The lion’s quiet share

Arti Sharma, Outlook
Mumbai-based businessman Nalin Patel’s wife works for a financial services firm in Singapore, so he travels there regularly. On his last trip, he couldn’t help notice that the flight was chock-a-block with banking ‘suits’. In Singapore, the general chatter around the drawing room was about Indian friends looking at making investments or buying real estate in the city state. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a more investment-oriented chat over drinks at home before,” says Patel.
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The Greek people now face a stark choice: in or out?

Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian
When Germany’s chancellor Hannelore Kraft met France’s president François Hollande in Berlin recently, they agreed on a compelling strategy to save the eurozone. With no elections in any eurozone country for the next two years, they were able to stretch the austerity timeline for Greece, Spain and Italy, add some elements of growth stimulus, but also keep up the essential pressure for fiscal discipline and structural reform. As a result, even devastated Greece began to glimpse light at the end of the tunnel. In our dreams, fellow Europeans, in our dreams. The reality is different. While François Hollande and Angela Merkel...
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Writing out the non-han

Philip Bowring, Times of India
The conflict between the Philippines and China over the Scarborough Shoal may appear at first sight a minor dispute over an uninhabitable rock and surrounding shallow waters. But it is hugely important because it encapsulates China's assumption that the histories of the non-Han peoples whose lands border two-thirds of the waters known in English as the South China Sea are irrelevant. The Philippine case over Scarborough has been mostly presented as one of geography.
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The real cost of the spectrum scam

R Srinivasan, Business Line
Decision makers appear to think terrestrial wireless is the only way to go. We are in real danger of missing the bus on alternative technologies for connectivity. India managed to leapfrog several generations in technology and connectivity thanks to the mobile telephony revolution. But unfortunately, technology has a habit of not allowing one to rest on one's laurels and soak in the glory. Thanks to the heat and dust of the spectrum scam, there is a real danger of the momentum...
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Politics at its most tasteless

Manoj Joshi, Mail Today

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Jaya, Modi and the PM’s job after the next elections

R Jagannathan, FirstPost
Anybody with access to any English newspaper could not have missed Wednesday morning’s spectacular advertising splurge by the Tamil Nadu government extolling the virtues of Puratchi Thalaivi Selvi J Jayalalithaa on the first anniversary of her return to power. The front page cover ads, complemented by several inside page ads, were impossible to avoid. Question: why would a Tamil Nadu Chief Minister want English readers outside her state to know how well she is doing in her state?
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Differences between the Iron Man and Chacha

Bhaskar Parichha, ExpressBuzz
Sardar Patel, the Iron Man of India, was not only a great leader of the independence struggle, his statesmanship and determinations are filled with innumerable anecdotes worthy of recapitulation. If merger of princely states is the single feat for which he is greatly remembered, Patel had advised Nehru on a range of other issues confronting the government. It was unusual on the part of Patel to comment on foreign affairs, yet he put his views when it warranted. On Tibet he wrote to Nehru in June 1949: “We have strengthened our position in Sikkim and Tibet.
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