The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announces 2009/10 fiscal’s first quarter monetary policy on July 28 and most analysts and traders expect it to leave key rates unchanged.

India’s economic outlook is mixed as a weak monsoon could dampen signs of nascent economic recovery, food prices are soaring even though headline inflation is benign and the borrowing programme is huge despite ample cash conditions.

The RBI has already cut the repo rate, or its key short-term lending rate, by 425 basis points to 4.75 percent in six steps since October 2008 as it tried to guard a slowing economy against the global financial crisis.

Should the RBI cut its key lending rates further?

Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s frisking at the Delhi international airport has sparked uproar in the Indian media.

Kalam is one of India’s most popular presidents, his tenure remembered both for his common touch and his earlier role in India’s rise as a nuclear power.

The government has filed a police report against Continental Airlines, whose staff frisked Kalam, violating a Bureau of Civil Aviation Security directive exempting specified VIPs and VVIPs from security checks.

Social networking sites were abuzz with angry Indians wondering how Americans would have reacted if, for example, former U.S. president Bill Clinton had been frisked.

For its part, the airline issued a statement saying both there were no exceptions to its security policy and it believed that Kalam had not been offended.

What do YOU think? Should Kalam have been frisked?

By C. Uday Bhaskar

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

The joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the NAM Summit has generated considerable comment in both countries and is being interpreted across a wide bandwidth that ranges from outright condemnation to cautious cheer.

India and Pakistan are now back to formal engagement — albeit in a brittle manner with many caveats after the composite dialogue, that goes back to January 2004, had been put on freeze by India after the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008.

It is instructive that this modest breakthrough came on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit, which marks the first high-level political contact between the Obama administration and the UPA government after it was voted back to power.

The operative part of the statement is contained in a mere 18 words that read as: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.”

Critics in India have flayed Singh for his seeming ‘capitulation’ and invoked the criticism that he is ‘weak’ — a charge leveled against him during the early 2009 campaign phase.

In Pakistan, the joint statement is being perceived as a victory for Islamabad which had long sought this decoupling of action against terrorism (a euphemism for the investigation in the Mumbai attack) and the composite dialogue.

Some sections have compared PM Gilani’s performance to that of an astute captain who has won a crucial cricket match — allusion to Pakistan’s dramatic T20 victory at Lord’s in June.

A more objective assessment of the joint statement would suggest that yes, India was perhaps more conciliatory in what it conceded — but on balance this statement is a tightly drafted diplomatic win-win textual compromise for both leaders in a prickly domestic political environment.

India and Pakistan need to engage at the official level on many issues — none more urgent than terrorism — and the circle has been squared in a reasonably satisfactory manner.

Pakistan’s insistence that Mumbai is linked to the abiding and unresolved issue of Kashmir has been set aside (though India has accepted a neutral reference to Balochistan) and is now committed — once again — to deal effectively with the Mumbai investigations.

Singh made a detailed statement in parliament asserting that Islamabad is expected to deliver on Mumbai first — and that some progress has been made by way of a dossier having been received that admits to the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ‘mastermind’ Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

With this renewed commitment the Zardari-Gilani combine has infused some slender traction into the Mumbai investigations and justified Singh having gone the extra mile.

But will this be sustained? Past history and the unresolved politico-military contradictions within Pakistan do not augur very well. In 1972 when the Shimla pact was signed, PM Indira Gandhi was generous beyond compare with PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and in retrospect, India could be charged with having squandered an emphatic military victory by way of the politico-diplomatic gains that accrued to it.

To that extent PM Singh has also been more conciliatory and accommodating with PM Gilani than what his domestic critics would have grudgingly endorsed. Will the tangled and zero-sum history of Indo-Pak dialogues repeat itself — or will this prudent gamble-cum-investment by Singh pay off?

The answer to this conundrum lies to an extent in the visit of Hillary Clinton and the posture that the Obama administration proposes to adopt vis-à-vis terrorism and Pakistan.

