The burden of Finance Minister P Chidambarams constant efforts to raise tax revenue need not fall heavily on the entire middle class if he directs his attention towards the sectional tax sops handed

Taxing concessions

Business Standard

The Hong Kong ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation is a little over a month away. Recent indications are that Hong Kong may go the Cancun way. There are pre-negotiation meetings going

Who needs Doha?

The departure of Mr Natwar Singh from the ministry of external affairs is unique in that its manner has left everyone squirming. Rarely have so many been so embarrassed by just one man. So it has also

Finally, the right thing

It is hard to imagine that it is only a short year since President George W Bush won re-election by a large margin. All the criticisms that were levelled against him during the election campaign, and

One year later

So far, thanks to the fact that hes moved on the modernisation of both the Delhi and Mumbai airports as well as opened up the skies quite liberally, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has been seen

The winter test

In one sense, Microsoft has jumped the gun in announcing a host of new web-based services long before the said services are actually available. In another sense, it may have procrastinated much too

New computer games

With one stroke of the pen, as it were, Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran has changed the landscape of the long- distance telecom market in the country, and has come that much closer to his One

Another phone revolution?

What is economic freedom? How does one measure or quantify it? What is the link between social freedom, political freedom and economic freedom? In the long run, is the last sustainable without the

Tracking economic freedom

In legalistic terms, the government should have rejected Hindustan Coca Cola Holdings (HCCH) proposal to buy back the 49 per cent shares it had earlier divested in its bottling subsidiary, Hindustan

Getting pragmatic

P Chidambaram obviously believes that the banking sector shares the responsibility for delivering on the promises made by the UPA government. Last year, he announced a doubling of credit to the

Banking up the wrong tree

When armed people capture a town, storm a jail and bail out the inmates, as they did in Jehanabad in Bihar on Sunday night, several questions will be asked. But what is needed immediately is action:

Cause and consequence

The rhetoric centred on control of the Internet turned out to be just hot air, after a compromise was hammered out at the World Information Summit in Tunis. The US remains in unilateral control.

Internet control

The finance ministry has set up a committee to suggest a way to ensure that tax-saving investments made by individuals get taxed at the end of their life cycleunder what the finance minister referred

Problematic proposal

When the UPA government took office last year, concerns about the attitude of the coalition towards economic reforms were assuaged to some extent by the appointment of reformers with proven

Not the reform spirit

It is hard to believe that last weeks minor changes in the council of ministers had the long wait and build-up that they did. It is even harder to understand how the Prime Minister and the UPA

After the wait

Winston Churchill was never a great admirer of Indians or of the region generally. When the British left the sub-continent he predicted that the natives would soon be at each others throats and the

Bihar and Sri Lanka

Except for Lalu Prasad and his party, the RJD, all of India must be pleased at the outcome of the Bihar election. After 15 years in power, much of it spent in supervising the rapid deterioration of

Over to Nitish Kumar

Trends in poverty and inequality have been subjects of lively debate in recent times. While the experts dont agree on what exactly the trends are, one factor to bear in mind is that there are

Inequality and poverty

Gold prices, having already hit an 18-year high, seem set to climb still higher. The uptrend is not confined to India, the worlds largest consumer of gold, but is a global phenomenon. This surge

Gold skyrockets

On his recent visit to the Infosys campus, Singapores senior minister Lee Kuan Yew exhorted Infosys Chairman and Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy to enter politics and make a difference, particularly

Politics or public life?

Cross-subsidies are one of the most favoured notions in socialist thinking: you charge the rich more than the poor for the same product (or similar class of product), and the rich therefore subsidise

Murderous subsidies

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 302 - Editorial Comment