While there is little doubt a Tobin tax increases the cost of investing, foreign portfolio investors will look at the overall costs and returns in India compared to that in other parts of the world.

'Does India need a Tobin tax?'

Business Standard

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&rsquo;s assertion at the India Economic Summit that the futures market needs to be improved for better price discovery and regulation is well placed. For, this important function of futures trading is currently not being performed efficiently by the Indian commodity exchanges. Nor are the other key objectives of futures trading, such as price stability and hedging, being adequately served. As a result, both traders and investors are being denied the kind of guidance they look for from futures trading. While global commodity exchanges probably perform this role more competently, the price signals they transmit are often not of much value to Indian commodity sector players because the domestic commodities market is not yet fully integrated with the global market.

Fixing India's 'future'

Since the summer of 2009 the world economy has begun to climb out of the Great Recession of 2008-09, much sooner than most people believed possible in the grim months of autumn 2008. Even the US turned the corner in the quarter ending September, registering annualised growth of over 3 per cent. The Asian behemoths of China and India suffered &ldquo;only&rdquo; a growth recession and an upswing is now clearly under way, rapidly in China and more sedately in India.

Shankar Acharya: Exit policy and all that

Suppose the top management of Anglo-Dutch fast moving consumer goods major Unilever were to make it a rule that only English and Dutch would be spoken throughout the organisation. Or assume TCS, India&rsquo;s largest software services company, mandated only Hindi as the official language of communication. Or imagine if the US insisted that Microsoft hire only Americans of European origin.

Kanika Datta: The business of bigotry

No other patent application has drawn the kind of interest worldwide as the Bilski case has. And no other patent suit has drawn into the debate, various industry interests, academia, the legal fraternity and the open source community. Filed 12 years, the Bilski case has put under the scanner the flood of business method patents issued in the US in the past decade, and as the case found its way to the Supreme Court, websites and the blogsphere has become cluttered with a plethora of opinions on the merits of the patentability business methods or processes. An indication of the high interest in the Bilski outcome was the long line of people wanting to attend the public hearing &mdash; it turned out to be a brief 30-minute session ultimately &mdash; in the Supreme Court last Monday.

Latha Jishnu: Method mania

Asia is rebounding fast from the global financial crisis. Initially, the impact on the region was extremely severe, with output in most countries contracting by more than even those nations that were at the epicentre of the crisis. But now Asia is surging ahead as the world pulls out of recession.

Anoop Singh: Asia's post-crisis challenges

The romance of train journeys, warts and all, came back to me recently. A hastily planned trip to Mumbai, only sky-high air fares available for the return journey, more time on a retiree&rsquo;s hands, and by some stroke of luck &mdash; maybe because people hadn&rsquo;t cottoned on to it &mdash; reservation to Howrah available in the very new Duronto. And so there I was, lugging my malfunctioning American Tourister contraption which would not stroll, at grand old VT, CST if you want to be politically correct and dodge the ire of MNS, looking forward to 26 hours of alternately reading Paul Krugman on the return of Depression Economics and dozing off.

Subir Roy: Romancing the railways

The Index of Industrial Production numbers for September 2009 revealed a growth rate of 9.1 per cent for the overall index and 9.3 per cent for the manufacturing sector, which comprises almost 80 per cent of the index. This was slower, but only slightly so, than the impressive 10.4 per cent notched up by the general index last month. This took the first half (April-September) growth rate of the index up to 6.5 per cent, appreciably better than the 5 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of 2008-09. The steady acceleration of the index over the past three months reinforces the perception that the economy is on a relatively robust, even if still moderate, recovery path.

Breathing easier

The release of the first discussion paper on the introduction of a goods and services tax (GST) is a welcome relief in that the country is now a step closer to the much-needed reform in its indirect tax regime. The 57-page document, produced by the empowered committee of state finance ministers and made public on Tuesday, however, leaves no one in doubt that the government will not be able to meet its target of rolling out GST from April 2010. Several legislative hurdles, at the Centre and in states, have to be cleared and a consensus on the key features of the new taxation system is yet to be reached among all the state finance ministers. For the finance ministry and the empowered committee, therefore, the task of putting in place a GST system has just begun. The tougher part of the battle lies ahead.

