The new (old) government is back. The question is if it has learnt its most important lesson: How to join its political agenda to the agenda of government.

Sunita Narain: A time to be different

Business Standard

When Parvinder Singh died in the summer of 1999, his father, Bhai Mohan Singh, was found pleading that his grandsons, Malvinder and Shivinder, be co-opted on the Ranbaxy board without any delay. They were, after all, the principal shareholders of the company. The brothers, on their part, put out a statement that they believed in their father&rsquo;s philosophy of separating ownership from management and would, therefore, not seek a board representation.

Bhupesh Bhandari: A report card for Malvinder

I don&rsquo;t know how Shiv Vada Pav, the &ldquo;Indian burger&rdquo; chain by the Shiv Sena, is doing (it was proposed to keep &ldquo;culture&rdquo; alive and to provide employment to the Marathi manoos), but it is easy to understand why street food in India can be a matter of national interest.

Street-smart food

Last weekend my mother and I took my niece up to Sitla Estate in Kumaon. The overnight Ranikhet Express train to Kathgodam leaves from Old Delhi Railway Station, which, for those of you who haven&rsquo;t been in a while, is still monstrously crowded and smelly. Four-year-old Tara lives in Boston, where the last germ was hacked to death in the middle of the last century (though now with swine flu all bets are off), so the station was a bit of a shock to her.

Old wine, new bottle

They said this round was the &ldquo;semi-final&rdquo;, and that the finals in 2014 would be between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. The two men campaigned more than any other party leaders in their respective camps. On both sides, there were enthusiasts who could not wait. Some in the BJP declared Mr Modi a prime ministerial candidate while the campaigning was still on, as though LK Advani was already history; and businessmen hastened to sing his praises.

T N Ninan: Pre-emptive defeat

In the year of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, one unusual voice has escaped the Chinese clampdown. The memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, ex-premier and general secretary of the Communist Party of China at the time of the &ldquo;June 4 incident&rdquo; (as it is called in China), were published last month in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The book is moving up the bestseller lists.

Jailwords

As the election results poured in, everyone seemed exultant about the Left Front having been wiped out in the Lok Sabha, as it was made out to be a greater enemy than even the right-wing parties, coming in the way of reforms and the liberalisation agenda. It had, after all, stalled &ldquo;developmental initiatives&rdquo; attempted to be taken by the ruling alliance &mdash; and don&rsquo;t ask whose development! Anyway, in the midst of it all what kept coming to mind was the small state of Tripura along the Bangladesh border, where I had recently attended a 10-day-long National Theatre Festival with 20 performances featuring 10 plays at two venues in two different cities, namely Agartala and Jerania.

Left empty handed?

Till Kamalesh Chandra Chakrabarty moved to Indian Bank, those watching the sector would often describe him as an economist and a planner. It was not surprising because he started his career in 1978 as a planning officer in Bank of Baroda, where he went on to head the economic research and corporate planning departments.

Sidhartha: Well-prepared for the job

While all the authorities concerned agree on the paramount need for development of a healthy corporate bond market in India, some recent issues raise question marks about the actions or inactions of the two principal regulators involved &mdash; namely the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Sebi.

A V Rajwade: Off-balance sheet exposures

It has been reported that the finance ministry has raised objections to the income tax exemptions provided to the producers of natural gas. Although the ministry of petroleum and natural gas advocates the equal treatment of oil and gas as a logical way to incentivise bids under the most recent round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), the position taken by the finance ministry is that the policy only extends to the exemption to oil. Given this, it is hardly surprising that there was very little interest in the new NELP round of bidding. On both commercial and analytical considerations, the finance ministry&rsquo;s position is untenable.

