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

If you&rsquo;re looking for the dog that did not bark, look no further than the (lack of) response to the government&rsquo;s recent economic policy pronouncements. Two weeks ago, the home minister announced the Cabinet&rsquo;s decision to list on the stock market all qualifying (e.g. profitable) state-owned companies, with a minimum float of 10 per cent. Already listed companies with a smaller float would take up their public stake to 10 per cent.

T N Ninan: No one barked

The burgeoning demand for graduates as economic growth accelerates has been encouraging Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal to examine more innovative ways of involving the private sector, especially in higher and technical education. This is sensible in as much as the government lacks the financial wherewithal to focus on this sector when the claims from primary education are much more pressing.

Fixing higher education

The US President&rsquo;s visit to the region begins a new game with new rules.

Frank Sieren & Andreas Sieren: Obama's Asian imbroglio

As an Indian, and one who has held high ministerial office, it is only right that I begin by portraying the reality of my own country before drawing comparisons with my South Asian neighbours. The World Food Programme tells us that half the world&rsquo;s hungry live in India.

'Outlays have had no relationship with outcomes'

A small rally of barefoot children wearing little dhotis marched through a small village of Kurumbilavu in Thrissur district 70 years ago. They were chanting: Him him pray...him him pray.

Sreelatha Menon: A new lesson

Budget 2009 contained important proposals in regard to exempting packaged software from customs duty, on importation, and on excise duty, with regard to domestic supplies, to the extent that such software is purportedly chargeable to the service tax. The proposals attempted to redress the problem of potential double taxation that arises in regard to such software.

Double taxation of computer software yet to be redressed

While Germany celebrated the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War in Europe, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall, some remnants of that inglorious era remain. North and South Korea, the Palestinian problem and, in a manner of speaking, the Af-Pak logjam. All essentially legacies of the Cold War. So, while Europe may pop champagne bottles, Asia will have to wait before it can celebrate the end of the Cold War legacy. But there is a bigger legacy issue waiting to be addressed. That is the intellectual legacy of the Cold War. The idea that one or two or even five Big Powers can run the world. In some ways, the creation of the G-20 has undermined this Cold War legacy, but the G-20 is as yet a talk shop. Unless institutions of power are able to re-adjust themselves to new global power equations of the post-Cold War era, we cannot really say we have put the past behind us.

Cold War and cold warriors

With the Left out of the power equation, it was assumed that it would be only a matter of time before the government revived its disinvestment plans. While the government has announced an ambitious plan to sell off stakes in various public sector undertakings (PSUs), not all political parties in the ruling coalition seem to be willing to give up the political patronage and rents that come with control of PSUs. So, the government must be congratulated for biting the bullet.

Getting PSUs on track

When foreign companies undertake turnkey contracts or installation projects which involve services to be rendered in India, it is quite common they appoint sub-contractors to undertake wholly or in part the activities to be performed in India. The foreign company remains liable for sub-contractor&rsquo;s job. In other words, sub-contracting does not exonerate the main contractor from liabilities under the contract.

Sub-contractor does not create permanent base for foreign company

Going by the nature of the questions being asked to Attorney General GE Vahanvati in the government&rsquo;s appeal in the S Tel case in the Delhi High Court, the government is in for a tough time. The S Tel judgment last July says telecom minister A Raja&rsquo;s September 25, 2007 cutoff date decision is illegal and that all the 46 firms that applied for licences have to be considered instead of just the nine Raja favoured. Given the government doesn&rsquo;t have the spectrum to give the licences, there is an obvious urgency over the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India&rsquo;s (Trai&rsquo;s) consultation on the matter since, if Trai caps the number of telecom operators, the government can present the court with a fait accompli.

Sunil Jain: Solving spectrum scarcity

With each of the controversies over PPP being addressed, such partnerships are increasingly being seen as the best way forward.

