Time Magazine's list of the most influential people in the world today has Sonia Gandhi, Indra Nooyi, Lakshmi Mittal and Osama bin Laden on it, but not President George W Bush of the United States.

Influential list?

Business Standard

The decision by Japan, China and South Korea to partially pool their foreign exchange resources, with a view to preventing a repetition of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, marks the first major

Asia`s own IMF

Anyone familiar with the history of Indias state-owned enterprises knows that they are invariably victims of pork-barrel politics. The party faithful have to feed off them in various ways, and one

Wresting back control

Has the countdown begun for President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan? It is early days yet to be sure. Popular protests have taken place against him over the weekend, most visibly and dramatically in

Headache for Musharraf

A series of reports on global warming issued recently by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have brought this critical issue into sharp international focus but it has

Global warming fissures

The global economy is in the midst of a significant mergers and acquisitions wave. The pressure to consolidate in order to retain competitiveness is clearly being felt in a number of industries, while

Global convergence

The first thing that strikes you about the latest World Competitiveness rankings from the Lausanne-based business school IMD is that Indias rankings havent moved in the last year; indeed, in the

Standstill phase

Freedom is one thing, emancipation quite another. Until now India was guilty of having the first but not the second, at least not in the fullest measure. That is why May 11, 2007 ought to go down as

Freedom vs emancipation

The pundits have spoken, about as much as they can. The term is traditionally used to denote Brahmins who perform rituals, but is now used to denote experts, not always accurately. In keeping with the

Lessons from UP

Dayanidhi Maran became the countrys (youngest) communications minister because his granduncle (M Karunanidhi), who leads an important constituent of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) wanted him

Lightning calls

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have been rivals in the chip-making world ever since they were born and are expected to continue being so as they both near four decades of existence. In India,

Chipping away

It is yet another comment  again, not a happy one  on the working of Delhis civic authorities that the Supreme Court has stepped in to set up a system for the hawkers in the countrys capital. Just

Food for thought

Three years into the Manmohan Singh governments life, three things are clear. First, the initial doubts about its ability to last the full term have given way to frustration that it has not been able

Wanted: more leadership

If newspaper reports are to be believed, the government is accepting many of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee. There is no harm at all in steps like creating a diversity index that will be

Careful, now

One of the interesting aspects of religions is that while those that evolved before the Christian era show a surprising tolerance towards sectarian diversity, those that evolved after or during the

Monopolising the Almighty

On the face of it, the dispute between the US-based Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute and the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) is a simple trademark one, with a bit

Regulating the three Rs

The Prime Minister has given 10 new commandments to businessmen. They are well-intentioned, but lasting reform and good behaviour do not come out of good intentions. As Adam Smith pointed out about

Make it worth their while

It is now accepted wisdom that Railway Minister Lalu Prasad has been as good a central minister as he was a bad chief minister of Bihar. While the higher economic growth of the last few years has

Questioning the magic

The majority shareholder decides who should run his company, right? Wrong! As the spat (reportedly settled yesterday morning) between the majority owners of the Escorts Heart Institute &amp; Research

How not to sack a CEO

Has media reaction to the Prime Ministers speech last week, at the annual meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry, been excessive? Certainly, some of the commentary in the Press has been

The medium & the message

India Inc.s sales figures for the January-March quarter show some slowing of the pace of business growth. The net sales of 1,875 listed companies (excluding banks and financial institutions), as

Continuing good news

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

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