Miles to go

Many market observers are convinced that the ongoing surge in risk assets and risk appetite will ultimately end in a huge bubble in the emerging market asset class broadly, and the BRIC economies in particular. I also happen to subscribe to this view, and believe that India will see significant inflows into equity markets as the momentum builds.

Akash Prakash: The coming bubble in power

The dual goods and services tax (GST) is fundamentally different from the existing indirect tax regime. This article explains how it is so with the help of arithmetical and diagrammatic illustrations. These illustrations are limited to the manner of taxation of goods both intra-state and inter-state, under the GST.

Taxation of transactions under dual GST

Ever since Gunnar Myrdal&rsquo;s Asian Drama, which castigated India as a &ldquo;soft state&rdquo;, western observers, as well as many members of the Nehruvian wing of Macaulay&rsquo;s children, have failed to understand the anarchical society which has existed in India for millennia. A recent review (Journal of Economic Literature, September 2009) by Lant Pritchett (a former World Bank official in Delhi) of Financial Times&rsquo; former India correspondent Edward Luce&rsquo;s book In Spite of the Gods, reflects a similar unease of both with the Indian reality. Both find it puzzling why a country with a firmly-established democracy and many world-class institutions and firms, and which is an emerging superpower growing rapidly, should in many dimensions of human well-being have a worse record than many sub-Saharan African countries.

Deepak Lal: The anarchical society

Bhim Mahto, a tribal from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, had his wallet pickpocketed on a Delhi bus recently. He lost cash, his driving licence and his voter&rsquo;s identity card. In more than 20 years that he has worked for me, I have rarely seen him in such distress. It wasn&rsquo;t the theft of the money or the driving licence he was agitated about &mdash; these could be acquired again with some effort &mdash; but the loss of the pehchan patra, his voter&rsquo;s ID, was incalculable.

Sunil Sethi: The crisis of identity proofs

It is a quirk of behaviour that, while we all know that wine goes best when consumed with food, experts would be horrified if one suggested having anything to eat when tasting wines. So, most wine tasting exercises are conducted with only crackers and water to refresh the palate.

Doing the desi hic

The class most sensitive to the political barometer &mdash; who&rsquo;s up and who&rsquo;s down in politics &mdash; is the bureaucracy. So it was with pity, and just a little bit of satisfaction too, that the Haryana bureaucracy watched as Chief Minister (CM) Bhupinder Singh Hooda did something he had never done before.

Aditi Phadnis: Crown of thorns

Shakespeare&rsquo;s Macbeth has endured the test of time not only because it is a cautionary tale about when to ignore your spouse, but also because of its poignant lessons in the importance of sleep.

The bane of the thane

The formalisation of Asean-India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA) covering the goods sector marks an important step towards India&rsquo;s deepening trade links with its partners in the Asian region. Viewed as the cornerstone of India&rsquo;s &lsquo;look east&rsquo; policy, this free trade agreement (FTA) would help the two partners unlock the tremendous growth potential that their closer economic integration could bring.

Biswajit Dhar: Making the Asean FTA work

Dastkar&rsquo;s Nature Bazaar is a wonderful place for spotting interesting handicraft and chatting with craftspeople. This time, I decided to walk around and buy the product that took the maximum time and effort to create. I saw carpets and dhurries, some of which I knew could take as long as several months to make. But having seen the whole fair, the one handicraft that stood out for the time it took to make, was Ajrakh printed cloth.

Geetanjali Krishna: Art for daily use

Two winters ago, the shriek of drills cutting through rock turned many of our neighbours into raving insomniacs. Coffee in hand, feet padded up in woollen socks, they contemplated a future that unfolded yesterday as the Metro came whooshing up to the gate, to collect or deposit passengers with a toot of its whistle which, if it continues, will ensure that the sleep of the just is denied to them for all time to come.

Daddy's day out

It&rsquo;s a rare time when mainstream artists engage with global political issues, keeping intact their ability to produce an experience as part of their art work. It&rsquo;s not unknown, just rare &mdash; the challenge is to embrace the senses of others in your work.

Beyond the gallery

When was the last time you wrote a letter? A real letter, in your own hand? Not since boarding school, in my case &mdash; although there was one, just for fun, sent to a friend last year. It took 10 days to reach Mumbai. If I become famous in my declining years, even if only by mistake, that friend will have a sample of my mind circa 2008 to offer my biographers.

Epis-too-late

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 839 - Opinion Specials