Conning the people on oil price
Yet another political drama was foisted on the country last week. Ms Mamata Banerjee quit the Cabinet, ostensibly in protest against the oil price hike.

Go the whole hog, go it quickly
Indian justice system has been acquitting itself well lately. There is the well-deserved scolding administered by the SC to the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments for their handling of Rajkumar's abduction. Then there are the convictions of Jayalalitha and Narasimha Rao.

Blind austerity
Last month the union government announced a series of austerity measures aimed at reining in government expenditure.

Macro to micro
The so-called `Nobel Prize' for economics has returned home, to the world of neo-classical microeconomics and quantitative economics, from the "big bad world" of macroeconomics and development theory.

Downgrade the optimism
IMF, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Asian Development Bank , in their annual assessments, pointed cheerily to India's role as the South Asian powerhouse. All seemed comfortable with a growth forecast in the upper 6% range.

eavesdropper
The glue of the trademark moustache that binds brigand Veerappan to journalist R R Gopal may not be strong enough to sustain the former's faith in his friend.