A bewildering blizzard of email, phone calls, yet more email, meetings, projects, proposals and plans. This must be familiar territory &mdash; your average day at work.

Shyamal Majumdar: New-age brain drain

Business Standard

From the primacy of the executive in choosing judges to a limited role for it, M J Antony traces the swinging pendulum and the issues arising from the lack of transparency.

M J Antony: Time to let in some sunshine

Most analysts expect a poor second quarter for corporate India, but CMIE has a bit of a different spin to it. According to CMIE, the decline in sales growth in the last few quarters (and an actual fall in the last two) will probably continue to be reflected in the results that we&rsquo;ll see over the next few weeks, but a large part of this is due not so much because of a change in real demand &mdash; it is more driven by a change in price levels, particularly of commodities.

Sunil Jain: In the black

The Supreme Court will begin its hearing on October 20. The division bench of the Bombay High Court had directed the two sides to negotiate a suitable agreement based on Reliance Industries (RIL) supplying Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL) 28 mmscmd of gas for a period of 17 years at a price of $2.34 per mmBtu. The court has said the agreement does not need government approval since the gas comes from RIL&rsquo;s share of the gas.

Sunil Jain: Ambani vs Ambani-II

Five thousand years is, obviously, too long. Those who claim such classical longevity for &lsquo;Indian culture&rsquo;, in particular the Indian State, seem now to be in a hurry to chuck off the protective mask they have been wearing all these years. Issues relating to arts and culture seem to be orphaned, without guardians in the new government.

Sadanand Menon: &#39;Culture&#39; stays orphaned in the cabinet

Not having a hub port in the country has always rankled. Every plan document makes the customary noises about developing hub ports on each coast of the country and our failure to do a Singapore, Hong Kong or even a Colombo has been the subject of much lamentation among think tanks and conferences on port development.

Michael Pinto: Hub ports and cabotage

The extraordinary rally in the rupee &mdash; it gained nearly 5 per cent in 10 days till October 8 &mdash; has once again shown up most people as rabbits frozen in the headlights of the future.

Jamal Mecklai: Rabbit in the headlights - again

London: This multicultural capital has been celebrating India in the run-up to Diwali in its own inimitable way. Major shows of contemporary art are on &mdash; by the Indian-born Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy, Subodh Gupta across the street in Picadilly at the prestigious Hauser &amp; Wirth gallery and a lively Indian representation at the international Frieze Art Fair in Regent&rsquo;s Park. Betwixt and between, many of London&rsquo;s leading salerooms organised auctions of Indian and Islamic works of arts and textiles.

Sunil Sethi: The price of a filmmaker&#39;s estate

So there I was stuck in Thimphu, Bhutan, so delirious with fever that I could have sworn that my friends were out bar-hopping rather than sitting by my bedside. But then these fevers make you think the darndest things; for instance, on the way back from the Bumthang Valley we stopped in a tiny restaurant for lunch, and I&rsquo;ll be buggered if I didn&rsquo;t imagine that columnist Jug Suraiya was sitting at the next table. I put it down to the antibiotics and swallowed another paracetamol.

Thimphian week

The scene is New York City in 2025. Henry Poiret, a former FBI scientist, is a specialist in environmental balance sheets who tracks down energy wasters of all kinds for his clients. For the very first time, he allows a journalist to watch him at work &mdash; and to get an inside glimpse of his new lab.

Energy sleuth

Just before results began coming in for the six assembly elections in 2005, the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office (PMO) voiced an interesting thought. It was suggested that while the PM was concerned about the outcome of the Bihar, Haryana and other elections, his primary worry was over a state that seemed the least important at the time.

Aditi Phadnis: Cash and carry CM

Funding current account deficits primarily through debt and portfolio flows is potentially destabilising for both developed and developing countries.

