Given the general industrial calm of the last decade and more, and the fact that the share of organised labour in the country&rsquo;s workforce is falling, the rash of strikes in automobile and component companies (Hyundai, Mahindra &amp; Mahindra, MRF and others) over the past few weeks comes as a surprise&mdash;but not to those who have been tracking the manner in which large companies use workers.

Wages of neglect

Business Standard

The surprise in this election is that one of the two major parties will reach past 170 seats - my bet is that it is the Congress.

Surjit S Bhalla: Middle class and democracy - I

The Supreme Court has done well to impose a blanket ban on all mining activities in the ecologically fragile Aravali hills, spanning the Faridabad, Gurgaon and Mewat districts of Haryana.

Saving the Aravalis

If ever the swine flu becomes a pandemic (similar to the 1958 Asian flu), the loss in terms of global GDP will be around $2 trillion or a little over 3 per cent of global GDP &mdash; it will be higher at around 3.6 per cent for low- and middle-income countries, according to modelling done by the World Bank.

John Samuel Raja D: Fear over the city

At the completion of a month-long process of parliamentary elections conducted over five phases, it is a moment for critical reflection as we eagerly await the election results on May 16. It is also the most opportune moment to reflect about the status of our democracy, because the process of formation of the next government at the Centre will grab all our attention from May 16 onwards.

Rajesh Tandon: Nurturing Democracy

Yesterday, the stock markets rose 475 points reportedly in anticipation of a victory by the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Given the very fluid state of national politics where a party can emphatically say diametrically different things at different times, it is hard to understand the basis on which brokers made this judgment.

Kanika Datta: Businessmen and common men

Exit polls have been known to go wrong, as in 2004 when all of them were off the mark, with no exceptions. They uniformly predicted an NDA victory but it was the UPA that formed the government. So, for all that anyone knows, the outcome of the elections could be different from what the pollsters say this time. It does seem unlikely, however, that any single party or pre-poll electoral alliance will get a clear majority in the Lok Sabha.

The casting vote

The approval given by the group of secretaries for the export of two million tonnes of wheat on private account has been completely mistimed. It has come after considerable delay, even though it has been known for months that the country's food stocks would swell to mountainous heights after the rabi harvest and that exports would be needed to bring them down to manageable levels.

Sell low...

Anti-money laundering efforts will not succeed unless banking secrecy laws are repealed.

Jaimini Bhagwati: Tax havens and banking secrecy

Is speculation good or bad? A simple question that generates strident arguments. While this debate peaked last summer, a recent International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) paper by Robles, Torero and von Braun1 examines a more pertinent question, &lsquo;When does speculation really matter?&rsquo; The answer lies in looking into the specific conditions prevailing in the relevant market.

Sumita Kale: Are speculators evil?

The charges against Dr Sen include aiding and abetting Naxalites and sedition. Both the CSPSA, 2005 and the UAPA (amended) 2004 are ridiculously draconian laws, ultra vires of the constitutional guarantees provided to the citizen, and several human rights organisations along with the People&rsquo;s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have been campaigning for their repeal and for the release of over 178 people detained under it.

Sadanand Menon: Who are these enemies of the state?

Speculating about the outcome of these general elections is quite the national obsession these days. Newspapers, television and the blogosphere are full of snippets about secret meetings, power alliances and more. The other day, whilst reading about a mysterious &lsquo;masked guest&rsquo; visiting 10 Janpath, I chanced upon a photograph sticking out of my computer drawer. It had been taken in Sadri, a small town in Rajasthan&rsquo;s Pali district. There I was, squinting at the camera with Daili Devi, an animal-healer. Suddenly, memories of my conversation with her flooded back.

Geetanjali Krishna: What use democracy?

Last night, when my son came back from dinner with his friends, he was greeted by the dog, who came wagging his tail &mdash; much to my son&rsquo;s surprise, since he is largely ignored on account of the disciplining he received as a pup, and has clearly never quite forgotten it &mdash; and proceeded to puke all over his laptop. &ldquo;It was his way of showing that he felt safe with you when he was feeling sick,&rdquo; I commiserated with my son in the morning while we were having breakfast, which is when he usually gets up, but he was not easily consoled. &ldquo;He was showing his annoyance,&rdquo; he mocked me, &ldquo;and by the way, I&rsquo;ll need a new laptop.

Kishore Singh: Taken for a ride? Enjoy

Last week Bangalore was host to a unique promotion: the European Art of Taste (EAT), a campaign financed by the EU and Italy for a consortium of companies producing pasta, olive oil, cheese and wines. It was a week-long programme showcasing selected brands of member-companies.

Wining and dining

One of the great pities of the electronic age is that it has quietly marginalised, if not completely obviated, one of life&rsquo;s greatest pleasures: Revisiting old letters. I&rsquo;ve always been pathologically attached to every scrap of friendly writing that ever came my way. Among my most prized possessions are cartons and cartons of snail mail from the pre-internet age, as well as thousands of stored emails dating right from the early 1990s.

Postmark: Way back when

Shortly after he took charge three decades ago, Deng Xiaoping started a conscious policy of preparing China&rsquo;s third and fourth generation leaders&mdash;young, educated people (many with professional qualifications in disciplines like engineering) who would be consciously groomed to take leadership positions. Deng (a member of the post-Mao, second generation of leaders) realised that his successors would have to be competent technocrats with a different worldview and skill-set from the party old guard, most of them hang-overs from Mao&rsquo;s Long March. If China has been able to deliver effective governance on so many fronts in the past decade and more (sustained GDP growth of 10 per cent does not happen by accident), it is because Deng took the key decision to prepare a new set of leaders with executive capability, and with their primary focus being economic development.

T N Ninan: Grooming ministers

History may well remember 2009 as the beginning of the historic end of regional party politics in India.

Surjit S Bhalla: Middle Class and Democracy-II

Ideas,&rdquo; the editor at the newspaper where I worked earlier would bellow each day. But when people did produce some as per the request nothing would pass muster. She was fussy about &ldquo;original&rdquo; ones, didn&rsquo;t possibly appreciate the world view that nothing is as such in god&rsquo;s kingdom, and fretted if one turned in something based on a party conversation or, horror, another publication&rsquo;s reportage, however obscure.

The ideas society

The wonderful French film Ridicule (1996) follows the short career of a minor nobleman named Gr&eacute;goire Ponceludon de Malavoy at the pre-apocalyptic court of Louis XVI in Versailles. Like bees drawn to honey, the thousands of nobles of every degree massed there buzz for favour and advancement.

Talking heads

Aditi Phadnis: Running with the hare...

Poor marketing of the state-owned Nacil's brand-new fleet has exacerbated its problems of excess staff and poor operations.

Surajeet Das Gupta: Young fleet, old marketing

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

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