In his engaging book on a love affair between a Hyderabadi princess and an Englishman in the 18th century, William Dalrymple reminds us that “the road from Hyderabad to the port of Masulipatam was one of the most beautiful in the Deccan”. In unearthing this fact from travelogues of the time, Dalrymple draws attention not just to the wealth of Hyderabad, inherited from the richest kingdom of the Deccan, Golconda,...

A rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of Growth.  William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible.” But...

Corporate governance codes work only where firms believe working in a legal, ethical and transparent fashion also means good business. It is not in dispute that good corporate governance is all about commitment of a company to run its businesses in a legal, ethical and transparent manner, and that the tone must be set at the top. But are companies in India convinced that good business is all about good corporate...

For a country looking to reap its demographic dividend when most other economies would be struggling to cope with ageing populations, the health of India’s under-five population should be a huge concern. Almost half (48%) of children under the age of five are stunted, or too short for their age, and 43% are underweight, according to the National Family Health Survey of 2005-06 (NFHS-3). The primary cause, finds the survey,...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...