Taxing energy

The government&rsquo;s move to make it mandatory for all packets of tobacco products to carry pictorial warnings on the health hazards of tobacco consumption is well intended, but it is doubtful whether this will have the desired impact. Under the new order, all packs of tobacco products like cigarettes, bidis and gutka, will now have to carry images of diseased human lungs along with blunter statutory warnings like &lsquo;Tobacco kills&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tobacco causes cancer&rsquo;. The objective, apparently, is to convey the harmful effects of tobacco consumption to those who cannot read. But whether this message is sufficient to deter a person from smoking or chewing tobacco is debatable, considering that the written warning that &lsquo;smoking is injurious to health&rsquo; has failed to check the consumption of tobacco among literates.

Kicking the habit

There is apparently serious debate in the American economics community on whether the large amount of dollars sloshing around in the system will fuel inflation going forward. The venerable and loquacious Paul Krugman is on one side and argues that in the current environment the textbook relationship between excess money and inflation does not quite hold. &ldquo;These aren&rsquo;t ordinary times,&rdquo; he writes on his blog, &ldquo;banks aren&rsquo;t lending out their extra reserves.

Abheek Barua: Should we listen to Paul Krugman?

Now that the stock markets are picking up, India Inc is rushing to mop it up. Over just the last two months, firms have raised nearly Rs 5,000 crore and another 10 have announced plans to raise another Rs 20,000 crore from what are called Qualified Institutional Placements &mdash; considering just Rs 188 crore was raised in all of last year from QIPs, that&rsquo;s a huge plus.

Sunil Jain: Getting your rights, publicly

SEBI should mandate a common face value for shares and end the confusion in the minds of investors.

A uniform face value needed

Disinvestment is important for the government which needs funds and the stock market which lacks depth.

Pratip Kar: Fundamentals don't justify this euphoria

Economic growth and fiscal deficit are immediate issues for the Budget 2009. The mechanism for addressing them has necessarily to be worked out in this Budget. For this the first thing to be done is to rationalise the tax structure, make it more user-friendly and less prone to evasion. With that in view I am giving here some suggestions on Central Excise that should help the Budget makers.

Budget 2009: What reform is needed in Central Excise

In the President&rsquo;s address to Parliament last week, the UPA government announced its intention to resume disinvestment as a way to bring the fiscal situation back under control. Of course, it would not consider surrendering its majority stake in the enterprises in which it decides to dilute its holding. The merits of retaining majority stakes versus those of ceding control to the private sector have been debated at great length and the issue is really not worth resurrecting. At this point, any progress is better than none and if the government feels that it needs to operate within the said constraints in order to provide political legitimacy to the process, so be it. That having been said, however, there are better and worse ways of achieving the same objective and the government should ensure that it follows the route that yields the best realisation on the assets it chooses to sell at the lowest transaction cost.

Speed up disinvestment

The government proposes to bring before Parliament a civil service Bill which, if it fulfils its aims, can have far-reaching consequences. It seeks to address some of the key shortcomings that have bedevilled the country&rsquo;s administration by introducing an evaluation system for civil servants that has a bearing on the way the department or programme has performed. The proposed system seeks to protect the civil servant from political interference, and visualises a central public service authority which will administer the system and deliver appropriate working conditions for civil servants while holding them accountable. What is new is that the members of this authority will not be selected by the government of the day but by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the leader of the opposition and a Supreme Court judge.

Guaranteeing public service

International economic diplomacy will be a major focus for the new government.

Suman Bery: All dressed up

The clarion calls for the opening up of the financial system have resumed and predictably so. The trigger this time appears to be President Pratibha Patil&rsquo;s June 4 speech to the joint session of Parliament, the contents of which reflect a fair, if not considerable, share of inputs from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Govindraj Ethiraj: Keeping the doors half open

The new government of Manmohan Singh has been making all the right noises since its formation on May 22. President Pratibha Patil&rsquo;s address to Parliament has left nobody in doubt that Manmohan Singh in his second term as prime minister is keen on a purposeful action plan and quick results. The focus is on improving governance and implementing reforms to achieve inclusive growth.

A K Bhattacharya: Reforms without change

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