Shamed And Crippled
With Tehelka.com's spy-camera taking a heavy political toll after the damning revelations of corruption in defence deals, the beleaguered Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government will have an uphill task restoring its credibility and undoing the damage to its image.

BJP: Old Hype

Interview:
Bangaru Laxman

Jaya Jaitly:
Jhola To Purse

Opposition: On A Roll

INDIA TODAY-ORG-MARG Poll: Outraged !

Defence Establishment
: Surgery For Graft

Interview: G. Fernandes

Barak Missiles:
Off The Mark

Tehelka:
Sting Theory

Highlights Of The Findings

Rakesh Kumar Jain: Gasbag Man

Wheeling A Good Deal
The battle for BALCO degenerates into a political chess match between Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, and Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie. Jogi holds most of the aces at the moment--but will he play them all when it could mean loss of investments to the state?

The New Targets
The 60,000 policemen in Kashmir are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, they are the target of militant attacks, and, on the other, the Army sees them with suspicion. It is not just themselves, but their families that the policemen worry about as they struggle to battle militancy and falling morale.

Crisis Of Confidence While stock prices haven't recovered since the collapse of March 2, the panic has spread from Mumbai to Kolkata. Underlying the fear is a deepening fear of the Securities and Exchange Board of India's will or capacity to regulate the stockmarkets.

Escape to Victory
Down and virtually out, India create a miracle at the Eden Gardens to stun the Australians and break their winning streak.

Mixing Metaphors Music, dance, and tourism synthesise in the famed textile centre of Maheshwar to provide sustainable synergies for its growth.

ECONOMY: STOCKMARKETS

New Code Of Ethics

NO SUCCOUR: Shifting positions to the CSE did not help the bulls as the bears closed in

CSE's worry of the week was over as the stock markets began looking up from Wednesday, thanks to the SEBI chairman, who talked up the market with a sea of promises. There would be a new code of ethics, he said, which would bar important functionaries of the stock exchanges from carrying out "proprietory" trading either for themselves or for their dependents. There were talks of a compulsory rolling settlement-or paying the margin at the end of the day-for the top 200 scrips.

These words worked as a tonic and prevented a payment crisis from erupting in Kolkata and then engulfing the other stock exchanges. The medicine is a placebo though. While Mehta suspended broker-directors from the BSE board, no action was taken against Executive Director A.N. Joshi whose job demanded that he'd reported the president's dubious interest in the goings-on of the Surveillance Department. Ironically, Atul Tirodkar, the director holding additional charge of surveillance, was asked to go on leave by BSE on suspicion of having spilled the beans.

On the other hand, SEBI responded to allegations of market manipulation with the proverbial lack of alertness of the detective's assistant in crime fictions. A 1998 allegation of price rigging by some companies, including Sterlite Industries which recently made headlines by buying a controlling stake in BALCO, is being investigated as late as now. Last year, when Parekh had been ramping up the share of Global Trust Bank (GTB), obviously with an eye on influencing its swap ratio with the UTI Bank share at the impending merger of the two banks, SEBI did not lift a finger. If it is being probed now it is because the Finance Ministry has cracked its whip at the RBI which in turn got SEBI working.

More than the seemingly irresistible fall in the share prices, it is this poor quality of regulation which has strangulated investor confidence. When prices are driven up by only a few operators through collusive bids, the regulator does not take notice. For insider trading yielding a haul of hundreds of crores of rupees, the maximum penalty is Rs 5 lakh. There is little check on the broker who draws too thin a line between trade in client account, and his own. In a speculator's casino, the investor cannot but feel suffocated.

MetroScape
Pop Corn
"You are the best audience in the whole world," the Vengaboys tell raving crowds
in Delhi.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi Exhibition:
Pop To Classic

Delhi Restaurant:
San Gimignano

Mumbai Accessories Store: Watches Of Switzerland

Bangalore Concert: Deep Purple

A bloody crackdown on Naxalites in the south-eastern fringes of Uttar Pradesh proves that only developmental programmes, not guns, can help fight the menace. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Subhash Mishra explains why in
Despatches.