As the world’s biggest democracy goes to polls in April and May, Reuters India gives its readers the chance to say what they would do differently if elected the country’s prime minister.

Will you speed up foreign investment projects? Will you focus more on agriculture, putting more money in the pockets of farmers? How will you tackle militancy? And what will you do vis-a-vis Pakistan?

Tell us what else is on your wishlist.

Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, and a man who believes that 2009 will be a "dangerous year", will be speaking on March 31st and has agreed to take questions from Reuters readers.

Zoellick has been outspoken during the current economic crisis predicting the first shrinking of the economy since the '30s, warning that increased government spending will simply create a 'sugar high' until banks' toxic assets are dealt with properly, and urging a tougher stand against protectionism.

But the World Bank's primary focus is on helping developing nations and alleviating  poverty. Earlier this month it published research showing that the spreading crisis will push 46 million more people into poverty in 2009 on top of 130-155 million pushed into poverty in 2008.

With the London summit of the Group of 20 nations on April 2nd fast approaching what do you want to know about the World Bank's role in shoring up the world economy and helping poorer nations? Use the comments section below, or use the #askwb tag on Twitter, and I'll get as many of your questions to Robert Zoeliick as possible.

UPDATE: This event has now taken place and you can view the questions we put to Robert Zoellick in the player below. We have no means to pass on any further questions to the World Bank but you are welcome to add your comments on the discussion thread below.

Tata Motors is launching the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, on March 23. Bookings open in the second week of April and the 100,000-rupee car is slated to hit Indian roads before July.

As D-day draws near, excitement is palpable among the middle-class. Dealers are reporting thousands of enquires daily for the “people’s car”.

But do Indian cities have space for the Nano on their roads? New Delhi is already bursting at its seams with cars big and small — and it’s a problem that’s fast spreading to other cities.

A year ago, R.K. Pachauri, head of the U.N. body on climate change, had said the Tata Nano was not the transport option for the one billion people of India.

Do the people have any other option?

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

The global financial crisis may have drained the coffers of investors, businesses and nations, but it’s making our language a bit richer as we discover, revive, coin and develop words and phrases to help make sense of it all.

Some take hold quickly and spread far and wide. “Bailout,” naturally, was voted Word of the Year for 2008 by the American Dialect Society and by Merriam-Webster and was No. 2 on Time’s “Top 10 Buzzwords” (a list that also included “staycation,” a frugal vacation spent close to home). Interestingly—and predictively, as it turned out—the dialect society’s 2007 Word of the Year was “subprime.”

There is a blizzard of language that strives to describe—but sometimes obscures—the strange new financial world we’re in. Television shows, websites and talk radio have exhorted us to buy or sell, have faith or run for our lives, be calm and just trust CEOs or don't believe a word they say. It's enough to make you wonder if screenwriter William Goldman's famous assessment of Hollywood—"Nobody knows anything"—applies here.

We who make our livings in financial journalism have a responsibility to help show the way through the blizzard—to translate and explain, or at least not to make it any more confusing. To that end, here at Reuters News, we're updating our financial glossary. We want it to be a living document that changes as the world it describes changes. When we're finished with updates, we plan to open it up to our users as a wiki. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to comment on this blog.

I also want to invite all of you to post on this blog your own words and phrases that capture the essence of the financial situation or help you make sense of it. Or you might want to share words and phrases that you'd like to see disappear from the language because they confuse and obfuscate, rather than illuminate.

Some words describing phenomena and financial tools that are causes or effects of the global financial crisis have quickly come into common usage. For many people, definitions for these important terms are still less than clear. Among them:

