Agriculture
Re-orienting farm operations
IT is a decade ago that India adopted the concept of a market-driven economy. An assessment indicates that the nation did not make gains on account of this change, but they could have been more. In one area, however, the market-driven concept did not wor
k fully: Agriculture. For market economy requires much political will, for instance, to abolish support prices and purchase operations by government agencies.
Corporate
Commandments for CEOs
MY BRITISH boss, the director of a prestigious laboratory, was given to throwing parties and indulging in small talk. In one such tete-a-tete, tinged with typical British humour, he gave out a few commandments for top administrators. He made it clear tha
t he was not arrogating to himself the role of an infallible oracle or Messiah. His precepts had been drawn from experience and were worth a try.
Economy
2001 Census: Encouraging and discouraging features
INDIA accounts for a meagre 2.4 per cent of world surface area of 135.79 million sq km, yet it supports and sustains a whopping 16.7 per cent of the world population. In 1950, China, with 22 per cent share of the world population, was in the lead, follow
ed by India, which had a 14.2 per cent share. It is now estimated that by 2050, India will most likely overtake China to become the most populous country on the earth with 17.2 per cent population living here. This is because in 1990-2000, China register
ed a much lower annual growth of population at the rate of 1 per cent, compared to India whose population during this decade grew at the rate of 1.9 per cent.
Editorial
Snail's pace
FEBRUARY 28, 2001: ``There is urgent need to further deepen reforms to set the stage for higher growth... This is a Budget for carrying forward the second generation of economic reforms. This is a Budget for equity with efficiency.'' These stirring words
of the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, that day left most of us falling over one another to congratulate him.
Information Technology
Using IT to visualise... Risks in portfolio management
LIKE other technologies, information technology is a resource used in the processes and activities of business enterprises. But the similarity between information technology and other technologies ends here. While other technologies tend to be applicable
only in specific industries and well-defined areas of operation, the potential for information technology in business is more universal.
Miscellaneous
Cycle of love, hate and deceit
IT HAS long been a redeeming feature of British society that some of its patricians, contrary to revolutionary socialist creed and prophecy, have been in the vanguard of causes that many of their peers perceived as class betrayal. No matter, they were th
e fine grain of non-conformist tradition, upholders of the individual conscience against the clamour of the multitude if need be, and very much in a peculiarly British mould.
Mutual Funds
Macro dimensions of UTI fiasco
THE FIASCO of the Unit Trust of India (UTI) raises the much broader question: Have financial crises of this nature become systemic? The individual small saver and investor has gone through a chain of such shocks in the 1990s when the financial sector ref
orms were introduced.
Taxation
Transfer pricing -- Case for simpler law
THE variance in tax rates across different countries, prompts many corporations which operate in more than one country to shift their profits to low-tax locations. This results in tax revenue loss to countries with high tax regimes. Transfer pricing legi
slation is used as a tool to curb tax avoidance by manipulating prices charged on intra-group cross-border transactions in such a way as to maximise the taxable profits in low tax jurisdictions and minimise such profits in high tax countries.
