INTERVIEW-PROF. C.N. VAKIL
The Government Is Helping Create A Privileged Class!’ Professor C.N. Vakil, eminent economist, formerly Director, School of Economics and Sociology, University of Bombay, and Director,…
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Frozen in the Headlights
Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed…
Letter from the Editor
ONE of the lesser known areas of media responsibility is its relationship with the law. It is a relationship which is generally little understood, not…
Book Review: My Years in an Indian Prison
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
NEWS does not have to scream from the headlines to be news. In fact, it is probably one of the failings of the media that…
FEELIN’GOOD
IT IS GOOD THAT WE ARE FEELING BUCKED UP AT THE BEGINNING of 2018. Major economies expect growth in tandem for the first time since…
MANILA OUTLINES 1988 BORROWING, BUDGET PLANS
7 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 7 – The Philippine government will issue treasury bills and notes totalling 29.8…
PHILIPPINES’ 1989 BUDGET SET AT 190 BILLION PESOS
8 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 8, Reuter – The Philippines will have a 1989 deficit of 28.5 billion…
Interview- India’s Sinha wants to go for growth
2 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 2 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put up a spirited…
Interview- India targets not just “hope and prayer”
3 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 3 (Reuters) – India’s fiscal targets for the current year are not…
Keep Your Expectations Low
In a spirited panel discussion moderated by Business Today editor Chaitanya Kalbag, Yashwant Sinha, MP and former finance minister, M. Damodaran, former SEBI chairman, Satya…
What the Government Needs to Do Now
Despite the crisis, a clear message must be sent to the investor community that India is open for business. There was an initial spurt of…
The Dauphin and the Figurehead
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, the cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The…
Earthy Tales
Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours in, the captain an- nounced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and…
READING THE BAR CODES
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp” STRANGE HOW time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
The Best Companies to Work for
At Business Today we write about companies all the time. Often, it is a top-down view. We meet the Chief Executive Officer, the senior members…
The Luxury Issue
Looking down at my bowl of gazpacho at dinner one recent night. I realised that I do not own a single moustache spoon, with guards,…
IT’S THE ELECTION, STUPID
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while…
Eight Innovations That Delighted Consumers and What India can Learn From Them
I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and con- trivance, I found at last that I…
India’s Coolest Start-Ups
Some things were on a fast track as the heat dragged us into the dog days of June, and some were on a slow track.…
Home Truths
And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That…
Gender Gag
Sexual harassment can be crude and overt or very subtle, but you know you are being sexually harassed when you experience it. Those around you…
EXCISE DUTY-MORE SLAPS THAN SOPS
RANAB MUKHERJEE’s first budget, at first glance so redolent of status quo, is peppered with little booby traps. Two paragraphs in his speech have caused…
A BATTLE SUPREME
Titled Judiciary: At tacks and Survival, the speech had been long in coming, the speaker delayed, first by an attack of diabetes in March and…
CLEARED BY THE COURT
The majority of Justices Islam and Mishra agreed with Solicitor-General Parasaran that Thakur nursed a grudge against Jagannath Mishra. “Remand for tri I will a…
MYSTERIOUS U-TURN
Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…
PRISONERS- FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE
The salaried middle classes have time and again fallen prey to the Government’s more capricious economic decisions. But, one group that has suffered the most…
JAGANNATH MISHRA-CLEARED BY THE COURT
HE INDIA-RUBBER man, Jagannath Mishra, had done it again. For months, the Bihar chief minister’s political fate had hung in the balance while the Supreme…
CHEATING THE HANGMAN
Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…
UTTAR PRADESH – PEACE OF THE GRAVEYARD
I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun. Yes it is. Vishwanath Pratap Singh had cause to be…
ENDS OF JUSTICE
Gauhati and Jorhat and small batches people took out processions in protest against the decision to hold the elections. Even political parties opposed to the…
Suppressing Dissent?
EVERY dissenter is in a minority of one, and K. Ashok Rao, 36, deputy manager in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), is discovering what it…
HANGING FIRE
The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…
UNTIL DEATH DO US PART
No Amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage. In the last few weeks, eight women have died…
SNAG IN THE ROPE
Anticlimax has become the boon companion of the Supreme Court. When the court reopened on July 18 after its summer vacation, it was shadowed by…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
Panic Button
Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in July and August of 1789, I was struck by the…
FINGER ON THE PULES?
Two-third of indians depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As our farm crisis deepens, the government is tinkering around the edges by pushing irrigation, rural…
TOO BIG TO FAIL
Independence day is a good excuse for some economic chest-thumping. We should be proud that lndia is a free-enterprise democracy. Imagine the world’s burden if…
Glass Half-Full?
We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that…
The Dog’s tail
There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you can never straighten a dog’s tail (kutte ki poonch…).…
Clutching At Straws
We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us to believe that we have seen friendly…