One of the notable episodes of Rajiv Gandhi&rsquo;s leadership of the government was the manner in which he dealt with the drought of 1987. Action was taken quickly, and it was taken purposively.

T N Ninan: Dealing with a drought

Business Standard

&ldquo;The fiscal consolidation achieved so far has encouraged us to take the first step. Accordingly, I propose to set up an autonomous DMO and, in the first phase, a Middle Office will be set up to facilitate the transition to a full-fledged DMO.

Rajeev Malik: Good idea, bad timing

It&rsquo;s going from 20 per cent to 25 per cent!&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s coming down to four per cent.

A case of sour grapes?

A large and long-established slum close to my neighbourhood, on the edge of the All India Medical Institute, was removed some years ago and its inhabitants sold tiny plots of land in a resettlement colony on the southern outskirts. A double-lane inner-city highway has come up where the old slum existed, as part of the feverish building activity before the Commonwealth Games next year, and the resettled population, it seems, is comparatively better off.

Sunil Sethi: Delhi&#39;s double displacement

A friend in school once told me that the most active thing he&rsquo;d ever seen me do was sneeze. I might have spent Games periods hiding in a luggage storage area and reading, but that apart, it was a downright calumnious thing to say, and I held it against him for a couple of decades.

Party smart

Toyota is coming to terms with the &ldquo;largest car maker of the world&rdquo; title in a very global manner. The penchant for aggressive expansion is now curbed in favour of consolidation and a renewed focus on quality &mdash; when it comes to cars as well as sales and service. Things will be different when it comes to India though.

Moving along swiftly

No matter how much our cities have changed in the last two decades, we haven&rsquo;t yet had more than the faintest foretaste of the revolution to come. I don&rsquo;t mean mass social unrest; rather, a significant reshaping of our view of the urban environment.

Urban legends

Last weekend, a full year after it had started, Video Wednesdays at Delhi&rsquo;s Gallery Espace came to an end. It was a simple idea &mdash; to devote a single Wednesday, every month, to video art. By the time it ended, it had managed to show the works of several artists without necessarily having an entire video show for them.

Video as a medium

A&nbsp;few journalists met Buta Singh, Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, about two years ago, when the issue of reservation of jobs in the private sector was at its peak &mdash; should the private sector be forced to reserve jobs for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and if a statutory arrangement including a constitutional amendment needs to be moved for this purpose.

Aditi Phadnis: The politics of caste

The earliest that credit demand will revive is 2010-11, and this year&rsquo;s growth is unlikely to be more than 12-14 per cent, says Rahul Chhaparwal. So government borrowing may not crowd out private spending.

Rahul Chhaparwal: No revival in credit demand

I saw him one morning when I went for a walk in the local park &mdash; staring into space while wielding his broom. &ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; cried a lady when he swept over her slippered feet, &ldquo;if you only looked where you were sweeping, you&rsquo;d clean the park more effectively.&rdquo; She was right, for behind the gardener, the detritus of last evening&rsquo;s play remained even though he had supposedly cleaned the area. He barely looked up and snarled, &ldquo;just let me do my work!&rdquo; Fifteen minutes later, &lsquo;work&rsquo; done, I saw him sleeping on a bench. Two hours later, I happened to pass that way again. The man was still asleep.

Geetanjali Krishna: A thorny life

At first, because she was travelling in a different time zone with a flexible itinerary, and since we didn&rsquo;t know when she or I would be able to take, or make, calls to each other, my wife suggested that for the duration of the month she was away, it would be best if we stayed connected via email. This seemed like a good idea, even though it remained a puzzle whether to sign on with a &lsquo;good morning&rsquo; when it was night here, or sign off with a &lsquo;good night&rsquo; when the sun was rising over the horizon there. Later, when she was back, but still not at work, her jet-lag seemed in danger of becoming a chronic condition, so she&rsquo;d be sleeping when I was at work, and pottering around at night while the rest of the household slept. And that is why, in close to two months, we had been bereft of any real conversation.

Kishore Singh: Luv&#39;s just a label, guys!

Bubble economies don&rsquo;t last, and crises bring you back to reality. The truth of both these assertions has become manifest in recent weeks. Consider the sectors where demand first nosedived, and has now revived&mdash;automobiles and housing&mdash;as well as other sectors where business models based on high-flying customers have been turned around. In all of them, businessmen see more clearly than before that the fortune lies at the bottom of CK Prahalad&rsquo;s pyramid.

Waking up to the mass market

There have been raging debates on two major issues&mdash;whether our honourable judges should make their assets public and whether Indian cricketers/the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should ratify the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) Code. While the two appear to be separate issues, there is a common thread&mdash;the common man&rsquo;s right to know.

Gopal Jain: Debating transparency

Wall Street is jeering Yahoo! Inc Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Carol Bartz, for the deal she cut with Microsoft Corp last week. The blame is misplaced.

Yang is gorilla in room on Yahoo-Microsoft

Sir, 30 years ago I was the Mayor of Bombay. At that time, we had a man called Dr N B Prasad. He was also from Andhra Pradesh. Dr Prasad was the Chairman of ONGC. He came to sign an agreement for supply of gas from Bombay High to the domestic city of Bombay.

'Nothing to do with the dispute of  industrialists'

The Right To Food Bill talks of everything - entitlements, the different people who should be entitled, the way the food should flow to targets...

Sreelatha Menon: A Food Security Law Minus Food

Investing in gas-related businesses carry the promise of decent profits, but at a huge risk.

For the risk-takers

Tata Indicom's Photon Plus broadband seems to deliver on its promise.

Surf the net at lightspeed

The Centre has decided to continue to hold not less than 51 per cent of the paid up share capital in listed public enterprises, even after disinvestment. Thus, those SOEs will continue to enjoy the &lsquo;government company' status. The government decision reflects government's intention to use these enterprises as an instrument to achieve certain national objectives. The Prime Minister in his speech delivered at the conference of chief executives of Central Public Sector Enterprises held in New Delhi on March 8, 2007 said, &ldquo;The revitalization of the public sector is an integral part of our strategy of promoting &lsquo;inclusive growth&rsquo;. We regard the public sector as an engine of growth, a source of employment generation and as an important source of R&amp;D in our industrial sector. Our Government's policy has been to remove all irritants coming in the way of healthy functioning of public enterprises&quot; (Source: http://dpe.nic.in/newsite/gcgcpse.

Corporate governance in state-owned enterprises

Retrospective amendments are becoming a regular phenomenon in recent budgets. Such proposals for amendments are being resorted to primarily to neutralise the interpretation given by the courts or tide over adverse decisions against the Revenue Department.

Menace of retrospective amendments

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