The Obama administration is increasingly signalling that the US will not continue to be the world&rsquo;s consumer and importer of last resort. The clearest statements came last month from Larry Summers, White House economics director, in a speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and in an interview with the Financial Times.

Fred Bergsten & Arvind Subramanian: Resolving global imbalances

Business Standard

India&rsquo;s aviation crisis never seems to end. Just a few weeks ago, private airlines threatened to go on strike unless the government gave in to their demands to rationalise aviation turbine fuel prices as well as did something about the high airport charges in the country. With the government threatening to take serious action, the airlines backed down, though the crisis in the industry persists.

Surajeet Das Gupta: Aviation&#39;s ground handling crisis

A brief daily skimming of the Net this week may amply convey the real difficulty of being Khan. If prefixed by Shahrukh and followed, in caps, by the letters US, what occurs is an eruption or amplification of the trouble the name spells in people&rsquo;s hearts. You don&rsquo;t have to enter &ldquo;movie star&rdquo; or &ldquo;Muslim&rdquo; or &ldquo;detention&rdquo; to make yourself better understood.

Sunil Sethi: The difficulty of being Khan

I saw a quotation the other day that made me wonder a bit. I don&rsquo;t remember the exact words, but the gist of it was thus: We all commit transgressions, only some of us get caught. Given that I saw it at an exhibition of artworks by the inmates of Tihar Jail, the thought was particularly piquant. For many of us tend to think that inmates of jail are &lsquo;people like them&rsquo;, quite distinct from people like us. &ldquo;This is the thought I had when I passed the Tihar Jail in early 2007,&rdquo; said Anubhav Nath of Ramchander Nath Foundation, one of the two curators of the exhibition. &ldquo;I asked myself,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;why is it that most of us just choose to ignore the Jail?&rdquo; So unlike the multitudes who probably go past the jail everyday without pausing to wonder what happens behind its walls, Nath decided to enter its portals and see for himself.

Geetanjali Krishna: Art to set you free

My son has been searching for face masks in the city for some time now, but with little luck. It seems the panicking crowds in Delhi have ended up hoarding them, which is hardly unusual, though as yet there is little evidence of their wearing them in public places, so it&rsquo;s pointless as well &mdash; but then that&rsquo;s the way the city is: Someone we know buys a new car to tank up every time there is a rumour of an increase in petrol prices, as a result of which he now has more cars than he can boast of common sense.

Kishore Singh: Mask and the man

Since 2001, India has possibly been the fastest-growing wine market worldwide, and one that is viewed with an enormous amount of interest by winemakers everywhere.

The rise and rise of wine in India

Amitav Ghosh met Aung San Suu Kyi twice in 1995-96, while he was &ldquo;At Large in Burma&rdquo; researching the essay of that title he wrote for the New Yorker. (It later became part of his excellent book of narrative reportage, Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma.) About seven months elapsed between the two meetings. Ghosh spent that time meeting dissidents; he also travelled to the Thai border in the east, to visit the Karenni, a minority ethnic group fighting a guerrilla war in its native forests against the Burmese army.

Seeing Suu Kyi

Monday. Can&rsquo;t believe I had to wake up again. What&rsquo;s the point of living in a free country if you have to wake up every day? This is so relentless. Wake up, get tired, go to sleep, recharge, wake up, get tired, go to sleep. It&rsquo;s like eating, only that&rsquo;s much worse.

Slow news week

With the unveiling of the draft Direct Taxes Code, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has conceived the blueprint of the Indian direct tax regime for future. Particularly, the corporate tax regime is set for a sea change. The industry and area-specific tax incentives (in form of exemptions or deductions) are sought to be done away with and the effective corporate tax rate rationalised to 34.78 per cent (down a whopping 880 basis points) post-dividend distribution. Some of key provisions pertaining to corporate taxes are discussed below.

Corporate tax rationalised, but MAT a concern

The collapse of a part of the new airport terminal in Delhi, coming quickly after the collapse of a pillar put up for the Delhi metro system, is disastrous PR for the country in every context imaginable (eg Indians can&rsquo;t build anything right, compared to the Chinese). And even though the Delhi metro is a public sector project, contractors like Gammon who did the work were from the private sector.

