid good riddance to what they almost invariably feel was the worst year of their lives and trustingly welcome what they almost invariably think is going to be a better year. (This is what literary critics call &ldquo;dramatic irony&rdquo;, but let us not dwell on sorrowful things.

Turn over a new leaf

One sidelight of the Climate Change Conference was the byplay between Copenhagen city authorities and the local sex-workers&rsquo; union (SIO). The Mayor&rsquo;s office ran a postcard campaign exhorting delegates to &ldquo;Be Sustainable: Don&rsquo;t buy Sex&quot;.

Devangshu Datta: Climate of change

The downside of sector funds is easy to understand. There are company-specific risks and industry-specific risks. For example, management quality is company-specific, while raw material pricing is industry-specific. A sector fund is highly exposed to industry-specific risk and unable to cherry-pick the best companies. Hence, sector funds tend to be more volatile than the overall market.

Sector smart

I have a problem with channels which claim that through many of their respective serials they support women&rsquo;s empowerment. Not just that, many serials have tickers running while women characters in them routinely get abused. &ldquo;Through this serial we want to condemn the atrocities faced by women in the country even today,&rdquo; mentioned a ticker while an episode showed a young woman getting physically abused. The other time this ticker came alive on the television screen, an episode showed a group of men killing a pregnant woman.

Suffering silently

The exponential decay of time proves that all the focus on studying news, prices, psychology and mathematical order are indirect ways to study time.

The Time decay

Selling strangles outside the zone of expectation or a long call butterfly are some options to exploit the low-volatility situation.

Look to exploit low volatility

The year 2009 saw mixed signals on business law and policy fronts. The New Year cheer on Press Notes 2, 3 and 4 fizzled with the implementation in sectoral tangles. But the year end's breaking news, the Bombay High Court judgement in the Lawyers' Collective case threatens to be a showstopper. The Court decision dwells on fundamental issues impacting our turf, whether foreign law firms can carry on non-litigious activity in India, the regulation of the legal profession, and in a macro-perspective, the judicial interpretation of restrictions in establishing liaison offices in India.

Definition of liaison offices of law firms still under a cloud

A guide on fighting abusive related party transactions published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has raised some interesting possibilities in the appointment of independent directors and pattern of voting on such transactions.

Related party contracts pose challenges

The Discussion Paper has envisaged a model of dual GST which has got certain structural defects that need to be pointed out for correction before the second Paper comes out. The proposed GST is an under achievement compared to the professed idea of a conceptually correct GST. It is an imperfect GST which has four rates with probably numerous exemptions, four thresholds, several taxes outside GST, a highly complicated system for inter-State credit of input tax and finally with no certainty that States will always abide by the fixed rates of tax. It is destined to be more complicated and ill administered than now.

Major structural defects in designing GST

In the words of our present Chief Justice of India,&ldquo;&hellip;.. the citizens&rsquo; faith in the judicial system will begin to wane because justice delayed is justice forgotten, excluded and finally discharged &ldquo; The quote certainly does not auger well if one were to look at pendency of tax cases in different layers of our judicial hierarchy &ndash; 28,000 cases in high courts with disposal rate of roughly 6000 each year. Ironically, the situation is worse in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata &amp; Chennai where the wait time ranges between 10-15 years. Not to forget the figure of 2 lac crores often debated in the Parliament as arrears of tax in dispute. These could be more staggering in the future.

National Tax Tribunal is a distant reality

Lord Rama&rsquo;s mission of building the sea bridge to Lanka was achieved without much ado. He had with him Nala and Neela, two clever monkey &ldquo;architects, design engineers and project management specialists&rdquo; who were able to plan the bridge, and supervise its implementation by the vanar sena. Though thousands of years have passed, challenges in infrastructure development remain quite similar.

Vinayak Chatterjee: Consulting practice and infrastucture

It will be naive to interpret the Indian Railways white paper, presented to Parliament last week, as only a political document. The white paper has many other implications for the Indian Railways and it will be instructive to evaluate them as well.

AK Bhattacharya: Tracking the Railways

It is a measure of the overwhelming presence of the leadership of the original duo, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, in the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that the party has had some difficulty in making the transition from the Vajpayee-Advani era. But in choosing Ms Sushma Swaraj for the post of the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Mr Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha, the BJP has put its best foot forward. The challenge before the new duo is to strike a working relationship that is as productive as the one Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani had. The party&rsquo;s choice for president, Mr Nitin Gadkari, is more a regional political leader from Maharashtra than a national leader, which Ms Swaraj certainly has become after having contested elections in various states, including Karnataka. In opting for a Maharashtrian, the BJP may be preparing for a post-Thackeray and post-Pawar era in Maharashtra politics.

BJP's new trio

The year 2009 should be something of a landmark for the Indian economy. It marks three completed decades of renunciation from the Hindu growth rate. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the Indian economy grew by about 6 percent. In the decade just ending, this figure climbed to over 7 per cent. Per capita growth rate in this decade is about 5-5.25 per cent compared to about 3.50 percent in the previous two decades.

Arvind Subramanian: Tax reforms for higher growth

India should feel rather satisfied by the way it has gone through the extended climate change negotiations culminating in the accord at the Copenhagen meet. It can be said to have become a permanent member, one among the critical five &mdash; along with the US, Brazil, China and South Africa &mdash; that form what can be christened the UN Climate Security Council.

Subir Roy: Coping well with Copenhagen climate

The lengthy arguments in the most contested corporate family battle between the two Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, ended last week in the Supreme Court, and now the speculation is over the date of the judgment.

MJ Antony: Line-up for justice

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