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

Business Standard

The resurgence of the monsoon in September, when it should normally have been on its way out, has lessened the concern about drought. But these rains have come so late in the season that wiping out the anticipated deficit in kharif output needs well-considered measures for this purpose. The strategy mooted by the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), therefore, needs to be implemented meticulously. The plan involves maximising the yields of standing crops, especially in areas which have received good rainfall, and compensatory crop production in the pre-rabi and rabi seasons to make up for the kharif shortfall. More importantly, it envisages measures for conserving rainwater for subsequent use in irrigation and other purposes. The underlying objective, obviously, is to convert the challenge of mitigating the adverse impact of erratic rainfall into an opportunity to boost overall farm production, besides putting in place the infrastructure for rainwater harvesting.

Drought-proofing agriculture

Ethanol from sugarcane is not an option available to water-deficient India.

Subir Roy: The way to crack the sugar dilemma

When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) finally ruled in favour of Brazil in its long fight with the US over its damaging cotton subisidies, the verdict was a double victory for developing countries. America&rsquo;s cotton subsidies have hurt a number of developing nations, particularly a clutch of sub-Saharan countries, and this in itself is cause for celebration.

Latha Jishnu: The IPR icing on Brazil's cotton victory

Price controls have rarely been known to solve problems caused by supply-demand mismatch, without provoking attendant aberrations or unwanted consequences. Yet the power regulator has gone ahead and notified a price cap on short-term power trades. According to an order of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), issued on Friday, there will be a price cap of Rs 8 per unit on inter-state day-ahead power transactions. This is said to be a transient measure for a limited period of 45 days, triggered by the high price volatility observed in this segment of the market. The move is ostensibly to protect the interests of consumers while balancing the regulator&rsquo;s statutory obligation to ensure &ldquo;reasonable&rdquo; return for the investor. These investors are said to be comfortable with a selling price of no more than Rs 7-8 per unit.

No price caps, please

Management control of Indian companies must be made more contestable than at present.

Nitin Desai: A feudal capitalism

While Jet capitulated, American Airlines had taken the bull by the horns.

Shyamal Majumdar: Calling the sick-out bluff

India is gaining a global reputation as a talented producer of a range of low-cost goods from automobiles to machine tools. This is not just a case of leveraging a cost arbitrage on labour but also a product of value engineering and research which is, in turn, the result of an inherently resource-saving mindset.

Kanika Datta: High standards for low cost

It&rsquo;s time for DTH to retire. That was the boast IPTV firm Smart Digivision made on huge billboards across the country when it began its MyWay IPTV services three months ago.

Shuchi Bansal: MyWay or the highway

Just how badly will the drought hit GDP growth? In 2002, when the shortage of rainfall was around the same as it is this year (20 per cent from the long-term average), agricultural growth fell to -7.2 per cent and, as a result, GDP growth in that year was just 3.8 per cent (average growth in the 5-year period 1997-2002 was 5.5 per cent). The mitigating factors this year, apart from the September rains, will be the farm-loan waiver and the NREGA expenditure.

Sunil Jain: Bharat holds the key

So, more Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence sixty two years ago. The per capita calorie intake, experts say, has dropped to what it was at the end of World War II. On top of it now, over 25 per cent of the country (177 districts) has been declared drought-prone. Prices or cereals and pulses have skyrocketed to unprecedented highs.

Sadanand Menon: Of hunger and its eradication

The new Goods and Services Tax (GST) is broadly as announced by Pranab Mukherjee in his Budget speech in July, and will comprise two parallel systems. The central government&rsquo;s system will replace the existing central excise framework and service tax structure, while also encompassing some other taxes that are currently not offset. The more difficult part of the transition is on the part of the states, which will have to extend the intra-state Value Added Tax (VAT) that was implemented in 2005 with an inter-state GST. This means that state-level taxes paid on inputs (goods and services) procured from State A will be deductible for the procurer located in State B. This is an enormous administrative challenge but, even before that hurdle is reached, some basic principles for harmonising tax rates and procedures have to be accepted and given effect to.

