Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

-NYDailyNews.com Recent deaths of battered baby girls in different parts of India have jolted the nation's conscience. The United Nations ranks India as the deadliest place for female children. A few days back, 3-month-old Afreen died of cardiac arrest in a southern Indian hospital. She bore signs of beatings and cigarette burns, allegedly abused by her father. The 25-year-old father was apparently upset at having a daughter instead of a son, his wife...

People with agricultural land that they do not wish to cultivate will soon have the option of depositing it in government land banks that will offer them consistent monetary returns. With an incentive system broadly on the lines of a bank account, the public land bank will offer payments based on the tenure and size of the holding with additional benefits if the land is leased out. "A lot of land is...

It would be great if the enthusiasm on the financial inclusion agenda gets a pause from the frantic do-gooders . Too many people appear to be enthusiastic about serving the poor - and the kindness is killing. Back in 1956, we discovered that cooperatives were a great instrument to reach out to the poor. These were peoples' institutions, local and would be responsive to the problems of their members. A set of...