One of the more egregious aspects of this years Budget is the increase in the discretionary powers of the taxman and the changes in the tax law made with retrospective effect. The government has

Cause I'm the taxman

Business Standard

While the Rs 60,000-crore agricultural loan waiver mooted in the 2008-09 Budget has grabbed the limelight, another striking, albeit disquieting, feature of the Budget has gone largely unnoticed. This

Burgeoning subsidies

After sniffing at an annualised 4.9 per cent in the week to February 16, the inflation rate as measured by the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inched over the 5 per cent mark for the week to February 23.

Inching ever higher

The markets leading indices may not yet have fallen below the lows of September 2007, but many analysts now reckon that a bear market has technically set in  because the indices have closed below

If New York sneezes...

Much indignation has been expressed at the treatment of Indian contract labour by a US employer in Mississippi. The government has even stirred itself to request details about the protest by Indian

Laboured concern

Pervez Musharraf may or may not have achieved much domestically in the eight years of his rule (he has done well by the economy, but been a political failure), but he has certainly engineered a change

A less dangerous place

The resurgence of the dreaded bird flu in West Bengal, barely a month after the state government claimed to have controlled it, is not at all a surprise, considering the ham-handed manner in which the

Culling won`t work

Puduvayal, a small town 85 km from Madurai in Tamil Nadu, was in the news last Sunday. The State Bank of India (SBI), the countrys largest bank, opened its 10,000th branch there. Puduvayal is located

Incomplete strategy

Sonia Gandhi is the first person to have been president of the 122-year-old Congress for as long as a whole decade. This reflects both her strength and the partys weakness, since it shows the extent

Ten years after

Finally, it is crunch time on the nuclear deal. The negotiators have come back from Vienna with India-specific safeguards having been agreed on with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to

Crunch time

Purists will protest the directive from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) to the finance ministry asking it to come up with ways to identify the investments made in India by sovereign wealth funds

Money and the state

President Bush must be one of the few people who might privately see a silver lining to the financial crisis that is engulfing the United States, insomuch as it has diverted attention from the fifth

Five years later

After the drama of the Bear Stearns operation over the weekend, there were expectations about an equally dramatic move on the monetary policy front. Forecasts of the cut in the federal funds rate went

But will it help?

The controversy over whether the government should mandate cooked food or pre-packaged meals at child care centres (anganwadis) and for the mid-day meal scheme in primary schools under the Integrated

Too many cooks

The proposed legislation to empower state-funded research institutions, including universities, to commercialise their inventions, if carefully framed and enforced, can help boost science as well as

Commercialising research

If the governments Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver was aimed at making heavily-indebted and resource-starved farmers eligible for fresh loans to resume their normal farming activity, that purpose is

Limits of loan waiver

Where the mind is without fear/Where the head is held high/Where knowledge is free/Where the world is not broken up into fragmentzs by narrow domestic wallsWhere the clear stream of reason has not

The retreat of liberalism

There has never been a more intense global industry debate over open standards. On the one hand is Microsofts Office Open XML (OOXML) file format backed by Apple, Novell, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, and

The not so open debate

The Wholesale Price Index numbers for the week ending March 8, released last week, showed that the inflation rate surged almost a percentage point compared to the previous week. It surpassed all

Raise the food subsidy

The sudden price crash in global commodities markets last week, after they had peaked at all-time highs at the start of the month, took most observers by surprise. The shock value was all the more

Commodity crash

Pakistan finally has a prime minister. The man who has been selected to do the job is Yousuf Raza Gilani. He was in jail for five years during President Musharrafs regime, on charges of corruption

Finally, a prime minister

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

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