Vinayak Chatterjee: The political economy of PPP

Risk is inherent in any activity, particularly in a business venture. There is a saying that &lsquo;when there is no risk, there is no gain&rsquo;. Those, who do not want to expose their investments to any kind of risk, invest in risk-free securities like treasury bills, sovereign bonds, deposits in post offices and perhaps, in fixed deposits with banks.

Risk management minimises downside

Whether or not you believe the numbers put out by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda&rsquo;s wealth, there is little doubt that the mining lobby has gained enormous financial clout and, through it, political power. If in doubt, look at recent events in Karnataka, where the mining lobby has humbled the sitting chief minister. It is obvious that the miners&rsquo; power flows from the enormous rents that they control once mining rights/licences are handed out to them. Since getting or not getting a lease is the difference between large sums of money and none, it is hardly surprising that these lobbies are liberal when it comes to handing out money to ensure that the present rules continue. That might explain why the government does not take the obvious step of auctioning mineral fields, in preference to the arbitrary selection process that exists today. An auction system will bring transparency into the system.

Auction those mines

After strong protest from civil society organisations, the government has admitted that it is considering amending the Right to Information (RTI) Act. It has, however, assured activists that a transparent and consultative process will be adopted before any action is taken, and the amendments will not be persevered with if activist groups are able to convince the government that they are either unnecessary or counterproductive. These assurances notwithstanding, it is unfortunate that the government should again be contemplating changing a law that stands as one of the first UPA government&rsquo;s main achievements.

It ain't broken

Strauss-Kahn&rsquo;s view that taxes on capital flows are costly and ineffective is unfortunate.

Dani Rodrik: IMF needs fresh thinking on capital controls

Over this last decade, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has &ldquo;blacklisted&rdquo; so many foreign arms corporations that the military&rsquo;s modernisation plan has virtually stalled. The MoD &ldquo;blacklist&rdquo; is not a formal document; an arms vendor is mostly embargoed unofficially, when senior bureaucrats agree that it is playing dirty.

Ajai Shukla: No thanks, you're blacklisted!

The specialised zero-tillage seed drill, which could sow seeds in fields without ploughing it, was introduced by the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Pakistan much before it was brought into India. Yet, the zero-tillage system of cultivation, one of the key technologies under the environment-friendly conservation agriculture, has proved a bigger success here than it did in Pakistan.

Surinder Sud: Zeroing in on tillage

So the Copenhagen summit on climate change has been killed even before it has started. The US and other countries have formally recognised that the summit next month will not achieve its basic objective of working out a post-Kyoto accord on future commitments with regard to the emission of greenhouse gases. The rich countries, aware of their role in bringing about this denouement, have been trying for weeks to pin the blame on China and India, but this attempt is so blatantly at variance with the facts that no one is fooled. The nails began to get hammered into Copenhagen&rsquo;s coffin at the preparatory meeting in Thailand last month, when the rich countries made it clear for the first time that they wanted to dump the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, with its binding commitments on emission reductions, and work on a new slate where basic fairness would not be an operating principle.

The wolf and the lamb

The India-European Union Joint Customs Cooperation Committee has met in New Delhi and failed to resolve the issue over Indian generic drugs being seized when they are in transit through European ports. This may be ascribed to technical reasons, but it has ramifications for international trade and, equally importantly, for public health. The stand-off comes barely weeks after the assurance by EU&rsquo;s trade commissioner, Catherine Ashton, that the EU was committed to finding a solution that works for India. The EU&rsquo;s plea that such seizures are made on suspicion of either violation of intellectual property rights (IPRs), notably patent laws, or of the consignments being of counterfeit drugs, holds no water because there is no evidence to back such a position. All the consignments detained so far have eventually been found to be of genuine, off-patent generic drugs on their way to countries where these are not patented.

Protectionism by another name

A large number of commentators on Indo-US relations seem to think that when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets President Barack Obama next week in Washington DC, the latter will not be able to match his predecessor George Bush&rsquo;s enthusiasm for India. This baseless pessimism is based on the view that the US is compelled to be on cordial terms with China because of economic compulsions.

K Subrahmanyam: Partnering with the US: Yes we can!

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