The best vs the good

After the head of the Commonwealth Games Federation, Michael Fennell, held out the veiled threat of taking away the Games from India (due to be held in October next year), the government has been in a tizzy. Central ministers Suresh Kalmadi and MS Gill and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit have quickly gone on record to say that things will fall into place well in time. That is, of course, a lot better than earlier ministerial statements, which likened the Games to an Indian wedding where everything remains fluid till all the pieces fall into place at the last minute. This is an odd way to explain away delays of several months, and is in fact a way of escaping a proper debate on what has gone wrong and why. It is a sorry thought that the government&rsquo;s ability to deliver has not improved in the 27 years since the Asian Games of 1982. Then too, preparations were behind schedule, and the situation was saved only after the government tasked Jagmohan with getting things in order.

The Fennell effect

The third G20 Summit is scheduled to be held in Pittsburgh on September 24-25, 2009. Earlier, the G20 finance ministers met in London on September 4-5, 2009. The G20 website and media reports indicate that there is consensus on continuation of countercyclical monetary and fiscal stimulus and about efforts to avoid protectionist tendencies in trade. Hopefully, the G20 will be able to dispel the incipient clouds on the trade horizon created by the US raising tariffs on imports of Chinese tyres.

Jaimini Bhagwati: G20 and business as usual?

Over the past couple of years, the volatility of prices of contemporary Indian art made even the most exotic commodities look tame. I realised this when I saw that a 2006 Subodh Gupta painting, part of his Untitled series of paintings of kitchen utensils, sold on Saffron Art last week for $209,000; significantly, there were only two bidders for the work, suggesting also that may not have been a market clearing price. What is amazing is that a similar work &mdash; from the same 2006 series, almost identical content, identical in size &mdash; had sold for over $1.4 million at Saffron&rsquo;s June 2008 auction.

Jamal Mecklai: Sufferin&#39; art

Denied the chance, by a beady-eyed weight-watching travel friend, to carry with me into the heights of Uttarakhand Goethe&rsquo;s The Sorrows of Young Werther, I revenged myself by purchasing, at the highest (and wettest) place on our itinerary, a copy of Bill Aitken&rsquo;s Touching upon the Himalaya: Excursions and Enquiries (Indus, 2004). Now that I am back at sweat level in Delhi and have actually read the Goethe, I realise that Young Werther would have made poor company.

Mountain lines

Since my first article for this column nearly five years ago, the number of wine labels available in India has grown so large that it&rsquo;s now difficult to write about wines from individual countries and do justice to the subject.

The wine revolution in India

It&rsquo;s not the grey hair and wrinkles and gravity-affected flesh. It&rsquo;s not even the increasing tendency to spend a convivial evening at a bar talking about mortgages and sluggish thyroids and failed relationships with friends. Those are merely incidental. No, the sure-fire way to feel old is to have the people who were part of your youth die on you. Grandparents, parents, old friends, musicians. Movie stars.

Dancing king

Most journalists covering fashion have concluded that the recently held Van Heusen India Men&rsquo;s Week (VHIMW) was a success. I feel that it failed on a very important count: there was, as is always the case, no real critique of what one saw on the ramp. Most articles on fashion weeks are full of silly praise and a rehash of the designers&rsquo; press releases. And, for this, I would blame the designers themselves.

You've got male

Our country is altogether unique in the way it copes with its despondency, its disappointments, its crises. I do not know of any other country which can alternate between crisis and catastrophe as ours does &mdash; and overcomes the challenge.

'We are an audacious nation, and should be proud we are so'

While Norman Borlaug was celebrated for hybrid seed varieties, several small groups of farmers are today searching for those rare traditional seeds that are still being sown in some places in preference to hybrids.

Sreelatha Menon: A drought of seeds

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 859 - Opinion Specials