Master of his Game
It’s hard to be a couch potato in India because (a) most homes have stiff, unyielding sofas; (b) it’s not easy to set yourself up…
It’s hard to be a couch potato in India because (a) most homes have stiff, unyielding sofas; (b) it’s not easy to set yourself up…
“WE WERE ALL COWARDS!” When Anand Mohan and Chaitanya Kalbag called on Mrs. Ambika Soni in Delhi on August 17, they expected her to come…
Transindia: Mr. Chandra Shekhar, do you think you have one of the most thankless jobs in the country today, what with having to build up…
Few of us know that KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, produced the critically acclaimed Hindi movie Black. Or that he has…
‘Is Drinking A Ritual “? Then I Think ‘It Is Better to Close Our Diplomatic Missions!’ The appointment is at I pm at the Prime…
Gandhi must have been passing through an extremely clairvoyant phase when he came up with this statement in the Thirties. In the thirty years that…
EIGHTEEN hours after Haryana Governor Ganapatrao Devji Tapase committed the most undemocratic faux pas in India’s political history, he was cowering on a sofa in…
CONGRESS PARTY PRESIDENT- BRAHMANANDA REDDY “We Will Return to Power Soon” Transindia: Mr. Reddy, many people feel that the Congress Party has had a great…
The Best of intentions go awry sometimes. That aphorism has struck home at INDIA TODAY where the effort to do a job better and more…
THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…
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…
THERE can be little more excitement for the media than to chronicle political events from inception to climax. Opportunities tend to be rare, but as…
8 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 8 – U.S. Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng is in a quandary over a…
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…
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…
1 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 1, Reuter – India is loosening controls on industry, investment and imports but…
9 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 9, Reuter – Thirsty Filipinos drank nearly a billion liters of San Miguel…
11 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 11, Reuter – The Philippine Senate has ended a six-month lull by taking…
1 December 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Mercedes-Benz India Ltd is bullish about the Indian car…
10 December 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 10 (Reuters) – BankAmerica Corp will sell its retail banking business in…
12 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 12, Reuter – The Philippine Senate is apparently softening its stand on a…
23 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 23 (Reuter) – Nepal’s fragile coalition government is not in any danger despite…
19 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 19, Reuter – Philippine officials said on Tuesday that It was up to…
26 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 26, Reuter – The Philippines welcomes a decision by the U.S. Department of…
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – Philippine President Corazon Aquino, secure in power near the end…
20 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 20, Reuter – Whoever wins this week’s Indian elections will face some…
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuter – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from…
22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 22, Reuter – Political instability likely to result from this week’s elections…
22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Reuter – Political instability likely to result from this week’s elections could slow…
29 June 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 29 (Reuters) – Consumer electronics firm Philips India Ltd has shed nearly…
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuter – Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wound up an exhausting…
27 August 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuter – India hopes to receive substantial financial aid from a consortium of donors…
13 April 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India intends to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for more contingency…
15 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 15 (Reuter) – A leading opposition politician is preparing to revolt against his…
9 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BOMBAY, Dec 9 (Reuters) – India’s largest truck and bus maker Tata, riding a dramatic…
9 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BOMBAY, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Hindalco Industries, a leading Indian maker of non-ferrous metals, aims…
11 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 11 (Reuters) – India hopes to reduce its dependence on imported…
29 August 1997 14:33 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 29 (Reuter) – Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the rupee’s…
16 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s tour of India slid deeper into controversy…
The Janata Party will soon split. The Janata Party has always been a loose coalition. The Janata Party’s constituents have view- points and ambitions that…
IT IS like being thrown about in an ideological cocktail shaker. You get off a gleaming passenger jet and drive over a soaring expressway to…
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…
3 December 1997 22:32 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Software firm Infosys Technologies Ltd is poised to…
Song sung blue Everybody knows one Song sung blue Every garden grows one If you are of a certain vintage, you will have been moved…
The day this issue of Business Today went to press, IBM Corporation completed one hundred years. What started as the Computing- Tabulating-Recording Company, manufacturing computing scales,…
I remember back in the 1970s, when a new India was just over a quarter of a century old, Geoffrey Moorhouse, in his foreword to…
17 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 17 – The Philippines” Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) has ordered all its reserve…
