Vivek Sengupta

May 20, 2011

FDI red alert!

International arbitration is the flavour of the month with foreign firms in India finding themselves at a dead end with either the executive or the judiciary. In his March 16 Budget speech, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had proposed a retrospective amendment to the Income Tax Act, 1961, to cover overseas mergers and acquisitions involving assets in India. This came as a googly to the British multinational Vodafone, which had been told by the Supreme Court in January that it was not liable to pay tax on its $11.2 billion acquisition of Hutchison’s stake in Hutchison-Essar in 2007.

Let’s make roads safer

Almost every morning we wake up to grisly newspaper reports about road accidents in the country. Most are chilling stories: a Lamborghini crash in Delhi claims the driver’s life and places another life in critical danger; two people, including the half-sister of Bollywood actor Fardeen Khan, were killed in a collision between two cars in south Delhi; a schoolbus crash kills 10 schoolchildren near Ambala; five members of a family die in an accident on the Mumbai-Pune expressway.

To beat inflation, win the mind game

The economy waits with baited breath to see what RBI governor D. Subbarao does today. Will he raise rates again — for the 12th time in 18 months? Since inflation is far from vanquished, he may well do so. On the other hand, it is abundantly clear that the monetarist approach to quelling inflation has failed to deliver results. Instead of depressing prices, it has suppressed growth — an outcome that the government, until not long ago, was vocal about not wanting.

UPA needs to learn the ABC of PR

The irony of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s situation cannot be lost on any observer. Here is a man who, for all his other attributes and accomplishments, has been universally hailed for his honesty.

Bangla bonhomie

If high-level visits are an indicator, Delhi has gone into overdrive to engage with Dhaka. In July alone, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna and home minister P. Chidambaram journeyed to Bangladesh. Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma went a longer way — to Meghalaya to join his Bangladeshi counterpart in inaugurating a haat for trans-border rural trade.

Save free speech in cyberspace

“Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.” That was the slogan that was carried atop the masthead of National Herald, the newspaper that Jawaharlal Nehru founded in 1938 (it shut shop in 2008). The slogan was written in Nehru’s elegant hand and bespoke the first Prime Minister’s commitment to free speech.