In Delhi’s perception, the anti-India establishment in Pakistan has made a distinction between the good and bad terrorists. The latter include those who target the vital interest of Pakistan. But the former who target India are either tacitly encouraged or allowed to exploit the loopholes in Pakistani law and remain free.

The manner in which the Hafiz Saeed case is being prosecuted is illustrative. It is astonishing that Pakistani law ostensibly does not prohibit linkages with the al-Qaeda and yet the U.S. sees Pakistan as a principal ally in the war on terror.

Like the Pakistani policy, the U.S. is equally culpable of having followed an ambiguous approach towards terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Some transgressions get the Nelson’s eye – whether it is Hafiz Saeed or A.Q. Khan — or the ‘truth’ as revealed by President Zardari about the Pakistan establishment having supported and nurtured terrorism and religious radicalism.

It is time to ‘reset’ many South Asian policy buttons and the Clinton visit is an opportunity to clear the clutter. Distorted narratives about state support to terrorism, religious radicalism and nuclear proliferation must be jettisoned and the moderate civilian constituency in Pakistan enabled.

The Indo-Pak joint statement in Egypt has laid the foundation in a tentative manner and this must be strengthened in the Clinton visit.

The Indian Space Research Organisation has said that Chandrayaan-1, the country’s first unmanned moon probe, has malfunctioned and its two-year mission may need to be curtailed.

The Chandrayaan-1, which cost $79 million, was launched in 2008 to map the moon’s surface and look for precious metals.

The moon probe’s successful launch in October enthused the media and distracted India from an economic slowdown, collapsing stock prices and outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence.

In a recent interview, Delhi Metro chief Elattuvalapil Sreedharan told Reuters that the government should concentrate more on building basic infrastructure.

“The pressure should be more on that rather than going to the moon,” Sreedharan said.

Do you think the moon probe project was a mistake in a country where millions still survive on less than $2 a day?

The chief of Delhi’s metro rail system Elattuvalapil Sreedharan resigned on Sunday after a section of an overhead bridge under construction gave way and crushed five workers to death.

This is the second such accident involving the mass transit system in less than 12 months. Last October, a section of an under-construction flyover in the capital’s Lakshminagar area collapsed and fell on a bus, killing at least two persons.

The Metro project, led by the 77-year-old Sreedharan, came under rare media criticism following the deaths.

Sreedharan has enjoyed strong government support so far and is not shackled by the delays, cost-overruns and red tape that have plagued big projects in India for decades.

His reputation , access to officials including the prime minister, and a mandate to jump obstacles himself rather than wait for civic authorities, have enabled him to get results.

The widely acclaimed chief’s resignation could also come as a serious blow to Delhi Metro projects scheduled to be completed before the Commonwealth Games.

Sreedharan’s resignation comes at a time when Nandan Nilekani, another engineer-entrepreneur and co-founder of Infosys Technologies, quit his job to head a government agency.

Do you feel the Delhi metro chief took the right decision and will his resignation be accepted?

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

The first entry is abattoir (not abbatoir); the last is ZULU (a term used by Western military forces to mean GMT).

In between are 2,211 additional entries in the A-to-Z general style guide, part of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, which we are now making available online. Also included in the handbook are sections on standards and values; a guide to operations; a sports style guide and a section of specialised guidance on such issues as personal investments by journalists, dealing with threats and complaints and reporting information found on the internet.

The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by -- and we're proud of it. Until now, it hasn't been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it's only now that we're putting the full handbook online.

We've decided to make the handbook available to everyone for a number of reasons. Among them:

• Transparency: At a time when trust is an endangered commodity in the financial and media worlds, it's important that news consumers see the guidelines our journalists follow.
• Service: As we've seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it's also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin.
• Geography: Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world. This is a handbook not just for English-language journalists in the United Kingdom or the United States, but for wherever English is used.

Many entries deal with words that are sometimes confused or misused. Turning randomly to the "H" section, we learn the difference between hyperthermia and hypothermia (The latter means "Too cold. Think that o rhymes with low" while the former means "Too hot. Think of 'er' as in very."); Haarlem and Harlem (the latter is in New York City, the former in the Netherlands); hangar and hanger (the latter is for clothes, the former a shelter for aircraft); and hale and hail (the former means "free from disease, or to pull or haul by force." The latter "is to salute or call out, or an ice shower").