• Agflation: “Inflation driven predominantly by rising prices for agricultural products,” according to Word Spy. Reuters was quick to cover this phenomenon and we created a special coverage page, though the earliest use, according to Word Spy, was by the National Post in May 2007.
• Collateralized Debt Obligation: “An asset-backed security which uses a portfolio of bonds or loans as collateral, or security. A sponsor uses the portfolio to set up a special purpose investment vehicle which issues securities or CDOs, sometimes with a higher credit rating than any of the individual underlying assets. There may be reduced transparency in assessing the underlying risks,” according to our financial glossary. That’s not exactly a “Finance for Dummies” explanation, but it's a complex term. Given what's happened in the last year, maybe no one really understood CDOs.
• Leverage: Also known as "gearing," according to our glossary, leverage is the ratio of debt to equity. As we've learned painfully in the current crisis, companies with extremely leveraged positions—that is, those who have borrowed much, much more than they own—are left vulnerable to major market fluctuations.
• Securitization: "The creation of asset backed securities. The assets to be securitised are sold to a special purpose vehicle (SPV), thus isolating the borrower from any claims for repayment. The SPV then issues bonds or other debt instruments which can be traded. The money raised by the issuance of the debt is used to pay the borrower for the assets. Mortgages can be securitised as can future royalties from a pop star's song portfolio," according to our glossary. Again, that's not exactly an elementary explanation of this important term. More simply, securitization is a process of pooling assets that produce revenue—like mortgages—slicing them up, and repackaging them as securities that are sold to investors. In the U.S., securitization of mortgages—some of them "subprime" loans taken out by home buyers who couldn't afford them and later defaulted—was a major contributor to the financial crisis.
• Stagflation: This one pretty much means what it sounds like: “A state in which an economy experiences high inflation accompanied by stagnant economic activity, i.e. low growth and high unemployment,” according to our glossary. Still, for the uninitiated, it might not be quite so obvious without the definition. And we’ve used the word more than once in stories without defining it.

Other words or phrases that are decades or even centuries old that have risen to prominence during this crisis:

• Clawback: "To get back (as money) by strenuous or forceful means (as taxation)," according to Merriam-Webster. This word, which the online dictionary dates to 1953, has been used a lot lately, typically in the context of recouping big bonuses from Wall Street high-fliers whose employers now need taxpayer-funded bailouts just to survive. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who's received plenty of financial support from Wall Street, said on NBC's Meet the Press earlier this month that the U.S. needs "really tough oversight" on limits to executive compensation. "I like clawbacks, for instance," the senator said.
• Decremental: A gradual decrease in quality or quantity, according to Merriam-Webster. The online dictionary says this one has been around since 1610, but it’s certainly appropriate for a 21st century crisis (although “gradual” might not be entirely appropriate).
• Ponzi Scheme: Sadly, with the arrest and guilty plea of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, this one is firmly back in common usage. “A fraudulent investment scheme that promises high returns which are derived from an inflow of new investors' funds rather than from sound investments. The scheme collapses when there are not enough new investors to pay the old investors. Also known as a Pyramid scheme,” according to our glossary. Generally, we’ve done a good job of clearly explaining what Ponzi schemes are. For instance, this piece about the increase in Ponzi schemes devotes its entire fourth paragraph to this clear definition: “Such schemes use money from new investors to pay distributions and redemptions to existing investors. They typically collapse when new funds dry up.”

There are also a number of tongue-in-cheek phrases that poke fun at the gloomy fiscal landscape.

• Brickor Mortis: "A real estate market in which very few houses are being sold," according to Word Spy. This one saw a lot of use in the United Kingdom.
• Flat is the new growth (or up): Let's hope not for long.
• Jingle mail: "The practice of abandoning one's house and mailing the keys back to the creditor because the mortgage is worth more than the house itself," according to Word Spy.
• Utility vs. casino: Expresses the divide between conventional and unconventional banking.

Other new words are pure invention. For instance, the Dialogic blog listed the winners of the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational contest, which “asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing only one letter, and supply a new definition.” I highly recommend the full list, and two or three of them seem appropriate for a new financial crisis vocabulary:

• Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
• Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to begin with.
• Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

And at the Double-Tongued Dictionary, we find a number of words and phrases that have made it into the language, if not the mainstream dictionaries. The Double-Tongued Dictionary is edited by Grant Barrett, who is a co-host of the U.S. public radio program “A Way With Words.”

