The Hindu Business Line : Thursday, June 15, 2006

EDITORIAL
India retains the flavour, still
Healthy FDI flows and MNC success stories reiterate the foreign investor confidence in the country. More

ECONOMY
Plan for human development
It is time the concept of public-private partnership is tried at primary and secondary education levels, with social empowerment and equality as the guiding principles. More

ACCOUNTANCY
Bankable audit inputs
Nitant P. Trilokekar is a Mumbai-based chartered accountant equipped with systems audit credentials. Using his two decades of experience in the banking industry, he has written Contemporary Bank Audit, from Snow White ... More

It pays to speak plain English
Generally, accountants dress neat. So are their products, the financial statements — neatly dressed with numbers aligned, lines drawn, columns named, references given, and totals tallied to the last decimal. Language is understandably ... More

A call on the stewards
In the context of BPO units, do the presence of stewards and secondees create a PE in India? The AAR ruling in the Morgan Stanley case throws light on this issue. More

How is audit work distributed?
A report on competition and choice in the profession More

Dense fog in the accounting jungle
Be warned: this is rough terrain. The world of Indian accounting, where you can be clean bowled by the language. Consider, for instance, the following snatch from `significant accounting policies' of Reliance Capital (2004): "The assigned ... More

STOCK MARKETS
Stock market panics when politics dominates economics
With Dr Manmohan Singh at the helm, economics, it was thought, would dominate politics. But all signs point to the opposite and are exacerbated by the reservation issue, the speed-breakers to infrastructure development, and the Naxal threats. This ma kes the market rather jittery, says R. VAIDYANATHAN. More

INTEREST RATES
The interest rate paradox
In terms of the logic of demand and supply, an excess of the latter should see a decline in interest rates. This is not happening due to systemic deficiencies. On the contrary, taking the cue from the latest RBI action, banks are raising the lending and deposit rates. The price rise caused by costlier fuel prices cannot be controlled by tinkering with the interest rate. It can only be arrested by increasing supplies and curbing demand, both of which are difficult to do. More

LETTERS

Senior citizens and tax