The road ahead appears quite foggy.

To borrow from Charles Dickens, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times for Indian businesses. On the one hand, the news on the economic front is not particularly cheerful.

The cleanup of the financial system was actually initiated by the previous governor, Raghuram Rajan, when he started the Asset Quality Review (AQR) of banks in July 2015, which forced banks to stop ever greening loans and owe up to their bad loans.

PM Modi got lucky in the early part of his tenure when crude prices fell sharply. But in the run up to the elections, his luck on the economic front seems to have run out.

Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry could have equally won the prize for Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and those in Physics could have also been considered for prizes in Medicine or Chemistry.

The blame game has already started with some of the independent directors who have been superseded by the government appointed directors saying that they had tried to ensure an orderly asset sell-off to manage the crisis, but nominee directors had blocked it.

Every year, a number of very respectable organisations - management consultancies, wealth managers, tax advisors, property consultants, and media firms - try to find out the number of super wealthy people worldwide and, of course, in individual countries.

The IL&FS case should be a wakeup call for the government precisely for the reason that it reached a stage of collapse without anyone spotting the problem early on.

The majority verdict is nuanced - but one gets a sense that the honourable justices have put too much faith and trust in an ideal world than the real world we live in.

The GDP back series data 'accidently' became public thanks to a report on real sector statistics prepared by a committee constituted by the National Statistical Commission. In the din that ensued, some of the more serious concerns that the committee raised regarding quality of the data got lost. Business Today's Prosenjit Datta and Dipak Mondal caught up with Sudipto Mundle, chairman of the Committee on Real Sector Statistics, which prepared the new series, to dig deeper into the observations made in the report. Edited excerpts:

Over the next few years, a number of entrepreneurs, who had shot to prominence over the past decade and a half, will either have lost their entire businesses or will see their empires shrink dramatically in size, after losing many of their companies.

Mallya kept borrowing more and more to keep KFA flying - putting up his shares and other assets as collateral to keep getting loans from banks.

SMEs hit hard, india still a cash economy.

Ira Kalish, Chief Global Economist, Deloitte, Touche Tohmatsu, talks to Prosenjit Datta, Rajeev Dubey and Joe C. Mathew on how India can do well in spite of trade wars, oil, the state of the global economy and the future of global trade.

There are numerous studies which show that having more women in the workplaces is good for business - not because it is the politically correct thing to do in today's era, but because it is better for the bottom line.

The problem is that two big objectives that the Prime Minister had touted in his late evening speech - about catching black money and weeding out fake notes - have been less than successful to say the least.

A closer look at the details of the GDP estimates shows that some worries remain and whether the 8 per cent plus can be maintained and bettered in the next several quarters will depend both on external factors as well as how well the government can manage its finances.

While Vajpayee is known for his dignity, his unfailing courtesy, his wit and oratorical skills and ability to take opposition parties along, the economic contribution of his government is often overlooked.

When Ratan Tata picked up Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, he was on an acquisition spree.

Vajpayee is no more, but no one can doubt his contribution on economic, political and diplomatic fronts.