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The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the regulator of the country's 24 stock exchanges is often described as the watchdog of the capital markets. Some would, however, argue that the analogy is quite inappropriate given the inadequate powers that have been conferred on SEBI. If at all a comparison can be made with a member of the canine species, cynics contend the body should be described as a lapdog, a gentle pet whose bark is usually much worse than its bite. Those not so...

Who remembers Baburao Shankaranand, former Union Minister in successive Congress governments who created a record by getting elected from the Chikodi Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka no less than six times? Well, Shankaranand's name came up recently in an official document prepared by the Banking Division of the Ministry of Finance for the members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that is inquiring into the stockmarket scandal. The document in question is the government's June 13...

How bad is the current state of the Indian economy? From all indications, things are pretty lousy. The half-hearted attempts made by the government to paint a brighter-than-actual picture of the economic situation seem to have miserably flopped. If anything, moves to project an optimistic future of the economy are backfiring on the country's financial authorities: negative sentiments seem to be feeding on one another to create a downward spiral of pessimistic expectations. It has been said that...

What does an idyllic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean have to do with the recent financial scam that broke out in Asia's oldest (and until recently, India's largest) stock exchange at Mumbai? What indeed does Mauritius have to with a stockmarket scandal that is currently being investigated by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) in New Delhi? Answer: Quite a lot, if not, everything. In August 1982, the governments of India and Mauritius signed a double-taxation avoidance treaty (DTAT)...

The Atal Behari Vajpayee government has become weaker in the wake of the assembly elections to Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala and Assam. In each of these four states, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was at best a marginal player. However, after the elections, the BJP has become even more marginalised in these states of eastern and southern India. While the outcome of the elections would not have a direct or an immediate impact on the stability of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)...

A sum of Rs 25 crore is not exactly small change. Not even for India's largest privately controlled corporate group with an annual turnover running into tens of thousands of crores. Yet this is the amount of money that had been offered in January 1998 by a company in the Reliance group, promoted by the venerable Ambani family, to "buy peace" with the income tax department. These are words that have been used by an official representative of the group, not conjured by this writer. Now why would...

Hers is a familiar face on the idiot box. She has headed newspapers and magazines. Married to the chief of a public sector giant with two grown-up daughters, she continues to write extensively alongside her career as a television newscaster and anchor. She, as the blurb on her fictionalised autobiography - presented as a novel - puts it, found herself at a disadvantage on two counts: because she was not a man and, more importantly, chose to be a Hindi-language journalist. But Mrinal Pande...