We take a global approach to the spelling of many words. Often, it's the United States against the world. For instance, our preferred style is "artefact," except in the U.S., where it's artifact. Same goes for axe and axeing -- our standards for most of the world -- which become ax and axing in the U.S. There's also "backwards," which loses its "s" in American stories, and "leukaemia," which loses that first "a" in the U.S. There's plenty more: tyre and tire, titbit and tidbit, and defence and defense.

In the world of diplomacy, economics and academe, the G3 is Germany, Japan and the U.S.; the G5 extends membership to France and the U.K.; G7 grows the club to Canada and Italy; make it G8 with Russia; G10 adds Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. As for the G24, G30 and G77, you'll have to look for yourself (we've got entries for them, too).

There are slang words to avoid (posh -- though one former Spice Girl might object) and a number of common misspellings (Viet Cong, not Vietcong; ventricle, not ventrical; machinegun, not machine gun; and ketchup, not catchup or catsup).

The sports section of the handbook offers a list of sports cliches to avoid (hard fought, made history, veteran, bounce back, and icon), the difference between a field and a pitch (the former's where American football and baseball are played), and an explanation of delight as a transitive verb that needs an object ("Marat Safin delighted Russian fans with a neat chip...not Marat Safin delighted with a chip."). Words like disaster and tragedy shouldn't be used in sports stories, as this devalues the significance of these words ("Losing a football match is not a disaster. A stand falling down and crushing a fan is").

When language implies a value judgment, we must use words very carefully (cult, for instance: One person's cult is another's religion). The entry for "good, bad" advises: "For financial and commodity markets good news and bad news depends on who you are and what your position is in the market. Avoid them."

One of the most controversial entries is that of "terrorism." The entry reads, in part:

"We may refer without attribution to terrorism and counter-terrorism in general but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor do we use the adjective word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events. ... Report the subjects of news stories objectively, their actions, identity and background. Aim for a dispassionate use of language so that individuals, organisations and governments can make their own judgment on the basis of facts. Seek to use more specific terms like “bomber” or “bombing”, “hijacker” or “hijacking”, “attacker” or “attacks”, “gunman” or “gunmen” etc."

This policy has been passionately debated inside and outside Reuters. As  the handbook says, "we aim for dispassionate language" so that our customers can "make their own judgment on the basis of facts."

Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger puts it this way:

"Over the years we have been criticised for this policy on numerous occasions, when people or governments wanted us to label an incident ourselves rather than quote their views. Criticism of our policy was especially fierce when the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Reuters made the decision not to describe the attackers as terrorists, because we thought a label would not add to our vivid description of the thousands of deaths and the destruction of the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center. In the years since, as the world has witnessed numerous other attacks, we've chosen to continue that policy of sticking with the facts and letting our readers make up their own minds based on our reporting and the evidence we present them."

It's important to point out that the handbook is a living document, one that preserves rules that have guided Reuters journalists through a century and half but also one that may change when the times change.  It's also important to note that the handbook is produced by humans who aren't infallible -- and it's used by humans who aren't infallible, so sometimes we make mistakes. I'm sure you'll let us know when we do, but we're usually harder on ourselves than anyone else is.

I hope you'll find the handbook useful, whether you're a journalist, a student, a teacher or an engaged reader. And we welcome your comments and suggestions.

The music world, the Jackson family and thousands of fans bade farewell to Michael Jackson at a public memorial on Tuesday.

“The more I think about Michael, and talk about Michael, the more I think that ‘King of Pop’ is not good enough,” said Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, who signed The Jackson 5 in 1968.

“I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived.”

Here’s your chance to pay your final tributes to Michael Jackson.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee may have disappointed the markets with a higher spending plan, but the salaried class is definitely walking away a little cheerful.

Mukherjee’s budget announcements include provisions that will see an increase in the take-home component of an individual’s salary.

