A labour ministry presentation to the parliamentary standing committee on labour on making labour markets more flexible has now been placed in the public domain for debate. 


The labour conundrum

Business Standard

The move to amend the Information Technology Act so as to address the need to introduce legal provisions for data security, may fail to serve the purpose.


Not the solution

It has been saidby D D Kosambi, the foremost Marxist historian of India, no lessof Indias failure to develop her science and technology after the sixth century that the Brahmins, who were the main

Is `Buddha-ism` Marxism?

Manmohan Singh is a third of the way through his term in office. Other than being a generally decent influence (as on the Delhi Sikh pogrom issue), handling external relations with some panache and

A third of the way

The large $2.2 billion IT services outsourcing deal announced by the Dutch banking giant, ABN Amro, marks a watershed in the development of the Indian IT industry. Two out of the three firms  IBM,

Another threshold

Every time theres a surge in oil prices, or uncertainty about supplies (such as when the US decided to invade Iraq), the Cabinet clears a plan to develop strategic reserves, to tide over a sudden

More patchwork?

With two days to go before the Booker shortlist is announced, this is as good a moment as any to consider the dilemma of the successful writer today. 


Nilanjana S Roy: Coetzee and Costello

When critics savaged him on the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that he had proposed in the Budget, Finance Minister P Chidambarams reply was that most people who read the Finance Bill were not lawyers and

Please, Mr Chidambaram

Some interesting ideas have begun to emerge from the petroleum sector. For instance, the government wants to appoint a regulator to the board of a company that he oversees in his regulatory capacity.

Some more ideas

The government's decisions on petrol and diesel pricing suggest that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are biting the bullet, even if only after long procrastination. That appearance is unfortunately

Underwhelming

Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran has done well to ask the rival mobile telephone groups who offer GSM and CDMA-based services to sit down together and resolve their differences on the issue of

Auction it

A deluge of liquidity has swamped our bourses, lifting the Sensex from 7,000 to 8,000 in record time.


Global rally

The Securities and Exchange Board of Indias ruling prohibiting UBS Securities Asia from issuing participatory notes for a year is the latest order by the market regulator to be struck down by the

Trigger-happy

This is the third time the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have published a Doing Business report. The number of countries ranked has increased from last years (2005) 145

Not businesslike

The governments decision not to grant more concessions asked for by chip maker Intel to set up a unit in the countryIntel wanted a host of tax waivers and an upfront payment of $100 million in

Intel inside

The findings of the latest survey of business schools, commissioned by the All India Management Association, are disturbing. Of the thousand-odd schools that have official recognition, only a quarter

B-schools fail

Defeat confuses political parties. Not just in India but in all democracies. So it is not surprising that the BJP, which till May last year was looking forward to at least another term in office,

Exit Mr Advani

The revelations in a new book, the The Mitrokhin Archive II by a former Soviet spy, about how the KGB bribed an Indian cabinet minister and the Congress as well as the Communist Party of India (CPI)

Double standards

The Bureau of Energy Efficiency has pointed out that one-time investments in energy efficiency in various government offices can be recovered within two years.


Outdated offices

Germany has not been able to elect itself a new government. The voters have been unable to decide which of the choices is the lesser of the evils on offer.


Hung House in Germany

While the Sensexs quick pull-back from a sharp drop of over 200 points on Wednesday may be an affirmation of the strength of this market, its important to remember that market breadth remains

A brief shock

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 304 - Editorial Comment