The recent focus on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China has shed little light on what is actually going on there, although something certainly is.

Ajai Shukla: Worried dragon; outraged elephant

Business Standard

Though I have been an avid consumer of all sorts of media, I never seriously looked at them from a child&rsquo;s perspective. Now, with a five- month baby who is fascinated by any screen or newspaper, I have started wondering about his media choices as he grows up. Currently all he thinks of is eating the newspaper or the screen. But eventually these will form the fodder for his mind, as all media does.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Making media child-friendly

The third G-20 summit begins on Thursday amidst a general sense of relief about the state of the global economy. The group will take credit for having appreciated the severity of the crisis last November and evoking very strong policy responses from its member countries, which have clearly proved to be effective.

The wisdom of restraint

Whatever the Collegium of Supreme Court judges decides on the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice PD Dinakaran case, it is unlikely that it will be the end of the matter. If it decides against his elevation to the Supreme Court, it will be accepting the validity of the allegations against him and this will throw up the obvious question as to how he became the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court in the first place and what, if any, is the mechanism to check corruption in the higher judiciary. If however the Collegium dismisses the allegations as untrue, it will have to face wrath of a bar association that includes some of the most respected lawyers in the country, who are convinced the allegations have a basis in fact. This is not the first time the judiciary has been put in the dock.

Judges, judge thyselves

The stalled Land Acquisition Bill should be completely overhauled.

Pranab Bardhan: The vexed issue of land acquisition

Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal has established that one does not have to wait for long before initiating change within the government system. What&rsquo;s more, he has shown that it is possible to meet a pre-determined target date for initiating that change.

A K Bhattacharya: The lost world

Arbitration is supposed to be a speedy and economic way to resolve disputes. But three judgments of the Supreme Court delivered last week shake this trust.

M J Antony: Arbitration tribulations

Cross-border M&amp;As get cheaper and easier, but this requires one set of laws - on takeover codes, for instance - for local firms and another for the dual-listed ones.

'Is dual listing of shares a good idea?'

Arun Babu is father-in-law to my niece. I have come to pay him a courtesy call, to utter an unspoken thank you for having visited us after my mother died. These reciprocities have to be maintained, because he is kutumba, that is, in-laws with whom one must be particular about social etiquette. It is not that Arun Babu is the nit-picking type.

Subir Roy: Time hangs lightly

Over the last two decades, India&rsquo;s socio-economic fabric has seen an unprecedented change. Such is the nation&rsquo;s demographic profile, this change is not yet complete and will continue at the same fast pace for the next two or more decades before some semblance of steadiness is achieved.

Arvind Singhal: A new class of entrepreneurs

What&rsquo;s more important to a hungry child? Food now, or future environmental worries? I know I&rsquo;m on sticky ground here, but it would be hypocritical not to ask the question when the world is mourning the death of one person who, literally, helped save millions in the developing world &mdash; in our part of it, especially &mdash; from hunger.

Barun Roy: Beyond Borlaug

With a focused and integrated approach, India has the potential to produce more than double the current output of pulses.

Pratik Kadakia & Jeffry Jacob: Raising India&#39;s &#39;pulse&#39; rate

The complex Bharti-MTN deal has hit a big roadblock, with the stock market regulator mandating that an open offer would be required if more than 15 per cent of another company&rsquo;s equity were being acquired even in the form of GDRs and/or ADRs. Till the Securities and Exchange Board of India&rsquo;s belated ruling, the generally held view in the stock market fraternity was that Bharti-MTN would get around the mandatory 20 per cent open offer requirement, since the transaction would take place using GDRs/ADRs (which have no voting rights, and therefore there is no question of any control being acquired). Sebi&rsquo;s order has, therefore, come as a surprise, and could be questioned on grounds of logic. The need for an open offer for 20 per cent of Bharti&rsquo;s shares by MTN will mean the need for another long, hard look at the deal&rsquo;s financials.

Too much static

The Cabinet&rsquo;s decision to extend by a year the stock limits and other controls on the private trade in rice, pulses, edible oils and sugar, perpetuates a regime that has proved ineffectual in reining in food inflation. Restraints on the commodity trade have been in place since August 2006, when the enforcement of an earlier notification of February 2002 that allowed licence- and controls-free trading was held in abeyance. Futures trading in several items of mass consumption has also been suspended though, in cases like wheat, also reintroduced. None of these measures has checked the rise in food prices. While general inflation has disappeared after peaking in 2008, double-digit food price inflation has continued.

Counter-productive controls


Two years have elapsed since the early stages of the global financial crisis led to the notorious run on the Northern Rock Bank in the UK and blew a big hole in the prevailing, three-pillar, monetary policy (new) orthodoxy of an independent central bank, charged with a single objective of an explicit inflation rate and a separate, single regulator for all financial institutions and instruments (see my article, &ldquo;The New Orthodoxy crumbles&rdquo; in Business Standard, October 25, 2007 for

Shankar Acharya: Policy continuity at the Reserve Bank

If the system's broken, why fix it? Government policy is to replace it with an 'authority', without sorting out the details.

Sunita Narain: Why authorise it?

Ford unveils the small car that it will make in India from next year; Renault announces fresh Indian plans, adding Nissan as a partner after having already selected Bajaj for a joint venture; Volkswagen in turn will introduce its small car next year. By all accounts, the car industry in India is about to acquire serious scale, as new car plants start dotting the maps of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat and Uttaranchal.

A small-car hub

The reconstitution of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) earlier this month, within three years of its being set up, suggests that the government is unsure of how to fulfil this mandate. Actually, the solutions exist, and have been demonstrated on the ground; they need replication. For although there are no firm estimates of how far the tiger population has diminished since Project Tiger began in 1972 &mdash; the &ldquo;pug mark&rdquo; census method used then has been widely discredited &mdash; it is easy to see that tigers are disappearing from India&rsquo;s jungles. Conserving the approximately 1,650-odd Royal Bengal tigers that India now has is essentially a question of institutional reform.

Protecting the tiger

Investors should be careful in assuming that dollar weakness is a given; this could easily reverse.

Akash Prakash: The dollar carry trade?

The idea of the MRP is becoming less relevant and should be replaced by portfolio pricing.

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