T N Ninan: Failing capitalism

Pulses Mission-II will show how much the nation loves its dal and the dal grower.

Sreelatha Menon: Pulses, missions and commissions

I&rsquo;m not sure when you&rsquo;ll see the documentary on TV, but remember, here&rsquo;s where you read about it first. It&rsquo;s a 30-minute documentary that aims at giving evidence of the existence of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of lord Vishnu. Produced and directed by Manish Pandit, the film tackles the issue of whether his birth is &ldquo;history or myth&rdquo;.

Evidence of Krishna

At this branded handmade cosmetics outlet, the welcome is skin-deep.

Not lush service

Removing the administered price mechanism for oil could see valuations of PSUs jump.

Getting rid of government controls

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was born in 1980, as a new avatar of the old Jana Sangh&mdash;whose leader Deen Dayal Upadhyaya had died unexpectedly in 1969. In the 40 years since then, the party&rsquo;s two stalwarts have been Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani. Mr Vajpayee is now out of politics, while Mr Advani has been given a fresh five-year term as leader of the BJP&rsquo;s parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha. The post-election situation cries out for new leadership but Mr Advani will lead the party&rsquo;s campaign in the 2014 parliamentary elections, by when he will be 86 years old. With the Congress almost certain to project Rahul Gandhi (by then 44) as its leader, there must be serious questions asked about what actually went on during the three days of the chintan baithak in Shimla.

A crisis of leadership

When the honourable Prime Minister was inviting active participation of the civil society in ensuring effective delivery of his government&rsquo;s ambitious development agenda for millions of aam admi from the ramparts of the Red Fort on this Independence Day, he was perhaps unaware of the fatal implications of the new Income Tax Code released only three days before by his own finance minister.

Rajesh Tandon: Taxing time for non-profit sector

We had last met in January this year. A number of steps were discussed in that meeting and I am happy that a substantial amount of work has been done in the subsequent period. I congratulate my Cabinet colleague Shri P Chidambaram for single-minded pursuit of the objectives that we had collectively agreed in general.

'There are limits to what Centre can provide'

When the National Remote Sensing Agency, a part of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), launched Bhuvan 10 days ago, it put India on the global internet map, and gave the country something new to cheer about on Independence Day. Bhuvan, meaning Earth in Sanskrit, showcases India&rsquo;s geo-capabilities.

Virtual feather in Isro's cap

Convergence: India will have its own set of IFRS-equivalent accounting standards. Companies which will apply IFRS-equivalent Indian accounting standards will be able to make an unreserved and unequivocal declaration that the financial statements have been prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. Therefore, convergence implies that one or more alternative principles/methods available in IFRS may be withdrawn, but an alternative principle/method that is not available in IFRS cannot be allowed. For example, Indian regulators (e.g. ICAI) may decide not to permit use of the revaluation model for measuring property, plant and equipment.

Transition to IFRS not to be delayed

Last fortnight, the finance minister unveiled the much talked about new Income Tax code. Since a lot has been written about the code, I wanted to focus on the findings of a survey that BMR Advisors initiated in partnership with CNBC Network 18 and Mint. Pleasantly, almost 500 respondents spanning across individual taxpayers, businesses representing Indian companies, multinational groups and public sector undertakings responded, suggesting the level of interest. Initial findings reveal that the tax code has received an overwhelmingly positive feedback, particularly in the area of moderate corporate tax rate, probability of reduced litigation, pass through tax status for venture capital investments and overall, a stable and less complex tax regime. Whereas, the feedback doesn&rsquo;t surprise me given the level of effort and commitment that North Block has demonstrated, I would focus on a few soft spots, which necessitates deliberation and possibly review.

Anti-tax avoidance: Made in India

Even as the government accepts the revised report of the technical expert group on patent law issues, headed by RA Mashelkar, a key conclusion of the group has run into fresh controversy over the reasoning on which it is based. A globally-acknowledged Argentine patent expert, Carlos M Correa, who has been quoted in the report to support the group&rsquo;s contention that patenting cannot be limited to new chemical entities, has disclosed that his views have been misinterpreted.

Dump the Mashelkar report

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