As Lok Sabha elections approach, the Cabinet Secretariat, under the supervision of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), is quietly assessing the performance of government departments and ministries in the last five years and has sought data for this fiscal as well.

Traditionally, any responsible central bank would tighten the monetary policy when fiscal profligacy is observed. But if it impinges on growth and unemployment, then the monetary stance probably needs to be boldly revisited, writes guest columnist Charan Singh.

Corporate India believes that cooperation between rival players within an industry, along with job creation, will increase productivity and put the economy back on tack. The idea gets the thumbs up at Business Today's CEOs lunch meet in Delhi.

Power generation showed a healthy growth of 12.9 per cent in the month under review. The mining sector, with a weight of about 14 per cent in IIP, grew by 3.3 per cent in September.

Rates have been raised twice as Raghuram Rajan stands, somewhat like the mythical Dutch boy who stands with his finger in the dike, between his townspeople and the terrifying seawater beyond. Senior Editor Anand Adhikari writes about this grim struggle in our cover story.

Without second-generation reforms and a drastic overhaul of its institutions, India is condemned to mediocre income and growth, says Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag.

Business Today CEO lunch meet in New Delhi was attended by a host of leading CEOs from diverse sectors. They talked of ways to promote inclusive growth through collaboration between players in industries or what they called 'coalition within industries'.

Business Today brought together CEOs for a 'power breakfast' in Chennai under the theme 'Infrastructure is a millstone around industry's neck'. Here's what they had to say:

Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag shares how the rankings of India's top 500 companies have thrown up more than their share of surprises this year.

The CBI has become exceptionally proactive in its coal scam probe ever since Ranjit Sinha took charge, fuelling corporate fears of a witch hunt. Sinha is personally overseeing the investigations into the Supreme Court monitored probe of the coal scam.

India sits on some of the world's biggest deposits of iron ore, coal and bauxite, but look at how disastrous our mineral-exploitation policies have been.

In an interview with Chaitanya Kalbag and Goutam Das, Tata Consultancy Services CEO N Chandrasekaran talks about the changing nature of his business, leadership, and people plans.

The industry body's president, Kris Gopalakrishnan, issued a nuanced statement upholding CBI's right to proceed against any person to ensure law of the land is preserved.

Hindalco Industries' Managing Director Debu Bhattacharya says if he had known how complex and fraught the process would be to set up an alumina plant and a smelter in Orissa, he would have never put it up.

The finance minister, on a trip to US to woo investors, made the remarks in reference to the 'India decided 2014' initiative, which is to track the developments related to the upcoming general elections.

Market expectation is that the manufacturing sector could throw up some surprises. While, the companies whose stocks form part of the Sensex will see profits rise in the range of five to eight per cent, with revenue growing between 10.5 to 12 per cent.

Business Today Editor Chaitanya Kalbag says the ADB thinks GDP will grow by 5.7 per cent in 2014/15, but it is not as if the tendencies in the Indian economy will go away magically after the elections.

Most of us assume that IIM, Ahmedabad, born 1961, is the oldest in the country. Not so. The oldest \"business\" school is the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management in Kolkata. That is not the only gem we uncovered in this year's Best B-schools survey, our fourteenth.

The first Business Today-YES Bank Emerging Companies Excellence Awards 2013 crowns the mid-sized, unlisted companies that are fast emerging.

While addressing the state food ministers conference on the Bill, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar also said \"there is no question of having any reservations for a social security programme covering the poor and needy sector of the society.\"