A bench of the Supreme Court recently said: “When you say it is the world’s oldest profession and when you are not able to curb it by laws, why don’t you legalise it?” Really? While dealing with a PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan about large scale child trafficking in the country, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice AK Pattnaik are reported to have advised the...

The food price inflation in India, measured by the wholesale price index of food items, touched a 10-year high for the week ended November 28, 2009 when it crossed 19% on point-to-point basis over the corresponding week a year ago. The cereal prices were up by about 13%, but pulses are up by 42%, and vegetables by 31%, although potato prices shot up by 102%. This is getting way beyond...

Referring to China in 1947, Nehru declared, “A new star has risen in the eastern horizon,” and some years later predicted, “If you peer into the future, the obvious fourth country in the world is India.” One of the countries he had in mind has disappeared, and he did not imagine that the emergence of India and China on the global stage would lead to mutual friction. The Chinese are...

A rogue’s gallery of corrupt politicians and entrepreneurs trying to create money out of thin air.  It is impossible to quantify the level of fraud in public spending on wind energy The European wind association does not have a code of conduct for developers A big Danish firm revealed that it was the victim of a 12 million euro fraud The northern trade winds of the Canary Islands have long tempted daredevil windsurfers,...

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...