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

Searching for NACO condoms at the New Delhi Railway Station.

The missing raincoat

Markets are likely to be northbound till the honeymoon period of the new government is over.

Trend is friendly

The country has given itself a marvelous result in the general elections--with the promise of a stable and cohesive government under the most preferable candidate for prime minister. A near-majority for the Congress-led alliance is something that no one had predicted, and comes as a very positive surprise.

Stability + cohesiveness = ?

Conceptual clear thinking is at stake. Also at stake is substantial revenue. A very recent judgement of the Delhi High Court holding that renting of immovable property is not service is now of great importance since it will set precedence for other services to get similar judgment that they are not service.

Why CBEC should appeal against Delhi HC judgment on service tax on renting property

A Foreign Company is engaged in India in a profitable venture by holding participating interest in oil blocks. The value of Company&rsquo;s interest in the Oil Blocks is far more than the actual investment made by it. The company is interested to sell its interest in oil blocks without paying any capital gains tax.

Tax planning through foreign partnership firms reduced to naught

The&nbsp;widespread application of three is not a coincidence, it might be the pulse of everything.

The three systems

The Supreme Court (SC) has asked the Bombay high court to decide the arbitration case between the Liberian shipping company, Petine Shipping Inc, and the Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation (MMTC). The Bombay high court had held that it was for the Delhi high court to hear the case as it was earlier moved there.

SC asks Bombay HC to arbitrate

Diversifying China's reserves away from the dollar could threaten both its own growth as well as that of the world.

A V Rajwade: Chinese checkers

The Punjab Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB) has many lessons for managing PPPs at the state-level.

Vinayak Chatterjee: Punjab and PPP

With the United Progressive Alliance coming back to power in a fairly dramatic manner, and without the Left parties to hobble them like they did the last time around, most expect the government to come up with a fairly sizeable reforms package. This includes, for instance, deepening financial sector reforms, increasing the levels of foreign equity in the insurance sector, passing the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill, disinvestment (though not privatisation), and even coming up with new guidelines on foreign investment (press notes 2, 3 and 4 issued by the industry ministry have been opposed by the finance ministry).

John Samuel Raja D: Point man in finance

Perhaps the most important decision that the Prime Minister will have to take after Cabinet formation concerns the economy. There has been talk of another stimulus package, but that would be barking up the wrong tree.

Focus on interest rates

It is remarkable that all three states that had assembly elections along with the Lok Sabha polls&mdash;Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim&mdash;have re-elected the parties that were running their governments till now. Naveen Patnaik in Orissa is now into his third term as chief minister, and Pawan Kumar Chamling in Sikkim into his fourth, while YS Rajsekhar Reddy in Andhra Pradesh has got a second term. This is entirely in line with the recent trend; three other states that had assembly elections a few months ago (Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Delhi) returned the parties that were already in power. For good measure, Narendra Modi in Gujarat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in West Bengal are also into repeat terms, as are some chief ministers in the north-east, including Assam.

Populism delivers

The new government must combine its mandate and its legacy to improve its record of delivery.

Subir Gokarn: Unmatched opportunity

Election 2009 has been remarkable in more ways than one. The most obvious of course is that, in this era of fractured mandates, the Congress has got such a solid base&mdash;the party has more seats within the UPA than even the BJP had in the NDA during Atal Bihari Vajpayee&rsquo;s tenure, and that makes it relatively less open to blackmail.

Sunil Jain: Caste in a new mould

Mobility of international capital coupled with access to tax heavens has facilitated amnesty and global tax holiday for owners of such capital &ndash; said an anonymous tax administrator. To strike at the very root of what OECD also refers to as harmful tax practices pursued by jurisdictions encouraging tax evasion, it has done pioneering work in the past few decades by prescribing standards and directives, including ranking countries on their transparency and willingness to share information on tax defaulters.

International convention on tax frauds

It is a matter of great satisfaction and relief that the people of India have voted for a relatively stable government. In particular, the businessmen are delighted that economic reforms can go ahead. Even the BJP supporters are happy that the nation can move forward under a government that need not keep looking back for approval from the Leftists.

Exporters look forward to continuation of Nath as commerce minister

The issue of patentability of micro-organisms has remained controversial largely because it concerns the high-profile pharmaceutical industry which views these organisms as sources of future drugs.

Surinder Sud: Wealth of microbes

It is one of the most reviled of media formats. Across the world outdoor or out-of-home (OOH) media faces the wrath of environmentalists, regulators and traffic authorities so much so that in most developed markets OOH companies and associations spend a lot of money on studies to prove that outdoor media does not cause accidents, is not harmful to the environment and reduces the civic authorities dependence on taxes among other things.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The strange case of outdoor media

After the electoral verdict that saw the Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s strength in the Lok Sabha decline by about 15 per cent, to just 116 seats (its lowest tally in two decades), Lal Krishna Advani did what defeated leaders usually do&mdash;offer to step down as the leader of the BJP&rsquo;s parliamentary party. Mr Advani has now been persuaded to stay on by (among others) the party president, Rajnath Singh.

BJP's dilemmas

A widespread assessment of the UPA&rsquo;s election victory is that it reflected the Congress party&rsquo;s greater credibility as a party for the future. With about 34 million first-time voters in the fray and multiples of that number in their 20s and 30s, a winning strategy would have had to address the aspirations for a better life that this age group would naturally put a high priority on. The onus is now squarely on the UPA to deliver on this promise.

The employment imperative

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 897 - Opinion Specials