Business Today January 17, 2016

The issue you are reading now is special in more ways than one for us. We have just completed our 24th year of publishing the magazine and are entering our 25th year in 2016. In January 1992, we published the first issue of Business Today magazine. It was perhaps the perfect time to start a magazine focused on Indian economy and business. The previous year, India had come close to defaulting on its external payments and had to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The pound of flesh that the IMF demanded was economic and market reforms. Till then, the Indian economy was largely closed, and worse, was characterised by the Licence Raj, with the government having a major say in every aspect of business. When the…

Excelling Through Innovation This refers to your special issue on chief executives in India (India’s Best CEOs, January 3, 2016). For me, the CEO means: Chief of a company ensures and makes its Earnings best at Operational levels as long as he is CEO of that company. The CEOs package has analysed well how these men and women have excelled through technological innovations, especially when the economy is crawling. All credit goes to the BT team. Mahesh Kumar, New Delhi Revamping Bankruptcy Law This refers to the interview with T.K.Vishwanathan (New Bankruptcy Law Is Necessary for Reviving Economy, January 3). It was an interesting interaction lucidly unfolding plenty of information and throwing fresh light on the whole gamut of insolvency issues, jurisdictional infirmities, jurisprudential inadequacies, and the urgent need…

It is conventional for most publications to devote the new year’s first issue at either looking back at the year gone by, or making predictions about what the new year will bring. At Business Today though, we like to take a slightly longer view. This is why we decided not to look at what India needs to do in a range of economic and other policy areas in the next one year, but what it needs to do in the long term to take its rightful place at the high table of the global economy. The Year 2016 is significant because it marks the 25th anniversary of the new direction the country’s economic planners decided to take in 1991, and which has resulted in India becoming the seventh…

ABOUT: Services now account for over half of our GDP, but manufacturing is about 17 per cent. If India has to cater to the growing needs of its 1.3 billion people, it needs to find an alternative to forex-guzzling import of products ranging from mobile phones and cars to consumer goods and shoes. India needs to design and manufacture its own products. Hero MotoCorp Chairman, Managing Director & CEO, Pawan Munjal, explains how India can become a globally competitive manufacturing nation capable of designing and developing products that are acknowledged as the best in the world. I find writing this article quite timely. I recently visited the Silicon Valley in the US, where I met some of the brightest minds engaged in path-breaking design and innovation. I have been a…

ABOUT: India is already the seventh biggest economy in the world today when measured by nominal GDP. It is also the fastest-growing major economy. And it is expected to be the world’s third-biggest economy by 2050, or perhaps even earlier. But just becoming a big economy is no good if you do not know how to balance your budget. In this column, former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, prescribes what the governments of the future should aim for, in terms of deficit, expenditure and raising of resources. Twenty five years is a horizon over which serious structural change is really possible. So here is my wish list for what future Budgets, and Budget processes, should be. Fix the FRBM Act India’s fiscal deficit (Central and state…

ABOUT: It would be a travesty if India’s economic growth were to be a prisoner of an antiquated tax regime, multiple and over-lapping tax structures and corrupt compliance officials. Can the economic interests of the Centre, the states and local bodies ever align to agree on a simple, transparent and a just taxation formula? Or, will that remain a Utopian thought? Former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha puts together his thoughts on how India must handle its tax reforms challenge. Man created the State to govern society. The State levied taxes to run the government. Over a period of time, taxation was used to achieve other socio-economic and political objectives. The nature of taxation changed and it became more and more complex. Now we are struggling to make it simpler.…