I recently went to Sadri, a village in Rajasthan&rsquo;s Pali district. In the shadow of the densely-forested hills of Kumbhalgarh and facing vast tracts of the Thar, this sleepy hamlet is a popular stopover for the Raika &mdash; nomadic animal herders who roam the desert in search of pastures. Stories about these people and their legendary, almost uncanny, affinity for their animals had riveted me, and I was full of questions when our host Hanwant Singh announced that we were to go to a Raika campsite at first light the following morning.

Geetanjali Krishna: Lost nomads of the Thar

Business Standard

It used to be a joke, the whole idea that kids could watch television, listen to music, talk on the phone, and also study &mdash; all of it simultaneously. As college students, we sometimes studied to a background of music, which our parents found strange, but these days kids manage to multitask so much more without once tripping over the tangle of wires in their wi-fi zones.

Kishore Singh: Plug &#39;n&#39; play generation

Perhaps there&rsquo;s safety in numbers &mdash; having fallen into a fairly esoteric space, one wants the company of like-minded souls to share the journey into wine. More likely, numbers give club members better leverage with wine producers or importers to part with some or all the wines consumed (or sampled) free of cost.

Wine clubs zindabad!

One of the many effective ways to fall into the generation gap and break my ankle is to mention to my mother that I&rsquo;m going to hang with friends. It makes her turn all gimlet-eyed and say things like, &ldquo;Again?&rdquo; or &ldquo;You people have a lot of time on your hands&rdquo; or, frequently, &ldquo;But what do you talk about?&rdquo;.

With a little help

There has been an interesting and intriguing response to my earlier articles (Business Standard, March 3 and 21, 2009) on GDP growth. These articles concluded that Indian GDP growth for the fiscal year 2008/9 would be much lower than the consensus estimate of around 6.5 per cent.

Surjit S Bhalla: Forecasts are not DNA-proof

Both the courts and the Election Commission have gone into activist mode over political behaviour for the coming polls. About time too, though it must be said that the Great Election Circus is now appreciably a less confrontational, dramatic and colourful exercise.

Sunil Sethi: Changed election circus

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself&mdash;nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

T N Ninan: The end of fear

The experience of trying to book a Nano leaves you feeling small.

Big car, small sales

In the next two months, an election panic could offer good opportunities to buy.

An election strategy

The government&rsquo;s move to once again defer the enforcement of the notification for mandatory food labelling, with detailed nutritional information on the labels of packaged food, by another three months, is incomprehensible. Food labelling is in conformity with the best international practice, and aimed chiefly at empowering consumers to make informed choices about what to eat.

Let consumers know

Moving the BRT to the left lane will kill whatever potential it has left.

Dunu Roy: Left lane&#39;s not the right lane

While India will be able to manage, many other developing countries may not be in the same position and this is where the international community can help. We must ensure that countries hurt by the massive withdrawal of private capital are able to rely upon an increased flow of resources from the international financial institutions. This will help these countries maintain a higher level of demand than would otherwise be possible, and thus help global revival.

Increase resources available with IMF substantially

For a country that is home to one-fourth of the world's blind, Sankara Eye Care is a model which is asking to be replicated.

Sreelatha Menon: An eye for charity

The recent suspension of the application of AS11, which deals with accounting for exchange difference, has brought relief to companies. AS 11 requires that liabilities and monetary assets (e.g. receivables) denominated in foreign currency should be presented in the balance sheet in INR by translating the same using the exchange rate at the balance sheet date.

Suspension of AS 11

Little over a week back, the Supreme Court (SC) rendered a verdict clubbing a batch of 104 civil appeals in relation to withholding tax i.e. tax deduction at source (TDS) provisions under the Income Tax law.

Tedious TDS Law

The Director General of Foreign Trade has notified the procedures for executing legal undertaking and bank guarantee for obtaining transferable duty credit scrips under Duty Entitlement Passbook scheme and under the reward schemes such as Focus Product Scheme, Focus Market Scheme etc. before realisation of export proceeds. The formats of legal undertaking and bank guarantee have also been notified.

Obtaining transferable duty credit scrips made easier

The Romans developed the Roman hand abacus. It was the first portable calculating device. It greatly reduced the time needed to perform the basic operations of Roman arithmetic using Roman numerals. However, there was a problem regarding complex multiplications and storing previous calculations. The Hindu (later called as Arabic numerals) number place value system resolved this problem.

The Euclidean proportion

Though spot market shows signs of overheating, markets can trend up for long periods while appearing overbought.

Wide long strangles may be profitable

With equities making a comeback, the lure of the yellow metal is diminishing.

Declining gold

BRIC markets might recover faster than developed markets.

BRIC strategy is hot again

The question is now getting serious. Across the world, film, music and TV companies are struggling to find ways of harnessing the power that internet offers as a medium &mdash; in reach, interactivity, width and depth. Google&rsquo;s YouTube, for all its success and ownership, is still struggling to make money from music videos. The same goes for every major TV and film company in the US, the petri-dish market for almost everything to do with the internet.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Selling entertainment on the net

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