It is only in retrospect that I realise how many things I took for granted when I lived in Mumbai. Roads, street lights, water, sanitation, garbage disposal, etc. were not issues which were top of the mind as I rushed to catch my 8.20 train to Churchgate Station. Or in later years (as I prospered) when I got into my car to read the entire bunch of morning papers on my way to work every morning.

Keya Sarkar: Tagore never ate &#39;Kurkure&#39;

Business Standard

The US' 14 engineering targets should get us thinking along similar lines, but strong inter-disciplinary activity and cooperation between academia, government and industry is vital for this, says Dinesh Mohan.

Dinesh Mohan: Challenges of the 21st century

Dawling!&rdquo; the large woman said into the most smothering embrace of my entire life, &ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo; Before I could extract myself and come up with a suitable reply &mdash; being not quite sure who she was to begin with &mdash; she had already sailed adrift to the gentleman standing next to me, quietly quaffing his drink.

Kishore Singh: What&#39;s the matter, dawling?

The Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum has become a ready reckoner for policymakers to know where their country stands and what measures are needed to improve matters. Over 100 tables measuring various attributes are grouped under 12 &lsquo;pillars&rsquo; on which a country&rsquo;s competitiveness edifice rests. The scores coming under the pillars make up the global competitiveness index and help determine the rank of a country. The report uses both hard data available from multilateral agency sources and the findings of the Forum&rsquo;s own global executive opinion survey. The latest report for 2009-10 has assimilated 13,000 responses from high-level executives in 133 countries.

Get the basics right

Buying gold as a hedge at these prices may be dangerous as the appreciation may have discounted the fundamentals.

Don&#39;t be bold on gold

The economic future of West Bengal has received a second major blow with the state government cancelling a major information technology project that was to come up on the outskirts of Kolkata, one in which anchor investors like Infosys and Wipro had been allotted land. This comes after the cancellation of the Nano project of Tata Motors, which ended the state&rsquo;s attempt to emerge as an automobile hub. Both the projects have come to grief for the same reason &mdash; farmers&rsquo; disaffection over losing their land to proposed new projects. In the case of the Nano project at Singur, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee led a successful agitation against state acquisition of fertile agricultural land.

Land dilemmas

The revival of the monsoon in north India over the last few weeks certainly seems to have cheered the stock markets. The assumption seems to be that while the damage to the summer crop is difficult to undo, delayed rain will help the winter or rabi crop.

Abheek Barua: Preparing for recovery

Looking at sterilisation costs alone incorrectly assumes that non-intervention has no costs.

A V Rajwade: Managing exchange rates

Sebi&rsquo;s decision to abolish entry loads has given mutual funds a chance to relook their model which hasn&rsquo;t caught the fancy of retail investors in a big way.

Pratip Kar: A game change for mutual funds

Human life is about celebration, which is the act, process of showing appreciation, gratitude and/or remembrance, notably as a social event. We celebrate various aspects in, about and around our life. Directly or indirectly celebration is about time, passing time. Conventional belief does not give a shape or ascribe a form to time like a beautiful, colourful surface that can be the reason for party.

Head and shoulder

K VP Ramachandra Rao, close friend and a trusted adviser to former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, once said, &ldquo;YSR is the sun and I am only a satellite. The light around me will be there only till he is there.

CH Prashanth Reddy: Chief strategist

From September 1, 2009, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act 1969 has been laid to rest, and the Commission will not accept fresh filings. By now all readers are aware of the roadblocks involved, being various court cases, with challenges to the appointment of the chairperson, the status of pending cases and existing employees. Amendments to the Competition Act 2002, and its slow passage in the Houses of Parliament delayed the introduction of an effective anti trust law, a vital element in an open economy which aspires to be a global major.

'Toothless' MRTP is laid to rest

Trading volumes eased in the derivatives market as the cash market locked into a narrow range. FIIs cut back on derivatives exposure though they were heavy net buyers.

Low volatility, early expiry

In the good old days, it was common for any doctor to be accosted at a dinner party and treated to a litany woes. Today, even a layman has come to realise different doctors belong to different specialisations and a dermatologist is as different from a pediatrician as a plumber is from a fireman. Unfortunately, this consciousness is yet to develop among chartered accountants (CAs), who, to a layman are supposed to be experts in taxes and audits.

Boutiques to departmental stores - the evolving accounting profession

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (&ldquo;SEBI&rdquo;) published the SEBI (Aid for Legal Proceedings) Guidelines, 2009 (&ldquo;Legal Aid Guidelines&rdquo;) last month &ndash; available at http://www.sebi.gov.in/acts/legalaid.pdf.

SEBI legal aid riddled with hurdles

A move in the right direction but in a discriminating manner has been made by the Ministry of Finance in extending the facility of availing of advance ruling only for public sector. This has been extended to all sectors only in respect of import of projects, which are in the nature of a full plant such as power plant or paper plant. With regards to central excise and service tax the facility has not been extended to private sector at all. The real beneficiary is only the public sector.

Advance Ruling Extension - a trickle down effect for the private sector

The new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) gives some more flexibility to export-oriented units (EoUs) and makes some provisions simpler. It could have done more.

FTP allows EoUs to procure finished goods for consolidation

Pranab Mukherjee should be complimented for emphasising the need for restraint while ministers spend public money, and indeed even their own money. Some of his colleagues have gone overboard and promised to travel in the cargo hold, while others have argued that such &ldquo;austerity&rdquo; (as if flying in an aircraft is an austere activity) does not achieve much economy in total government expenditure. Of course, but what about the message that goes out to citizens? Yet others argue that more money will be saved by addressing inefficiency and corruption. Perhaps, but why does that have to be a choice? These reactions quite simply miss the point.

Restraint, not austerity

Ministerial expenses on travel have always remained a tiny portion of the Union government&rsquo;s total expenditure. Ten years ago, tour expenses of central ministers were estimated at Rs 40 crore, accounting for about 0.01 per cent of the government&rsquo;s total expenditure that year. In 2009-10, they are budgeted at Rs 161 crore and their share in the government&rsquo;s total expenditure is marginally up to 0.02 per cent.

A K Bhattacharya: Am minister, will travel

The world owes a huge debt to Norman E Borlaug, who passed away at 95 in Texas on Saturday. Dr Borlaug, as is well known, was the agricultural scientist who triggered what came to be called the Green Revolution in several countries, by breeding high-yielding wheat seeds. But he was more than that, for he was first a humanist who campaigned relentlessly for eradicating world hunger. He gave up a promising career in DuPont to take up an assignment with the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, to conceive strategies for combating hunger in that country. It was this challenge that made him realise the need for raising crop yields through better seeds and production technologies. His natural instinct as a person born and brought up in the early part of his life on a farm stood him in good stead in evolving dwarf wheat strains that could give high yields when combined with fertiliser and irrigation.

A humanist first

To many, the collapse of Lehman Brothers was the defining moment in the trajectory of the Great Recession. At one level, it demonstrated the malignant force of excessive risk-taking. At another, though, it persuaded a great many people that an economic crisis was at hand and there was no time to lose in initiating a massive response. One year later, there is little question that the bottom of the trough has been reached and a slow crawl out is under way. Massive infusions of liquidity, the shoring up of the balance sheets of fragile financial institutions and, in some cases, fast-acting public spending combined to arrest and eventually reverse the post-Lehman slide. Now, the focus has begun to shift to exit strategies.

A year after Lehman

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Keya Sarkar: Tagore never ate 'Kurkure'