A lovely piece on dry martini that I once read went something like this: &ldquo;Bartender A let the shadow of the vermouth bottle pass over the cocktail glass, while B merely bowed in the direction of France.

Still making wine

Business Standard

My friends often accuse me of being a bit on the detached side. While I&rsquo;m open to criticism, I have to say that after spending so much quality time hanging out and cooing supportively into their ears, I find it a little hurtful that they continue to see through me so easily. I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that they don&rsquo;t use the phrase my family does, which begins with &lsquo;cold-blooded&rsquo; and ends with &lsquo;reptile&rsquo;.

Rolling stones

I think of Asterix as a comic version of wily Odysseus,&rdquo; says the brilliant translator Anthea Bell of the subject of her best-known work, the Gaulish warrior whose village, forever frozen in 50 BCE, still holds out against Julius Caesar&rsquo;s Roman legions. Frankly JC doesn&rsquo;t have a chance of completing his conquest of Gaul so long as Asterix and the rest of the villagers can count on the magic potion brewed by the druid Getafix, which gives them supernatural strength.

Comic history

Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the generally accepted index used in discussions on climate change was the per capita emission of greenhouse gases. With emissions per head that were 10 times India&rsquo;s, the United States was, therefore, obligated to do more than India when it came to corrective action. That was the basis of the Kyoto Protocol of late 1997, under which the biggest polluters (the rich countries) took on commitments to reduce their emission levels.

T N Ninan: Hold fast

After two successive quarters of GDP growth of 5.8 per cent, the first signs of improvement have been provided by the estimates for the first quarter of 2009-10. GDP grew by 6.1 per cent over the corresponding quarter of last year. That isn&rsquo;t very different from the previous two quarters, but is reassuring nonetheless.

Out of the trough

M Govinda Rao on the shortcomings in the code.

M Govinda Rao: Can we afford the draft direct taxes code?

Teenagers watch movies and play online games, but they don&rsquo;t read any more. Today&rsquo;s children aren&rsquo;t interested in books. Familiar complaints, often voiced in &ldquo;readers are an endangered species&rdquo; arguments, but they miss two crucial points.

Nilanjana S Roy: Teenage wasteland: What to read before you get old

State governments have to stop using pictures of political leaders while publicising their successes.

A K Bhattacharya: Not picture-perfect

The second Manmohan Singh government has got off to a more ambitious start in its first 100 days than any since perhaps Rajiv Gandhi&rsquo;s in 1985. To be sure, the Vajpayee government did the atomic big bang once it assumed office, and the Narasimha Rao government did the big bang economic reforms in its first few weeks, in 1991. UPA-II has done nothing remotely comparable in terms of &lsquo;big bang&rsquo; impact. But in terms of the range of initiatives, legislative and executive, perhaps only the Rajiv Gandhi government compares. A quick reading of the list should make this clear.

A good beginning

Few cities in the world have been as dramatically transformed as Delhi in the last hundred years. From a decayed Mughal city at the end of the 19th century to the grand imperial capital and then to the capital of independent India. It is now one of the largest and fastest-growing mega-cities in the world. Spread across three states, the metropolitan region has a population of 16mn. However, this apparent success hides virtual civic collapse. Despite ambitious master plans and large sums of money, Delhi has proved unmanageable.

Sanjeev Sanyal: Reinventing Delhi: Cutting the Gordian Knot

India has to change its entire culture of water usage if it is to avoid that eventuality.

Subir Roy: The Great North Indian Desert, circa 2035

Two weeks ago Justice S Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi High Court dismissed with costs the writ petition filed by the German pharmaceuticals giant Bayer Corporation against the Union of India, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and Cipla. The importance of Justice Bhat&rsquo;s judgment cannot be overestimated. It is a clear &mdash; and sharp &mdash; judgment that puts paid to attempts by foreign companies to modify India&rsquo;s regulations to suit their commercial interest.

Latha Jishnu: Setting aside Bayer's 'spurious' claims

The finance minister has done well to clarify that some of the tax rates and brackets mentioned in the draft Direct Taxes Code are only indicative. In doing so, he has signaled that the government is open to revisiting the rates and slabs, perhaps in response to feedback that the ministry has got. But the problems go beyond rates and slabs, questions need also to be asked about some of the concepts that have gone into some of the proposals in the Code. The exercise is welcome in that it introduces simplicity and medium-term stability into the tax system and rates, but the Code should be finalised only after a full discussion with all stake-holders, and the vetting of some of its assumptions.

Code Red

The plan to use hydrogen as fuel to run a small fleet of vehicles, to ferry athletes from their &ldquo;village&rdquo; to the contest arenas during the forthcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi, is experimental in nature, but a &ldquo;first&rdquo; nonetheless in a city which has put its entire public transport system on the pollution-free compressed natural gas (CNG). The world is looking to hydrogen as a future source of clean energy to run automobiles and also to power factories, businesses and homes. Hydrogen is of course the most abundantly available element on earth. When used as fuel in an engine, it is reckoned to be about 30 per cent more efficient than conventional fuels like petrol. And when it is used through the fuel cell route, its efficiency betters petrol by between 100 per cent and 200 per cent. The Indian Oil Corporation, which has mooted the plan to operate hydrogen vehicles during the Commonwealth Games, plans to use a mix of hydrogen and CNG in a 20:80 ratio.

Tapping hydrogen

India&rsquo;s commerce minister and his senior officials have been unusually candid about their motives in hosting this week&rsquo;s conclave of trade ministers and officials in New Delhi to revive the Doha trade negotiations (the so-called Doha Development Round, or DDR).

Suman Bery: Mood Music

High-quality education creates opportunities and choices for personal success and growth. It is natural, therefore, for parents to spend a lot of time and energy in pursuit of good schools and colleges for their offspring. With the demand for quality educational institutions far outstripping its supply, the so-called reputed schools manage to get in the driver&rsquo;s seat by attracting smarter students via strict selection criteria. As a result, only potential high academic achievers are admitted in good quality institutions while lesser mortals end up in the low-quality ones. A clear hierarchy of educational institutions as well as of students, in turn, influences the future pay-off from education.

Vidya Mahambare: Inclusive education

Whether to continue wearing those comical short pants is not the only crisis in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Quick on the heels of their brand new and &lsquo;young&rsquo; sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat expressing a need for the &lsquo;cultural&rsquo; organisation to keep pace with the times by presenting a more respectable front through a costume makeover, it turns out that they need to do some cosmetic dressing for their political front, the BJP too.

Sadanand Menon: The cultural travails of the RSS

If Dara was such a wonderful prince, why is he not more warmly remembered? There are some things going for him: he was the eldest son and possibly his father&rsquo;s favourite, his brother was one of the great baddies of Indian history, his defeat was tragic and precipitated by betrayal and poor advice more than impatience or stupidity, and he was a scholarly fellow with unorthodox religious views &mdash; views which place him in line with his great grandfather Akbar, the Great. Yet, unlike Akbar, Dara wins our sympathy, not our affection.

Portrait of Dara

It&rsquo;s a truism that the number of wines available is so large that they confuse, even intimidate consumers &mdash; few of whom have either the time or inclination to keep track of the hundreds of new wines being launched each year.

Rating at the tasting

This last year, two friends of mine lost their fathers to Indian healthcare.

Rest In Peace

The system of monitoring the environmental impact of projects has failed and so there is little hope for the self-certification process.

EIA's see-no-evil policy

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

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