28 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 28, Reuter – Buildings blazed and streets shook in Manila today in the…
31 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 31 – Manila’s stock markets held steady in the first session after Friday’s…
18 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 18, Reuter – President Corazon Aquino’s shake-up of top posts in her government…
Raghuram Govind Rajan is a lucky man. Two weeks into his new job as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India his friend Ben Bernanke,…
24 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 24 – Any ceiling on debt repayments imposed by the Philippines would cut…
28 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 28 – The Philippines is poised for a risky showdown with its…
25 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 25 – The Philippines’ recent debt restructuring hangs in the balance after a…
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…
Exactly two years ago we ran a cover story on India’s skills crisis. This was just after Subramanian Ramadorai was named Adviser to the Prime…
In 1908, when Henry Ford began making his revolutionary Model Ts on an assembly line in Detroit, there were 241 carmakers in the United States.…
Sometimes India’s economy resembles a rambunctious teenager brought up short by a finger-wagging headmaster. Our finance minister can now recite with his eyes closed a…
8 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 8 – The Philippine peso plunged to a record low of 20.850 against…
Business Today’s team of reporters was putting finishing touches to the BT-YES Bank Best CFO Survey starting on page 57. The 14 men and one…
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,…
22 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 22 – The Philippine Central Bank and creditors of a private fertiliser firm…
Within the space of a week, I met N.R. Narayana Murthy for a long and friendly conversation at his airy venture-capital office in Bangalore’s Jayanagar…
Many, many moons ago, I used to visit a cousin pursuing his B.Tech. programme at IIT Madras. The campus was beautiful; of an early Sunday…
The US Congress stepped back just in time from the fiscal cliff, but Indian sensibilities about the Delhi gang rape and killing fell off another cliff…
20 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 20 – The Philippines will borrow between 30,000 and 100,000 tonnes of…
Three economists are gazing at a glass half full of water. The optimist sees a glass half full. The pessimist sees a glass half empty.…
Companies and human beings are surprisingly similar. Over a long period of time we build an intricate geodesic dome of habits, rules. principles, emotions, likes…
25 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 25 – The Philippines has been warned that the United States is planning…
It was a bracing week: I started and ended it with conversations with honest men whose cleanliness shone through. Both had had something to do…
One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At ev’ry word…
I have a confession to make. Many moons ago, I studied to be an accountant and despite one of the world’s toughest entry barriers with…
Competition is fierce and kicking in India, not least between business magazines. Which is why we love being flies on the wall as we watch…
The day before this issue of Business Today hits news stands, America will vote for a new president. The day after you invest less than…
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s dramatic announcement on January 18 that the Emergency in India is being relaxed and that elections to the Lok Sabha will…
A laughter club in Mumbai is forced to “zip it” because a humourless neighbour is disturbed, not long after a 63-year-old cartoon unleashes a cleansing…
The deeper we sail into the economic doldrums, the greater is the wonderment that there is so much locked-up promise in India that we cussedly…
There are times when we at Business Today chafe at being a fortnightly. There is so much happening in business and the economy that we…
Speaking about the 1971 elections to a Newsweek correspondent, Mrs Indira Gandhi had said: “I am the real issue in this election.” In 1977, too,…
What a fortnight it has been. We have plumbed new depths in animus and acrimony. Not a day goes by without a shrieking melee, either…
There had been many signs of the anti-Congress wind in the final days of the 1977 election campaign, but its magnitude amazed the canniest political…
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is…
Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the struggle within “We are all like a family and there is bound to be dissent in a democratic party.” The…
By the time this issue of Business Today hits the news stands, voting for new governments in three Indian states will be completed. The seven-…
Pity the modern banker, who is described in one of the stories in this issue as “pin-striped”. In India, of course, some of the most…
If you look down from a helicopter at any of India’s teeming cities you will see millions of people scurrying around using every known form…
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
I remember when I was a child eating the only canned peas available then. They were hard, bland and left a metallic taste in my…
Sssssay now … what we have we here?” hisses Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book, smacking his lips over Mowgli. “Jusssst you wait till…
“Chamko… kapdon ke liye behtereen sabun. Bar-bar, lagatar. Chamko. Kapdon mein chakachaundh chamak lane ke liye. Khushbudar, jhaagwala-Chamko.” Romance blooms when charming salesgirl Deepti Naval…
Do you know what a “dominant undertaking” is Suresh Krishna does. The Chairman and Managing Director of Sundram Fasteners lived every day with the provisions…
Stock markets and their behavior are an inexact science. Technical analysts will study head and shoulders patterns, Fibonacci retracements, stochastic oscillators and sundry chicken entrails…
“Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up…
When I lived in Tokyo in the early 1990s, children at my daughter’s school could clamber into an “earthquake truck” for a foretaste of what…
Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…
I remember my first car with great fondness. It was a Fiat 1100D, and I crashed it barely a month after my wife and I…
Early this month I travelled to Agra to walk barefoot around the Taj Mahal, the only wonder of the world that stands in honour of…
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…
Have you heard the story about Warren Buffett, the 215 millionaires, and the coin-flipping orangutans? It takes some telling and you will have to buy…
H for Hitler. A for arrogant, R for rascal, I for idiot …” I’m sure many of us remember the “Hari Sadu” commercial about the…
“When you were five years old, you were happy nearly all the time. Somebody had to make you unhappy Now you are 30-plus and have…
It Began as a small tiff, as all battles do. The two antagonists identities lent it a delicious irony: Vijaya Raje Scindia, the ex-Rajmata of…
Of all the functions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there is one routine task crucial to the health of the economy: incinerating the…
Whatever else the government is butter-fingered at doing, it is adept at keeping the results of its impetuosity in a state of continuing suspense’. The…
Tyers are one essential commodity over which the Government seems to exert no control whatsoever. In the last six months prices have risen twice. And…
It Began as a small tiff, as all battles do. The two antagonists’ identities lent it a delicious irony: Vijaya Raje Scindia, the ex-Rajmata of…
For all those journalists who think they belong to a thankless and poorly-paid profession, there is hope on the horizon. It comes from the latest…
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (Rss) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…
Politics cinema, like the new wave of the mid-’70s, has long acquired a pejorative meaning in India. At most, a political film that catches the…
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…
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…
The Sprawling city that Charles-Edouard le Corbusier had designed for bureaucrats and retired people looked like an army encampment girding up for an enemy onslaught.…
Last week-end the seesaw battle being waged by Swraj Paul to take over Escorts and DCM slowed to a less suspenseful motion when the London-based…
On Summer nights all over north India. people put out hundreds of thousands of cots in the open air to sleep on. Most of the…
SHEIKH Mohammad Abdullah’s health more than anything else has been responsible for the sudden thaw in Delhi-Srinagar relations For a while last month Kashmir teetered…
September 1981 to go into the question of revising the rates of forest produce. The eight-member committee, chaired by the chief secretary, consisted of the…
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi La1 reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
One of the misconceptions spawned by the Bihar Press Bill is that it will emasculate Bihar’s journalists. The truth is that Bihar’s journalists have already…
In the coolness of the early morning there is little traffic on National Highway 3. Outward bound from Nasik, the tar stretches infinitely in mottled…
Without second-generation reforms and a drastic overhaul of its institutions, India is condemned to mediocre income and growth. As befits an ancient land, India is…
It is two years since you took charge. How are you tackling the skilling challenge? The scale of the problem is huge. A combination of…
A disgraced Ranbaxy has a long and expensive journey ahead before it regains the trust of global and Indian customers. By E. Kumar Sharma and…
Gurdeep Singh Chadha – “Ponty” to those who nod at and fear him – is not an easy man to know. Many say the tax…
Kishore Biyani reveals why he sold a controlling stake in his flagship Pantaloons stores to the Aditya Birla Group in a candid conversation with Chaitanya…
The next time you are flying somewhere, do not bury your nose in a book or plug in your earphones. Take a good look around.…
MARUTI WILL NOT END Simmering unrest among contract workers at the Manesar (Haryana) plant of Maruti Suzuki exploded in violence and arson on July 18;…
“There are companies which are defying the law…. We have taken a series of measures” In the 20 months he has been Chairman of the…
SWIMMING IN IT Until July 1991, directors at Indian companies could not be paid more than ₹15,000 a month. Commissions as a percentage of net…
Roberto Zagha has been the World Bank’ s Country Director in India since January 2009, when the economy was reeling from the global financial crisis…
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
HUL contributes just 6.3 per cent to Unilever’s global revenues. Where does India stand among emerging markets? Manwani: Emerging markets are not just important; they…
YOGESH CHANDER DEVESHWAR has been with ITC for nearly 43 years. the past 15 as chairman and chief executive. Having turned ITC into a multi-…
“In India, I See a Lot More Acceptance of Gender in the Workplace” Do you think the India-us CEO Forum you are a member of…
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
The Reserve Bank Of INDIA (RBI) IS the best-run company in India: transparent, diligent, accountable, and (ostensibly) in dependent. Its official capital is a paltry…
India’s economy is lurching like a car with two flat rear tyres. The monsoon has been better than expected: a bumper kharif crop is expected,…
Narender Modi’s first term in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two governors of the Reserve Bank of India. The bad blood between…
The wise ones among us are all ganit shastris(Mathematicians) and love crunching our election result which seem more frequent than our economic indicators. Politics is…
Look Carefully at all the Headlines, screaming or otherwise, that are popping up these days about corruption. How many of them feature women? Study after…
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…).…
If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd…
Hell for leather means to run very fast, but the leather industry in and around Kanpur has nowhere to run. Hundreds of tanneries and manufacturing…