• Bad bank: Though it might sound like a scolding tut-tut given to irresponsible financial institutions, this term typically refers to the proposal for a giant, government-run bank that would buy toxic (or "bad") assets from existing banks, hopefully allowing them to return to financial health.
• Econolypse: The situation we may or may not be in.
• I kill you later: This catch phrase was described this way on Bloomberg.com: “Using derivatives contracts known as accumulators, the company wanted to minimize its currency exposure resulting from a A$1.6 billion (US$1.07 billion) investment in an iron ore mine in Australia. Three months later, the Aussie had lost almost 40 percent of its value against the greenback, and Citic Pacific’s losses from the accumulators—so notorious in Hong Kong that investors refer to them as “I kill you laters”—had soared.”
• Jet-pooling: The mode of shared travel that's been popularly, and sometimes sarcastically, suggested to corporate CEOs who fly on expensive private jets to Washington D.C., where they then asked the U.S. Congress for emergency bailout funds.
• Mini-Madoff: The nickname given to alleged Ponzi schemers whose suspected swindles—while not nearly as massive as Madoff's US$65 billion fraud—have also been exposed by the economic downturn. As Warren Buffett famously said, "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."
  
• Zombie company: Firms kept alive by banks even though they were insolvent.

We’ve only scratched the surface. I know readers of this website are more plugged into the financial world than many. So let us know the words and phrases that you’ve heard that have enriched the language, if not your brokerage accounts.

( C. Uday Bhaskar is a New Delhi-based strategic analyst. The views expressed in the column are his own)

The Ides of March have been linked with deep political intrigue and pre-meditated violence and history notes that Caesar paid a very heavy price for not paying heed to the sage advice rendered unto him.

Pakistan is no Rome but the pattern of recent events that include the ‘conquest’ of the Swat valley by the Taliban, the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and the blowing up of the shrine of the Sufi-saint Rehman Baba at the foothills of the Khyber Pass by Sunni extremists are cumulatively indicative of a socio-religious tsunami whose tectonic implications go well beyond the political contours of Pakistan.

Concurrently the country is poised on the cusp of an irreparable breakdown between the two major political parties - the PML(N) led by former PM Nawaz Sharif, and the PPP led by the Pakistan President, Asif Ali Zardari.

This tragic paradox is heightened by the reality that while the disparate extremist groups that are broadly classified as the Pakistan Taliban are uniting under a common banner and leader – the political forces that can counter such ideology are splintering.

But then historically Pakistan has been plagued by myriad domestic contradictions and paradoxes and long-time Pakistani watchers see the current turbulence with a sense of déjà vu.

From the first military take over of Pakistan by General Ayub Khan in October 1958 to the more recent coup by General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999, the khaki constituency has always been the central element of power in the national matrix.

Even when civilian leaders have been elected – their authority has been notional. The real power centre remains the Pakistan Army and its Chief who represents the multi-dimensional corporate interests of the ‘fauj’ as an institution.

The military are the guardians of the national interest, which they define and then proceed to protect – even if it means cynically exploiting religion – as General Zia-ul-Haq had skilfully demonstrated.

The current political impasse wherein Nawaz Sharif has threatened to go on a ‘long march’ culminating in Islamabad on March 16 is a challenge to the legitimacy of the Zardari regime.

The huge crowds that attended the PML(N) rallies in Lahore and Abbotabad over the last few days are case in point. The Supreme Court decision against the Sharif brothers and the imposition of Governor’s rule in the province of Punjab has resulted in Sharif exhorting government officials not to obey illegal orders, thereby inviting charges of sedition – and the possibility of life imprisonment.

In this turbulent and contested domain where rumour is rife, there is talk of the khakis coming back – ‘reluctantly’ – as they did in 1958 and all eyes are on General Pervez Kayani, the COAS. The possibility that General Musharraf will make a comeback as an acceptable President is yet another strand.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani remains the dark horse in the melee.

The Ides of March have always been preceded by intense speculation on the street.

On the eve of his departure to Tehran (March 10), President Zardari observed: “Our focus on fighting extremism and terrorism remains strong and cannot be diluted. The people of Pakistan have made tremendous sacrifices in this fight and are determined to see the return of peace, stability and prosperity in the region.”

A day later, his very articulate and persuasive information minister, Sherry Rehman is denying reports that President Zardari has been advised to stay back in Dubai – for his personal safety.

Public opinion has not forgotten the dastardly assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The same Taliban constituency with its anti-women virulence was behind the violent end of Bhutto. Her widower is caught in a maelstrom that is fraught with many disturbing possibilities.

The Ides of March will soon be upon Pakistan and both the ideology of Islam and the relentless pursuit of political power will be cynically contested.