Income tax exemption has been hiked by 15,000 rupees for senior citizens and 10,000 rupees for the other categories.

Some of the other proposals include elimination of 10 percent surcharge on IT and scrapping of fringe benefits tax (FBT).

Has the budget met your expectations?

- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own. -

Reports that China has asked for a discussion about reserve currencies at next week's expanded Group of Eight summit in Italy has added to confusion about whether the country wants to dethrone the dollar from its status as the world's sole reserve currency. But the very fact the issue has been pushed onto the agenda suggests that a fundamental shift is underway.

Given the U.S. government's enormous borrowing requirements over the next decade to cover the bank bailout, fiscal stimulus and deficits in Social Security and Medicare, the dollar's reserve status depends on emerging markets' continued willingness to accumulate U.S. liabilities rather than switching to other stores of value, such as the euro or the IMF's Special Drawing Right (SDR).

As the largest buyer of U.S. Treasury securities, China can break the dollar's reserve currency status any time it wants. But it would risk large losses on the stock of U.S. debt that it has bought already. The resulting unstable stability is the foreign exchange version of the Cold War stalemate based on "mutually assured destruction".

Senior Chinese officials have given off mixed signals about their intentions.

When pressed, officials have indicated China will continue to stand by the dollar in the short term and denied the country has begun to diversify its official holdings. But that has not stopped People's Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Zhou Xiaochuan floating the idea of shifting to a super-sovereign currency based around the SDR.

Zhou's call for diversification was repeated last week in the central bank's annual stability report, which noted that "an international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency has intensified the concentration of risk and spread of the crisis". It went on to urge the IMF to exercise closer supervision of the economic and financial policies of major reserve-issuing countries.

Chinese officials have bluntly expressed concern about U.S. fiscal and monetary policies that appear to contemplate inflation and devaluation as a way out of the debt crisis, or at least accept it with weary resignation.

China has started backing a variety of small projects designed to encourage greater "internationalisation" of its currency (such as an active RMB market in Hong Kong and bilateral discussions with Latin American countries on the use of RMB to settle trade transactions).

The question is whether China is preparing to deliver the "coup de grace".

Pressing for a reserve currency discussion at the expanded G8 summit (which will also be attended by India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Egypt) suggests China's leaders are serious. They must have known that just pushing the issue onto the agenda would rekindle market fears about the dollar's value.

But it could also be an attempt to create leverage and seize the initiative as part of wider efforts to shape the international financial agenda.

In the past, G8 summits have been structured as a monologue from the advanced industrial economies to the developing world. But following the debt crisis, the leading emerging markets are in no mood to be lectured.

By putting the dollar into play, China's government may hope to pre-empt pressure from western countries for a revaluation of the RMB, and take exchange rate discussions off the table entirely.
It is also a sign China is ready to begin flexing its financial muscle and will have to be treated as an equal alongside the United States, EU and Japan, shaping as much as responding to the policy debate.

The dollar's reserve status has become highly conditional, one of a number of items to be bargained over as part of the international financial agenda. Past experience suggests that when reserve currencies become highly contingent in this way, it marks the beginning of the end.

The dollar will not lose its reserve status completely. But it is set to become less "special". In future it will have to share its reserve status with the euro, the yen and perhaps even in time the yuan.

Mamata Banerjee’s railway budget for 2009-10 appeals to the common man. She has introduced cheaper tickets for the poor and kept passenger and freight tariffs unchanged, bringing cheer to the millions who use the world’s largest rail network daily.

Banerjee, who took over as the new railway minister, underscores the Congress party-led government’s focus on “inclusive growth” after it was re-elected in May.

In her budget speech on Friday, she said there were plans to introduce 57 new and 12 non-stop trains, upgrade 50 stations to international standards, have air-conditioned double-decker trains, build a 1,000 mw power plant to power electric locomotives, and resume issuance of tax-free IRFC bonds.

The country’s rail network carries more than 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight every day on a backbone of outdated technology. Do you think the railways can execute this daunting task and make train travel in India more comfortable?