The other day, I spent ten minutes with my eyes closed in the neighbourhood park, trying to experience the world of the blind. With few non-visual markers (other than the bush I almost stepped into) to enable me to navigate, the going was tough. Just when I was beginning to appreciate my other senses, I tripped heavily against a bench. The words of Nidhi Kaila, an IIM Calcutta alumna who runs Esha &mdash; an organisation for the blind &mdash; came back to me.

Geetanjali Krishna: A sight for sore eyes

Business Standard

It&rsquo;s unfair that the rain in Mumbai hogs all the news, so even though the unprecedented cloudburst over Delhi this week was every bit as spectacular, and the traffic jams would have given the financial capital a run for its money, all the media did was gripe about drains and silting and pinning the blame on somebody instead of passing the buck. It&rsquo;s true that, unlike Mumbai, you&rsquo;d be hard put to find stories of people helping each other during the course of the flooding &mdash; the Delhi driver was more likely to run you over than extend a helping hand &mdash; but even so, it was a momentous event that required more human interest coverage.

Kishore Singh: A pain in the rain

Trying out exotic new cuisines &mdash; often laden with so-called &ldquo;luxury&rdquo; ingredients &mdash; can turn into a rivetting game of upmanship for the snobs among foodies; rivetting for them, boring for the rest of humanity. And you don&rsquo;t need me to tell you how such snobbery is only increasing by the day.

Food from Himachal

Businessmen are careful people; ask them to comment on the Budget and they will give the finance minister nine marks out of 10, if not all 10. Ask bankers to comment on credit policy, and it is only the heads of foreign banks who will give you an inkling of their real thoughts; the state-owned banks&rsquo; chairmen in particular will border on obsequiousness. Go to a meeting of Ficci or CII, and watch the ingratiating tone with which ministers are addressed.

T N Ninan: Pointing fingers

Lodhi Gardens in Delhi is a lovely place, full of trees and birds and squirrels. It is one of Delhi&rsquo;s many &ldquo;green lungs&rdquo;, and in my view one of the prettiest, which is why I stepped off the walking track the other day, trying to get a better look at the pink water lilies growing beside the fountain.

Fractured verdict

That China feels protocol conveys power shows it isn't quite there yet.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: The power protocol

The right is limited to some children for some kind of schooling with no guarantee of universal access or quality education for all.

Latha Jishnu: The right to cut-rate education

When the finance minister presents the Finance Bill, the Budget Division of the Ministry of Finance prepares several documents which are also laid before the Parliament. One such document is the &lsquo;Revenue Foregone Statement&rsquo;. It was first presented during Budget 2006-07. A second edition of the statement was presented during Budget 2007-08 as an annexure and also as a standalone document entitled &lsquo;Statement of Revenue Foregone&rsquo;. The intention behind issuing the document is perhaps to bring about transparency in matters of tax policy. A cursory glance over this year&rsquo;s statement suggests that for corporate taxpayers, the effective tax rate is 22.24 per cent, as against the rate of 20.60 per cent clocked in during 2006-07. Sample companies with profits before taxes (PBT) of Rs 500 crore and above accounted for 54.98 per cent of the total PBT and 54.02 per cent of the total corporate income tax payable.

Tax Revenue Foregone Statement: An Interesting Study

Something fresh and bold was visible in NSD's just-concluded graduate show this year.

The young and the restless

Arvind Subramanian made an important point when he wrote on this page last week that India had lost the &ldquo;narrative&rdquo; on the climate change issue. As Mr Subramanian pointed out, the worst offenders, when it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, have adopted a holier-than-thou posture, and have managed to paint India as the villain of the piece&mdash;the country that is standing in the way of a global compact on dealing with the climate change issue. That such an absurd &ldquo;narrative&rdquo;, which has nothing to do with the reality, can gain currency in many circles should be considered a failure of Indian economic/environmental diplomacy. It is also a case of undisguised duplicity on the part of the developed nations, and it is just as well that Mr Ramesh took on Hillary Clinton during her India visit, and more recently Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern report in Britain.

Regaining the narrative

China&rsquo;s controversial Green Dam has been damned for now. &ldquo;Net nanny&rdquo;, the web-content filtering software that was to be mandatorily installed in every new computer sold after July 1, 2009 following a directive by China&rsquo;s Ministry of Industry and Technology, has been stalled after a surprisingly furious public backlash. In the eye of the storm was not the censorship attempt per se, but the larger issue of its netizens&rsquo; right to information.

Anurag Viswanath: Green Dam on the back burner

The rise in the average volumes at stock exchanges is a signal that financial service providers would see a rise in their toplines.

Some relief for brokerages

It is while facing the hon&rsquo;ble finance minister that I am fed by some sense of nostalgia. I was mentioning it to the leader and the deputy leader of my party that this is my eighth term in Parliament.

'What the world has experienced is an economic tsunami'

A public health ministry acts as an intelligence agency for diseases. However, India is yet to have such a body, despite facing epidemics every year.

Sreelatha Menon: Wanted, a CBI for diseases

Thanks to a friend, after a break of 15 years, I restarted yoga a few months back. I also picked up the Bhagwad Gita &lsquo;as it is&rsquo; and made it a part of the extended Saturday sessions. This could be considered a mystic exercise as spiritualism, supernaturalism and magic get bundled together as one.

The mystic time

The increased liquidity that speculators provide has to be weighed against the price hikes that their activities cause.

A V Rajwade: New dominant minority-II

Petroleum Minister Murli Deora&rsquo;s actions, or at least Anil Ambani&rsquo;s interpretation of them, may have got the government into all manner of embarrassment, but the greatest loss is undoubtedly Deora&rsquo;s. Anil Ambani&rsquo;s decision to openly accuse Deora of siding with elder brother Mukesh Ambani, in a sense, is a big defeat for everything Deora stands for.

Everyone's friend loses one

A very high volume settlement ended with an upwards breakout. The carryover pattern was excellent and FIIs are back in the thick of action.

Expect 600-point swings either way

Gold rose for a second day, set for a monthly gain, as the dollar declined against major currencies, boosting the metal&rsquo;s appeal as an alternative investment.

Gold gains in Asia

Sometimes wishful thinking pays off. RBI, in making passwords or PIN mandatory for credit card online transactions has taken the first step in protecting card fraud, the most rampant of technology offences, belonging to the wider genre of economic offences. It may be simplistic, but not incorrect to attribute the upswing to opportunities created by globalisation and the increasingly important role of information transmission. Also, such crimes involve players from multiple jurisdictions, who deploy sophisticated technology.

Laws governing economic offences need to be updated

The International Monetary Fund will probably sell 200 metric tons of gold annually starting next year, &ldquo;potentially weighing on prices,&rdquo; Citigroup Inc. said in a report.

IMF gold sales may begin in 2010

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