Villagers had to fight to get unemployment allowance worth Rs 14 lakh in Sitapur&rsquo;s villages though this is something they are assured under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

Sreelatha Menon: Winning a fight

Business Standard

The proposed move by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue only monthly rainfall predictions, instead of the long-range monsoon forecast for the entire four-month (June to September) monsoon season, will disappoint many monsoon watchers, even though it makes sense for several reasons. Given the track record of seasonal monsoon projections, despite the growing sophistication of the data collection and data processing technology, not offering a misleading forecast may be a good idea.

Not chasing the monsoon

China is using its growing trade power to enhance its global influence, especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia, where it is perceived as an all-weather friend. Since opening up its economy in 1978, China&rsquo;s foreign trade has been growing by leaps and bounds. In 2008, its foreign trade volume exceeded $2.56 trillion&mdash;70 times more than what it was 10 years ago, according to the US-China Business Council. China has now become the world&rsquo;s largest exporter, beating Germany, reported the World Trade Organization.

ND Batra: China&#39;s economic diplomacy

Khadi is everlasting, and now, shopping for it is also a breeze.

Home-spun charm

Rumours or khabar in India tend to surface days or even weeks before the event.

Reacting to rumours

The challenge of internal security has two dimensions. The first is the state of our police system. That system is completely outdated and our police forces are ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-paid. Adding to these woes are the short-sighted policies followed by governments with the objectives of control and patronage.

'A constable is the most used and abused person ever'

The term Intermarket was coined by John Murphy in 1990. Murphy said that all markets are linked, domestically and globally, no market moves in isolation, analysis of one market should include all the others.

Global Intermarket review

A narrow trading pattern never lasts long and one high-volatility session is likely to trigger volumes expansion.

Volatility set to rise

Every time there is a major regulatory development in the United States, the Indian media goes into paroxysms. Whet-her they are convulsions of delight or despair is dictated by the context of what has happened in the US.

SEBI has greater powers than US SEC

Recently I read a judgement on ayurvedic medicine by the tribunal which has quoted exactly thirty judgments. You can imagine what a puzzle it is. It is because the central excise tariff does not define ayurvedic medicine. The result is a plethora of Supreme Court judgements, and more of high courts and tribunal judgements, in individual cases claiming to be ayurvedic medicine which attracts lower duty. The con-troversy is two fold. One is about whether it is ayurvedic or not.

Ayurvedic medicine needs to be defined

As the primary market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has realised the need to not only lay down broadbased framework and regulations, but also actually go into the next level of detail in creating an architecture for monitoring and clarificatory mechanisms. Two recent steps in this regard raise hope. First, SEBI mandated peer review of certain listed companies.

Stock market regulator takes a step forward

The commerce ministry has prohibited import of mobile phone handsets (classified under ITC (HS) Code &lsquo;8517&rsquo;) without International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number or with all zeroes&rsquo; IMEI, with immediate effect from October 14, 2009. Import of &lsquo;CDMA mobile phones&rsquo; (classified under ITC (HS) Code &lsquo;8517&rsquo;) without Electronic Serial Number (ESN)/Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID) or with all zeroes as ESN/MEID is also prohibited with immediate effect from the same date.

Import rules take effect on security-risk cellphones

Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiao Bao have restored the much-needed sobriety to the India-China relationship through the tone of their meeting on the sidelines of the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand over the weekend. In the past few months, a war of words through the media has disrupted peace and tranquility between the neighbours. While the Indian media is free and does not necessarily reflect government opinion, no one could believe the same of China&rsquo;s officially controlled media. The media hysteria was aggravated by unhelpful statements from China regarding the prime minister&rsquo;s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. Coming on top of China&rsquo;s official objections to Indian project proposals at the Asian Development Bank and followed by objections to the Dalai Lama&rsquo;s visit to Arunachal, these events gave the impression that both governments were hurtling towards a confrontation.

