Activists of various kinds, but particularly those dealing with health issues, are having a tough time of late. They are spending long hours poring over the unlikeliest of documents to gird up for their next big battle. The documents are trade agreements between nations, rife with convoluted legalese and bureaucratic caveats, and whose fine print can tie even lawyers in knots. In particular, it is the deceptively-named free trade agreements or FTAs which are engaging a whole lot of activists here and abroad because these remarkably comprehensive pacts &mdash; they cover everything from investment and banking regulations to labour and agriculture practices &mdash; carry hidden threats to the well-being of millions of people in poor countries.

Latha Jishnu: Vicious sting in the tail of FTAs

Business Standard

Just when the going was great for promoter shareholders wanting to delist shares of companies from the recognized stock exchanges, SEBI has notified new regulations for delisting of equity shares of listed companies with effect from June 10, 2009. These regulations replace the SEBI (Delisting of Securities) Guidelines, 2003, as far as delisting of equity shares are concerned.

Web Excl: Sebi delisting regulations, 2009

The key choice that the government has to make in the Budget is whether to allow the fiscal deficit to rule high through the new year, or whether to apply the brakes and impose some discipline. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has signalled that he is in favour of pushing for growth now and worrying about the deficit later, given that there is no immediate risk of general inflation, and since there is still some evidence of a shortage of private demand. But the Reserve Bank governor, D Subbarao, has been sending out different signals, arguing apparently that the time may have come to start tightening up on money supply and let interest rates rise. The latter may happen anyway, if the government follows a lax fiscal policy, because it will translate into higher government borrowings which will then cause money to be tight and raise interest rates.

Fiscal dilemmas

The government&rsquo;s decision to give fast-track clearance to coal mining projects in degraded forests may help boost coal production, but it bodes ill for the country&rsquo;s forest cover. While environment activists are red-faced over the decision, taken at the meeting of the environment and coal ministers, legal pundits maintain that laws stand in the way. Besides, it will be difficult to delineate degraded forests, as the Forest Survey of India does not recognise any such category.

Coal or forests?

India and the EU would do well to assess each other not as fixed entities but as ongoing processes.

Pallavi Aiyar: A partnership of equals

Air India lowered the base-performance levels in order to pay productivity-linked incentives to staffers.

Shyamal Majumdar: What productivity?

The national gas grid is still a mirage and all the pipelines are making a beeline for Gujarat.

Latha Jishnu: The great gas pipeline chase

It&rsquo;s obvious that a well-educated work-force will contribute more towards economic growth, but just how much does reading, &lsquo;riting and &lsquo;rithmetic matter? The latest research from the McKinsey Quarterly looks at this in many ways. It looks at the increasing gap between the US and other countries &mdash; in the 1960s, the US led the world on various education parameters, today it&rsquo;s 25th of 30 industrialised nations in maths.

Sunil Jain: The 3Rs and recession

Basic Investor relations techniques, when pursed effectively hold the key to bring investors back to capital markets. Clear, timely and easy to understand communication has always helped investors to make informed decisions and will continue to do so.

Web Excl: Use Basics to Get Better

If performance-linked pay models are not tweaked, teachers will focus only on the brighter students.

Vidya Mahambare: Motivating teachers

The monsoon forecast update issued by the Met office, projecting total rainfall during the season at 93 per cent of the long-period average (with an error margin of 4 per cent), should not be cause for alarm. Instead, it should put to rest the speculation about an impending drought.

Over-reaction to forecast

President Obama revealed his plans for restructuring the US financial regulatory system last week. The broad principles and priorities of the plan were already known, courtesy of an article by Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, two of its main architects, in the Washington Post, a couple of weeks ago. Now the proposals are on the table and, from the initial responses, a tough fight in Congress awaits them.

Delicate balance

In a more narrow range-bound market, stock-specific issues will once again come to the fore.

Akash Prakash: The return of stock-picking

Millennia ago, a certain warrior-teacher, fearing the superiority of a tribal lad&rsquo;s martial skills over that of his own urbane students, demanded the gift of the lad&rsquo;s right thumb in return for transgressing codes of civil and caste hierarchy. The story of Dronacharya and Ekalavya is etched in most Indian minds. Many of us might even have wept at this injustice as we heard the mythological fable in our childhood. Of course, the sentimentalism blinded us to the reality of the here and now. The almost nine percent tribal population of the nation continues to be asked to part with more than its thumb.

Sadanand Menon: The tragedy of being tribal in India

Our higher education system is under-performing in many ways. University education is rigid, outdated, under-funded and bureaucratised. Even the best institutions have problems. A partner in an IT firm and a professor of computer science independently told me that the quality of IIT students has got worse over the last two decades. They are burnt out by the time they get in because of the entrance exam.

E Somanathan: How to get decent colleges in India

It&rsquo;s a little-known fact that people in south India drink &mdash; quite prodigiously, as it turns out. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu each alone guzzle some 30 lakh cases of spirits a month, with Kerala trailing far behind at 15 lakh cs/mo &mdash; together, that&rsquo;s almost 60 per cent of the total market for spirits in India! Sales of branded spirits (mostly sold at the cheaper end) took off when state governments banned sales of &ldquo;country spirits&rdquo;, and have traditionally been a cash cow for their respective states.

The southern sip

&hellip;Or, How I woke up much too early but didn&rsquo;t mind a bit.

Ode to dawn...

The cap-and-trade system imposes a carbon tax without having to admit that it is really a tax, raising the possibility of serious risks to international trade.

Martin Feldstein: Cap-and-trade = protectionism?

Whether a characteristic of political defeat, a sub-continental malaise or simply a fallout of the heat wave, lots of people are in denial mode. The BJP. Pakistan. Iran. Going into denial is a cover-up for failure; it&rsquo;s a form of saving face, sometimes desperate, in the forlorn hope that the clock can be turned back.

Sunil Sethi: Going into denial mode

If Nandan Nilekani is confident he can deliver India&rsquo;s first unique ID card in just two years, it&rsquo;s because he&rsquo;s been thinking about it for a long time.

Zapping those phantom IDs

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve neither seen, nor heard of such a thing!&rdquo; spluttered my friend as we pulled out of a busy south Delhi market in her car, &ldquo;parking lot attendants smiling and waving you away, letting you park for free?&rdquo; When we neared the exit of the lot, other attendants smilingly salaamed us, and my friend and I began to wonder if we were in a particularly self congratulatory dream-for-two. The driver cleared his throat when he saw our incredulous faces in the rear view mirror, &ldquo;Madam, I&rsquo;m sorry if the parking lot attendants have embarrassed you &mdash; actually, they never let me pay when I park here!&rdquo; What had he done, we asked, to deserve such an honour? &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to tell you the story of my entire family to explain,&rdquo; he almost warned us. Aware of the fact that we were a captive audience in the rear seat, we nodded.

Geetanjali Krishna: Not quite in the family!

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