CALCUTTAÂ -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIEÂ Â
Nowhere else in India do people engulf you as they do in Calcutta. From the moment you step off your train or plane, and begin…
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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…
TOURISMÂ – A NEW LOOK AT OLD PLACESÂ Â
Been away from India for some years? Planning to go back this year, family in tow, for a long vacation? If the answer’s ‘Yes’ both…
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…
CALCUTTA IS FOEVER
Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…
10 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business
They say nothing sharpens our minds as much as high danger or a threat to our survival. We are prepared to stand and fight when…
Ready For Battle
I remember sticking an aluminium one-yen coin and a copper one-US-cent coin to my computer screen in Tokyo around the mid-1990s and watching in fascination…
Hooks & Crooks
I remember a composite satellite photograph of the world taken at night time. One country stood out like a black blotch on a map that…
Are Indian CEOs Overpaid?
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…
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.…
The Takeover Man
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…
STC-Anatomy of A strike
Inscrutable are the ways of public-sector trade unions. The Federation of the State Trading Corporation Employees’ Unions (FSTCEU) lived up to this image when it…
LABOUR – MAKING A POINT
RARELY had an event invited such determined and concerted action by LIIC Union Government: When the 24- hour national strike called by the National Campaign…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
THE WEAGES OF WRATH
ON January 18 the strike by 2.5 lakh textile workers in Bombay’s 60 mills will complete a year; 25,000 of these workers in eight mills…
STONE AGE SHAKTI
That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…
WHO WILL CAST THE FIRST STONE?
The Jan Lokpal Bill may need to move from idealism to realism; the solution may also lie in granting independence and teeth to existing agencies…
Lemmings or Llamas?
The US is on life support, and Asian creditors led by China, which holds $1.16 trillion of US treasuries, control the intravenous drip. Asian central…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
SHOW ME THE JOBS
The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs meter. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the…