From tantrums to tranquility

While the government debates the issue of whether or not there was a scandal in the manner in which scarce radio spectrum was granted to firms like Swan and Unitech &mdash; with the prime minister appearing to let the telecom minister off the hook even as the CBI raids his ministry &mdash; it is becoming increasingly clear that a quick solution needs to be found to allotting spectrum to telecom companies.

Speed up 3G

With just two assembly elections in the next 18 months, the government has enough room for major policy changes.

A K Bhattacharya: Waiting to exhale

Some say India has been saved from the financial crisis only because the policy was conservative and did not act to improve the efficiency of the system. Hence, their prescription is to act now on efficiency. This view is not right because India was active in policy interventions in both monetary and financial sectors. RBI adopted an active countercyclical policy, while many others failed to intervene.

Yaga Venugopal Reddy: What next for India's fin sector?

Teeja tera rang tha main to... is a haunting song. It plays in the background of the 2007 hit, Chak De India. The Indian hockey captain, a Muslim, gets branded as an anti-national because he makes a wrong call during a crucial match with Pakistan. Many years later, he redeems himself by coaching the down and out Indian women&rsquo;s hockey team to win the World Cup. The song is about a man&rsquo;s love for his country and his sense of nationhood.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Cinema - The mirror of India

The monetary policy stance articulated in yesterday&rsquo;s quarterly announcement broadly lived up to expectations. The main policy instruments &mdash; the repo and reverse repo rates and the cash reserve ratio &mdash; were not changed. This was consistent with the Reserve Bank of India&rsquo;s (RBI) view that, while the recovery was under way, it had not quite consolidated. Among other points of fragility is the agricultural situation, where this year&rsquo;s output is expected to drop appreciably from last year&rsquo;s. Consequently, the RBI has maintained its baseline GDP growth forecast for 2009-10 at 6 per cent, somewhat more conservative than those of the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Economic Advisory Council. Since both those bodies, despite their greater optimism about growth, had already voiced their preference for the status quo, the RBI&rsquo;s forecast provided an even stronger justification.

More micro than macro

Facts often become a casualty when politics starts dominating policy debates. A case in point is the ongoing wrangle over whether the West Bengal government should have let off some tribal women to obtain the release of one of its police officers, abducted by the Maoists operating in that region. Odious comparisons have been drawn between this incident and the release of hard-core terrorists in return of passengers of the Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan about a decade ago. The reality is somewhat different. No proclaimed terrorists or convicted criminals have been released to obtain the freedom of the West Bengal police officer. The tribal women released by the government are neither members of the Maoist groups nor have they on their own indulged in terrorist activities. They were only mobilised by the Maoist groups in support of the latter&rsquo;s cause.

Not by force alone

Never mind that it was a confidential communication. Never mind too that the establishment came down on him and crushed any possibility of his private views translating into public policy. Never mind, in short, that it is back to the status quo with a vengeance. The impact of the leaked letter from Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for the environment, to the Prime Minister on the terms of India&rsquo;s international engagement was nevertheless seismic with the aftershocks sure to reverberate for some time. The terms of the debate, especially on the tone and possibly also on the substance of India&rsquo;s external entanglements&mdash;and not just in the climate change negotiations&mdash;have been altered, possibly for good and definitely for the better. Consider in turn the motives, content, and implications.

Arvind Subramanian: New letter and spirit

Pulses getting dangerously close to Rs 100 per kilo, potatoes in West Bengal (a traditional exporter) crossing Rs 20 a kilo, make real the food price inflation that statisticians&rsquo; numbers signal. Inflation in primary food articles is currently running at over 13 per cent. Dun and Bradstreet forecasts that overall inflation will touch 6 per cent by the end of the current fiscal, fuelled by, among others, current high food prices and the impact of the drought. The 20 per cent deficit in the monsoon is slated to bring down kharif output by 15-20 per cent. The news couldn&rsquo;t get worse.

Subir Roy: Sound the food alarm

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