If Indonesia can keep up its political will, we're going to see a new business centre emerge in Asia.

Barun Roy: Little Singapore?

Business Standard

Despite what it can do to the country's automobile market, its ability to transform Tata Motors' financials will be limited.

Shyamal Majumdar: Nano&#39;s nano-impact

The Chinese government must work towards policies that lead to higher spending by Chinese consumers.

Martin Feldstein: China&#39;s recovery and global growth

With every country attempting to spend its way out of the current crisis, the question is what type of expenditure gives the best results. Some time back, the IMF came up with an answer for the G-20 countries &mdash; it said infrastructure investments gave much better results than, say, tax cuts that left more money in the hands of consumers.

John Samuel Raja D: IMF versus Moody&#39;s

Indian economy has been relatively better off in terms of the severity of the impact of the global financial crisis and the economic slowdown when compared to other countries. This has been largely due to domestic demand, which has been resilient compared to the external demand.

Winter is here - can spring be far behind?

The issue is not the right to own a Nano but the right to a slice of the public subsidy so that everybody is mobile.

Sunita Narain: What is the right right?

The banks demanded that the accountants give them leeway in how they report losses to investors. The accountants responded by giving away their souls.

Jonathan Weil: Doors opened for banker fiesta

The whole point about a scale is that it remains constant. So, if something looks smaller in length than the scale, it&rsquo;s because it is smaller, not because the scale got longer. This is precisely the problem with the recommendation by the National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards (NACAS), reported in this newspaper, to postpone the compulsory implementation of Accounting Standard 11 (AS 11) to 2011 &mdash; it allows the scale to shrink and elongate at will.

Flexible standards

It is a matter of regret that the government&rsquo;s bid to spend more on infrastructure projects, to provide a stimulus for the economy, has not delivered on this objective because of that familiar problem&mdash;hurdles in the way of land acquisition. An official review of projects that have been held up is reported to have revealed that as many as 70 per cent of the 190 delayed works are victims of roadblocks in the way of getting land.

The land hurdle again

The stock market is normally a leading indicator, and has historically always tended to lead the real economy by approximately six months. In fact, in the construct of the series of leading economic indicators in the US, the stock market is one of the critical constituents of the leading indicator index. Even in this crisis, the markets broke down, before the crisis really began to eat into the real economy.

Akash Prakash: Leads and lags

The Crompton Greaves stock lost nearly a fourth of its value in just two trading sessions. Investors slammed the stock after they heard that the Thapar-owned engineering firm was picking up a 41 per cent stake in a group company, Avantha Power. Avantha Power is into power generation. To be fair, Crompton has not violated any rules or laws of corporate governance.

Shobhana Subramanian: Cash in listed company is no personal asset

From the little I have read and the lot I have heard, I have had the utmost fascination for Tagore&rsquo;s vision of integrating traditional crafts with mainstream livelihood potential. And now that I work with both craft and microfinance companies, I appreciate more deeply how complex the relationships are.

Keya Sarkar: Remains of Tagore&#39;s vision

You would think it would be difficult to beat Delhi where architectural excess is concerned, but here it was, this majestic home in Bikaner that could put any twin-staircase, Bollywood-screen villa to shame. We&rsquo;d come in search of my wife&rsquo;s niece who, so we&rsquo;d learned, was visiting her in-laws who, in turn, had abandoned their family home to camp in this stone and marble heap hidden behind high walls and tall gates. In a tribute to bad taste, the circular drive curved around a garden pierced with fountains amidst which frolicked marble statues of women in various stages of undress and cupidity.

Kishore Singh: Bikaneri baroque

The US and EU are putting up more protectionist barriers.

Latha Jishnu: The brazen deceits of the rich

Since the conception of the IPL, it has been on a collision course with the general elections of 2009. The organisers ought to have been aware of that. The inflexible global cricket calendar implies the IPL must be played in April-May.

Devangshu Datta: IPL - Chaos all around

As I write this, I have been listening to corporate bigwigs from some of the world&rsquo;s biggest luxury brands ponder over the subject of &ldquo;sustainable luxury&rdquo; at a conference in New Delhi. No one can pretend any longer that luxury is, and can be, aloof from the general environment &mdash; &ldquo;it is, after all, not on some another planet,&rdquo; as the Hermes VP quips.

Luxury dining

The wonderful thing about not having children is that you don&rsquo;t have children. This means that you can keep your breakables where they are, swear as much as you like, and call a boiled egg and cigarette &lsquo;lunch&rsquo;. You can sleep right through the night (or day), never touch anyone&rsquo;s poop but your own, and walk out of the house in the morning and decide not to come back for a month.

Dog days

This isn&rsquo;t a typical Neterati entry, but the animated feature film I&rsquo;m writing about has had a particularly vibrant life on the Internet &mdash; from its inception as a series of musical sequences a few years ago to its recent completion and availability as a free download (it&rsquo;s been released under a Creative Commons Share Alike licence, meaning anyone can copy it). The film&rsquo;s creator, the American cartoonist and animator Nina Paley (http://blog.ninapaley.

Ramayana to chill the blues

Every financial scandal leads to intense debate on how to improve the existing mechanisms for providing better safeguards. The Sarbanes Oxley Act, Clause 49, Kings Report and various insider-trading rules are all the direct result of major economic debacles. It&rsquo;s safe to assume the underlying causes of the current global credit crisis or the chinks exposed by the Madoff fraud will result in more changes or review of existing regulations. The turmoil in India, caused by events at Satyam, certainly warrants a systemic review of all components of the economic and corporate system. However, if legislation is brought about as a reaction to a specific debacle or even the regulators&rsquo; need to be seen to be acting, it will create sub-optimal solutions.

Kaushik Dutta & Kshama V Kaushik: The GAAP in corporate governance

Mr Menon, you had extensive talks with the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on various things.

Terrorism out of Pakistan is a global menace

Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week allowed its journals to be accessed by all. The movement for sharing scientific research for larger public good is gathering pace.

Sreelatha Menon: Opening up knowledge

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

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