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

Business Standard

Those listening to Bill Gates&rsquo; acceptance speech at the Indira Gandhi prize ceremony last week could have felt one of two things: Either immensely proud or immensely ashamed, depending upon which side of the window, as it were, that they sat on. The more optimistic could focus on that part of Mr Gates&rsquo; speech where he went on about the polio eradication campaign. &ldquo;Vaccinators visit more than 200 million homes, one by one,&rdquo; Gates exulted, &ldquo;200 million.&rdquo; He went on to talk of how, to make sure they never missed anyone, &ldquo;they also go to train stations, bus stations and ferry terminals to immunise children who are on the move.&rdquo; More heart-warming numbers were trotted out &mdash; every national immunisation day, more than two million health workers are mobilised, the number of lines of polio transmission have been cut from 14 to just two in the last two years, and a new injectable vaccine is being developed.

Mission critical

India's first nuclear submarine will be a key component of our total defence capability.

Premvir Das: INS Arihant - A watershed moment

Financial results for the most recent quarter seem to confirm that the worst is behind for most companies including those that are engaged in consumer interfacing businesses. The recovery in consumer spending is visible across almost all the sectors including automobiles, consumer electronics and durables, information technology and communication, apparel and footwear, and leisure and entertainment.

Arvind Singhal: Re-connecting with the consumer

China's efforts for the 2010 World Expo make it a clear winner compared to India&rsquo;s for the Commonwealth Games.

Barun Roy: Let the games begin

MTNL will be one of the few big telecom companies in the world to allow competitors to offer their brand on its network.

Surajeet Das Gupta: So what&#39;s a brand between friends?

The number of households in the country that don&rsquo;t have access to bank accounts is estimated at around 112 million and it is to cater to this population that the RBI mandated that banks start opening &lsquo;no frills&rsquo; accounts for poor people.

Sunil Jain: What inclusion?

With more people falling prey to the swine flu virus H1N1 in the past six weeks than has happened with previous flu pandemics over as long as six months, the World Heath Organisation (WHO) has done well to formally declare it the &ldquo;planet&rsquo;s fastest moving pandemic&rdquo;; such a warning was badly needed to alert countries to the looming peril. Since everyone is immunologically vulnerable to this virus strain, WHO reckons that a staggering two billion people (30 per cent of the world&rsquo;s population!) may get affected in the next two years. That may sound like going over the top but, beginning in Mexico a few months ago, the H1N1 virus has already affected over 1.3 million people &mdash; these are confirmed cases, the actual number may be far higher &mdash; in about 160 countries, including India. Though H1N1 is believed to be a mild and usually non-fatal virus, it has killed over 800 people.

The most dangerous yet

Successive governments from the 1990s onwards have developed a predilection for encouraging the private sector to enter healthcare services. Their reason for doing so is difficult to understand and the United Progressive Alliance should speedily reassess a trend that can only be described as unhealthy. Experience since the corporate hospital boom began in the 1990s has shown that growing private investment in healthcare has enriched promoters and shareholders but has neither transformed India&rsquo;s sub-Saharan healthcare system nor noticeably improved ethical standards and practices.

Skewed growth

Much like last year, the first half of 2009 hasn&rsquo;t seen too many big hits from Bollywood. The IPL and other cricket tournaments apart, there was also the spat between film distributors and exhibitors that left theatres empty for nearly three months.

Shobhana Subramanian: The woes of the big screen

Good water-management policies are needed for India to cope with flood-drought cycles, often in neighbouring areas.

Sunita Narain: Looking for rainmakers

Anand Sharma, better known as the Congress spokesperson, has taken over as commerce minister from Kamal Nath. Sharma will be assisted by the young Jyotiraditya Scindia, who has taken over as minister of state for commerce from Jairam Ramesh. The new incumbents face more challenging and uncertain times than their predecessors did.

Sharma faces uncertain times

The corporate bond market is a stated strategic focus area for financial sector regulation in India. When the SEBI (Issue and Listing of Debt Securities) Regulations, 2008 (&ldquo;Debt Regulations&rdquo;) were notified about a year ago, the intention was to kickstart the corporate bond market. However, avoidable ambiguity prevails, with bad interpretation by merchant bankers and the media being left undisturbed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (&ldquo;SEBI&rdquo;).

Misleading regulations can kill unsecured debt market

The issue of taxability of offshore services was settled by the Supreme Court in case of Ishikawa (288 ITR 408) wherein it was observed that there are two conditions which are required to be met in order to bring the income from services in the tax net in India. The two conditions both of which are to be met are that services should be rendered in India and that the services should be utilised in India.

Can contract be bifurcated to decide tax jurisdiction?

The Expert Group, appointed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, to review the Cost Accounting Record Rules and Cost Audit Report Rules observes that maintenance of appropriate cost accounting records by firms and effective cost audit will contribute to improving the competitiveness of the Indian industry.

Appropriate cost accounting records will improve competitiveness

Extending time fractals to explain the bell curve transformation into a Pareto distribution reconciles the efficient, inefficient market debate.

The time translation

The collective relief that was felt on Friday, when the encouraging fourth quarter and full-year GDP numbers were released, may turn out to have been premature because of the continuing sluggishness in corporate performance.

Poor quarterly numbers

It is encouraging news that the Pakistan army has taken control of Mingora, the main town in Swat, after driving out the Taliban; a month ago, this might have seemed more than anyone could hope for, amid predictions that Islamabad itself could fall to the militants in as little as six months. Admittedly, the re-taking of Swat has been done at enormous human cost, as over two million people are said to have been displaced on account of the fighting.

Still Security Risk No. 1

M Govinda Rao hopes that the Budget will contain the deficit while continuing to create conditions for pushing growth.

M Govinda Rao: Tightrope walk for the finance minister

As serious negotiations start in Bonn to thrash out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that expires in 2012, pundits are veering round to the view that agriculture should also be a vital part of the agenda of these talks. Their logic is simple: Agriculture affects climate change, gets affected by it, and can also help to undo it.

Surinder Sud: Putting farming in the frame

It is always good to know of some real progress in the power sector where only daily power cuts and capacity addition delays make the headlines. There finally seem to be some serious signs of an attack on the biggest problem facing this sector &mdash; transmission and distribution losses &mdash; which eat up over a third of the power generated in the country. This seminal move promises to fundamentally change the power landscape over the next few years.

Vandana Gombar: The $10 billion attack

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