Alok Sheel: Revisiting cross-border capital flows

I thought you said we&rsquo;re going to see cardamom growing?&rdquo; said I to Dinesh, our Sikkimese friend, &ldquo;instead, we&rsquo;re traipsing up a hill full of tall grass and weeds&hellip;&rdquo; He silently bent under one of the grasses we&rsquo;d been wading through, and took out a revolting bulbous mass of something. &ldquo;It may look weedy,&rdquo; said he with a smile, &ldquo;but this is a cardamom plant &hellip; look, here&rsquo;s a pod!&rdquo; I looked at the innocuous black pod which is considered Sikkim&rsquo;s black gold. Of the 4,000-odd tonnes of brown cardamom produced annually in India, this tiny state contributes about 88 per cent.

Geetanjali Krishna: Spice flu in Sikkim

When we were planning our Diwali cards party for three score or so people, give or take a couple more or less, my son suggested we build in some entertainment. &ldquo;I hear belly-dancers are hot this year,&rdquo; he said, reading from the newspaper supplements. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not dancing for your guests,&rdquo; my daughter protested immediately, maybe because she and her sorority group had been taking expensive lessons in belly-dancing &ldquo;for the sake of exercise&rdquo;. In the event, neither our daughter nor professional dancers made the cut: If there was any more space, my wife would have picked card players over dancers any day, there was simply no contest.

Kishore Singh: A bad case of Delhi belly

While quite a few people are starting to imbibe wine in India, not too many really know how wine is made, or what constitutes &ldquo;good&rdquo; wine. Since I&rsquo;ve been carrying on about the stuff for some time now, it&rsquo;s high time I delved into the subject, on the principle that to appreciate anything one needs to understand it a little.

Making wine

You look to the left, you look to the right. No difference. Nor is there any difference if one looks forward or backward.

Surjit S Bhalla: Back to the future

Which is India&rsquo;s most profitable business sector? The answer, believe it or not, is real estate. For the latest 12-month period, realty companies listed on the stock market had a mind-stretching net profit-to-sales ratio of 36 per cent. The previous 12-month period was even better, with a profit margin of 42 per cent. So if you thought that cash-strapped real estate companies have been slashing prices to off-load inventory, and taking a hit on their bottom lines, think again.

T N Ninan: Picking winners

The Chartered Institute of Financial Analysts (CFA) of USA, which represents financial analysts worldwide, published 'The Comprehensive Reporting Model' in 2007. According to the model, &lsquo;fair value information is the most relevant information for financial decision making&rsquo;. It argues that fair value measures reflect the most current and complete estimations of the value of the asset or obligation, including the amounts, timing, and riskiness of the future cash flows attributable to the asset or obligation. Such expectations lie at the heart of all asset exchanges.

IFRS - fair value challenge II is not too difficult to handle

Two months after the draft of the New Direct Taxes Code (Code) was released, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) facilitated a power-packed formal 'Interactive Session' with the trade and industry last week. The session was attended by over 100 tax technocrats comprising &lsquo;who&rsquo;s who&rsquo; in the tax fraternity, chief of country&rsquo;s three leading chambers of commerce and was chaired by the Finance Minister.

Tax code balances expectations of taxpayers, administrators

There is an ongoing debate if the sale/transfer of computer software attracts Income Tax in India or not. Accordingly, where foreign company transfers computer software to an Indian company from outside India, a question arises as to whether the Indian company is liable to deduct tax at source while making remittance from India. The problem is complex because the software is generally embedded with intellectual property rights. In other words, the acquirer of the software usually also gets along with the software a licence to use the same.

Is transfer of computer software taxable in India

One of the key challenges in the implementation of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) is with regard to exemptions from the tax for specified goods and services. In the Indian context, given the plethora of exemptions that currently exist in regard to numerous goods and services, under the respective Central and state laws, the challenge is a larger one. The matter gets complicated if one were to consider that in addition to the exemptions, there exist exemptions from the tax, both Central and State, that are based on the geographic locations of the manufacturing units. These are commonly known as area based exemptions.

Exemptions under dual GST are key challenges

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

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