This is not the first time cricket or cricketers were targeted in the subcontinent, especially Pakistan.

Despite the threat to players’ security, something which has led to postponement or cancellations of many tours, the subcontinent has always presented a united front which many will say was instrumental in the centre of gravity of world cricket shifting from England to South Asia.

There was always the fear of violence, the threat was clear and present, but what unfolded outside the Gaddafi Stadium at Lahore took the fear and threat to a new realm. Is cricket in the continent critically injured?

Can cricket recover from this body blow?

-- Leslie Harris is the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC. The views expressed are her own. --

In the wake of troubling reports as recently as last year that Western companies were assisting China with Internet censorship and the unmasking of cyber-dissidents, governments around the world seemed poised to regulate the conduct of Internet companies. Lawmakers appear to have stepped back from those efforts, but the challenges of advancing global Internet freedom remain.

The Global Online Freedom Act, drafted in the U.S. Congress, would have made it a crime for Internet companies to turn over personal information to governments in cases where that information could be used to punish dissent. The bill produced a firestorm of controversy. Human rights groups campaigned for swift passage, while the tech industry scrambled to stop the bill, which they viewed as a global eviction order from many difficult but emerging markets. At the same time, several members of the European Parliament proposed a European version of the measure, taking the accompanying controversy global.

Now policymakers seem far less certain that global Internet freedom will be served by imposing harsh mandates on Internet companies that provide crucial services to customers in repressive regimes. The bill has not been reintroduced in the U.S. Congress this year, and earlier this month, a top European regulator, European Union Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding, dismissed the notion of Europe passing its own Global Internet Freedom Act, saying that she was not convinced that "hard law" was the best way to address the issue.

For Internet executives who feared that hard-line regulatory mandates might force them out of many countries, Reding's comments came as welcome relief. But celebration is premature. Threats to Internet freedom are growing and lawmakers’ concerns about industry's role remain rightly high.  Those who choose to misconstrue Reding’s remarks as a free pass on this important issue do so at their peril.

Now is the time that Internet and technology companies must step up and take on the very challenges that the Global Internet Freedom Act was intended to address in order to ensure that their services and technologies do not become tools for surveillance and oppression.

Lest companies argue that the problem is too big and complex for any one company to make a difference, there is a responsible way forward. Late last year, a diverse coalition of leading information and communications companies, major human rights organizations, academics, investors and technology leaders launched the Global Network Initiative, which seeks to provide a framework to help information and telecommunications companies chart an ethical and accountable path forward through the growing demands from countries to take actions that infringe on the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users.

Equally important, the initiative promotes collective action to uphold the rule of law and the adoption of public policies that protect and respect freedom of expression and privacy on the global network. Three technology giants – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! – have shown critical leadership by committing to the Global Network Initiative. Now, others in the industry need to step up and make that commitment as well.

Companies that join the initiative will find its requirements both rigorous and fair. Signatories will have two years to implement a range of commitments including conducting human rights risk assessments, training employees, increasing transparency with users and employing a high degree of push back when government restrictions or demands appear to be inconsistent with fundamental rights. Members also commit to encouraging their joint venture and business partners to abide by the same principles.

The collective goal is not to provide the definitive rulebook for companies doing business in hundreds of countries with countless different legal regimes. Rather, the initiative provides a framework that allows companies to stand up for their customers, wherever they are in the world, and to draw support from a powerful community of business leaders and human rights advocates.

Now is a critical moment for this initiative. As regulators shift their focus away from immediate legislative action, the test for the Internet industry will be the extent to which it commits itself to addressing the challenge on its own. The Global Network Initiative provides a path toward responsible action. But its value depends in part on expanding participation from the companies in the sector and building a global identity.

One thing is certain: the challenge of upholding global Internet freedom is not going away. The next time a foreign government uses American Internet technology to spy on citizens, censor democratic materials or otherwise oppress users, the world will ask what the Internet industry is doing to address the problem.

Ignoring the issue was never a viable alternative. The world is on notice about these practices, and the next attempt to legislate the issue is always just around the corner. Companies that participate in the Global Network Initiative will be prepared to do the right thing regardless of whether or not there is a legal mandate to do so. At the end of the day, this is about leadership on a fundamental issue of human rights that will not go away.