Without land, big projects will not take off.

Singur reprise

Business Standard

Colleagues may be trying to pull him down a peg.

PM loses ground

Under a third of the target for power generating capacity in 2008-09 was met. What&rsquo;s worse is that just better management could have fixed things, says Mahesh Vyas.

Mahesh Vyas: The plans are man's, the odds are God's

Disinvestment is a buzzword now. Economic Survey 2009 indicates that the central government would mobilise Rs 25,000 crore from disinvestment of its holdings in state-owned enterprises (or public sector enterprises). The target is abysmally low (at Rs 1,120 crore) in the budget 2009-10 presented by the Finance Minister. We may assume that the target is Rs 25,000 crore for the year 2009-10. The government is committed to disinvestment, although some of its coalition partners and trade unions are against it. There-fore, although there is no debate on the issue within the lead coalition partner, there are some questions that remain unanswered.

Disinvestment, the buzzword

In a recent decision, the Madras High Court had an occasion to deal with the matters of service taxation of hire purchase and lea-sing transactions of moveable goods and to determine whether such a tax was constitutionally valid.

Service tax on hire purchase, leasing transactions

The transfer pricing provisions (TP) are relatively new provisions leading to substantial differences between an assessee and the tax department. Broadly speaking, in principle, an international transaction between two associated enterprises should be made at Arm&rsquo;s Length Price so that both the countries involved get proper share of profit in their respective jurisdiction. In other words, TP provisions are intended to curb any manipulation in international transactions resulting in the understatement of profits in any country.

Transfer pricing provisions need to be liberalised

The disinvestment plan for ITDC&rsquo;s Ashok Yatri Niwas has been caught in multiple litigation and the Supreme Court last week asked the Delhi high court to decide the issues as early as possible in the order, Ram Parshotam Mittal vs Hillcrest Realty Sdn Bhd. Hotel Queen Road (Private) Ltd was incorporated as a special purpose vehicle for taking over the assets of Ashok. Hillcrest Realty, a Malaysian company, bought redeemable shares from the private company. But it did not get dividends.

ITDC disinvestment in a bind

There have been good crops in years of poor rain and huge variations in years which have had similar rain.

Surinder Sud: Gamble in the monsoons

Sach ka samna is a gripping show. It asks perfectly ordinary people 21 intimate questions. These could be around their deepest thoughts and feelings &mdash; about partners, family, spouse, society or just anything. The participant&rsquo;s ability to answer these truthfully could win them some money. The show, a licensed version of the American Moment of Truth, has been aired in 23 countries. It is known for its corrosive impact. In one instance, a marriage broke up on air.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Star&#39;s moment of truth

The first-quarter (April &ndash; June) results of a sample of 486 companies (four of them in the petroleum sector) that were analysed by the Business Standard Research Bureau provide some indications that the corporate sector has seen off the worst of the slowdown and is getting into recovery mode. There is, of course, a sharp contrast between the performance of the four oil companies and the rest of the sample, and it is from the numbers reported by the larger sub-group that the relief emerges. The 482 companies in this group saw sales increase by 8.9 per cent over the corresponding quarter of last year. This is in nominal terms but, given the low average inflation rate during the quarter, this number fairly represents the growth in physical volumes. By virtue of low inflation, costs grew by a mere 6.2 per cent, which allowed Ebitda to grow by 15.8 per cent and net profits to grow by an impressive 28.3 per cent.

Corporate climb

The &ldquo;launch&rdquo; of the first Indian-built nuclear submarine marks the beginning of a new phase for India&rsquo;s navy. Not because of what everyone has commented on&mdash;namely, the fact that the country has joined a global club of (so far) five countries, because that can be said to be true only when the Arihant and its nuclear arsenal become operational, in a couple of years&mdash;but because it signals the effort that is under way to build the country&rsquo;s submarine fleet (and indeed the entire Indian Navy) after a hiatus of a couple of decades. India&rsquo;s submarine fleet today is smaller than it was 15 or 20 years ago, in large part because the programme to build HDW submarines at Mazagon Docks was scrapped in the wake of a bribery scandal that surfaced in the early 1980s; this was the first of several episodes in the last quarter century when a pay-off scandal derailed an armaments acquisition programme.

The navy surfaces

The current monetary 'non-system' is the only way to deal with the turmoil in the world economy.

Deepak Lal: A new international monetary system?


I know one-line questions are not common in Parliament, but suppose I was to get a chance to ask a question to the lawmakers, who all claim that infrastructure is their top priority, here is what I would ask:
Which are the country&rsquo;s ten largest infrastructure projects and what is their current status?
Based on the trend of replies that one sees, the answer would either be an assurance from one of the ministries &mdash; &ldquo;The information is being collected and will be laid on the

Vandana Gombar: Shadow-boxing blues

The literary world attracts its share of harmless lunatics, and for some years, my mailbox was enlivened by the presence of a gentleman I will call Mr S K Parthasarathi. He had never been published, but had a burning desire to be recognised as an author.

In search of an Asian prize

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) maintained the status quo in its quarterly monetary and credit policy announcement yesterday. As this newspaper had argued in an editorial last week, the macroeconomic circumstances have changed quite significantly over the past quarter. The fear of deepening recession has faded, and the outlook for the global economy as well as for India has turned positive. Not that this means that the economy is out of the wood yet by any means. But the objective of the central bank should be to act in a manner consistent with conditions a couple of quarters ahead. That is at least as long as it takes for monetary impulses to be transmitted through the rest of the economy. From this perspective, two factors underlie the RBI&rsquo;s decision. One, it has signaled a fractional upscaling of its growth outlook for 2009-10 to 6 per cent with an upward bias, from the 6 per cent range mentioned earlier.

As it should be

Law-makers have been racking their brains in recent years to reduce the hurdles in debt recovery. Their last attempt was the enactment of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act 2002 (SARFAESI Act). The main object of the law was to enable a secured creditor to enforce his right in the case of non-performing assets without the intervention of the court or tribunal.

M J Antony: Insecure creditors

The drugs controller-general, the central government&rsquo;s drug regulator, has been trying to deliver through administrative action what could not be legislatively empowered when the last Lok Sabha failed to pass a comprehensive law to overhaul India&rsquo;s archaic drug regulatory system. One recent step has been to hire more inspectors; another to float the idea of a quality mark for generic medicines (which have no patent cover).

Right and wrong medicines

Unless the Right to Education Bill focuses clearly on making teachers accountable and has independent measuring mechanisms, it is difficult to see how it will help.

Will the new Bill improve education outcomes?

India should offer constructive but conditional engagement at Copenhagen.

Arvind Subramanian: Climate change - Winning the narrative

The Satyam scandal erupted a little more than six months ago. Even though it had already gone into election mode, the Manmohan Singh government showed remarkable alacrity and took charge of the situation. In about 100 days, the government-appointed board stabilised the operations of Satyam Computers and found for it a new buyer. In India, governments are notorious for their slow response to crises.

A K Bhattacharya: Alacrity followed by stasis

Ministerial misgivings have been expressed about the consequences of the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean), specifically in relation to the implications it has for the domestic plantation sector and to Kerala. With what is said to have been vocal support from several other ministers, the Prime Minister has managed to get the Cabinet&rsquo;s nod for the FTA, while referring the specific issues raised by ministers from Kerala to a group of ministers. If it is assumed that the GoM will not take much time to deliberate on the issue, and that it will concur with what the draft FTA provides for, the scheduled signing in December should still take place.

Time to sign

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