From the Editor

There are times when we at Business Today chafe at being a fortnightly. There is so much happening in business and the economy that we storytellers are fit to burst. It is not just what you see in the printed magazine—our website www.businesstoday.in is up to nearly a million page views. Our tweets and podcasts are gathering ever more followers. It is natural for us now to shoot web video clips while speaking with Anybody Notable in business.

This issue is swollen with superb content, and our cover story on Mukesh Ambani illustrates the new paths that B7 is beating. His troubles with the Petroleum Ministry over Reliance’s gas fields in the Krishna-Godavari basin are like a burr in his sock—a prickly annoyance at every step. This story is as much about deep-sea exploration as it is about how a giant like Reliance can start to have just too much sand and water getting into its pipes, figuratively speaking. It illustrates the attention to accuracy, balance, detail and narrative that we excel at, as well as our tenacity—Special Correspondent Anilesh Mahajan pieced together the puzzle over weeks with help from senior editors. Enjoy reading it from page 66.

Another businessman who has adroitly played government, politics, regulations and public perception like a harp and had a rollicking good time at it is in even deeper water. Vijay Mallya (page 28) is looking like the King of Poor Times: can he pull Kingfisher Airlines out of its nosedive?

Large chunks of our ‘mind space’ are taken up by big events, and the government’s annual Budget is truly like an assault on Everest—lots of base camps, sherpas carrying in demands and requests from the peak to the raja (okay, I mean North Block), the gusts and blizzards of economic stress that have ever so often turned into a Budget feel young (happy?) capped by a 90-minute peroration from the peak. It is actually a gripping tale, and Senior Editor Sanjiv Shankaran and Deputy Art Director Rajat Baran Chakravarty would have done us proud at last month’s Comic Con in Delhi with their colourful narration from page 145. Do not for a moment think that we are flippant, though. I was privileged to be a spirited, two-hour brain-storming at our offices when we invited some of the best economic brains in the land led by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha. You can read the rent and tart recipes for Pranabda (Last Chance to Get it Right, page 78) and the meaty pre-Budget package that follows. A week earlier, I was in Mumbai delighting as more women do more with wireless technology at the NASSCOM Leadership Forum with the theme (and limits) (see Associate Editor Goutam Das’s story on page 32). By the way, Goutam’s stream of reports from the conference are on our website at http://goo.gl/cr0lt  drew a lot of eyeballs. 

The seventh and final round of voting in India’s most populous state will take place only after we hit the news stands. Special Correspondent Manu Kaushik foraged across Uttar Pradesh to bring you some old-fashioned “shoe leather hits village dirt track” reportage on a huge chunk of our political economy (page 36). Just in case you think we are short-termist poll-watchers, don’t miss Executive Editor Suveen Sinha’s Bihar chronicle on page 41.

Frankly there is so much to read and view this fortnight that you ought to either bookmark or subscribe. Senior Editor Anand Adhikari turns out the glamour piece on unscrupulous promoters who misused IPOs, and Senior Editor Sarbajeet K. Sen draws the curtain aside on corporate fraud. There’s more. Lots more. Go on.

Share this story