Five years after demonetisation, which sought to curb black money and reduce cash circulation in the economy, 70 per cent of respondents said they paid a large component of the total payment towards a real estate transaction in cash. About 16 per cent said they paid over half the amount in cash, observes Shyamal Majumdar.

The tax portal problem is a goof-up by both sides, and making Infosys the only villain in the story is quite unfair, argues Shyamal Majumdar.

Food delivery platform Zomato had investors eating out of its hand recently. Its initial public offering (IPO) drew bids worth $46.3 billion and was nearly 40 times oversubscribed. While retail investors came out in large numbers, big institutional investors also placed major bets, with the subscription for their category at 52 times the shares on offer. Even before the IPO opened, Zomato raised $562 million from 186 big financial investors, including marquee names such as Tiger Global, BlackRock, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.

It was perhaps over-enthusiasm that prompted the Indian investigative agencies to take a private jet to Dominica to bring back fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi. Predictably, the eight-member team had to return empty-handed after almost a week-long wait. The agencies were banking too much on the "state-less" status of Mr Choksi, as Antigua, which had given him citizenship in 2017, wasn't willing to take him back. Thus, the calculation was that Mr Choksi would be whisked away from the Dominican courtroom to the waiting plane. The reason for the optimism was also because Antigua is friendly territory for India.

The oxygen shortage was inevitable to an extent given the tsunami of Covid cases, but the problem is the lack of even basic preparation by both the Centre and states, notes Shyamal Majumdar.

Dharavi's success underlines the importance of community participation in any public health crisis.

The agency's poor track record in convictions is the only light at the end of a rather long tunnel for the couple, observes Shyamal Majumdar.

What makes the SBI case even more curious is that the government didn't insist on a similar procedure when it extended the tenure of another public sector bank head just last month, observes Shyamal Majumdar.

'India is home to the third-largest number of family-owned businesses in the world.' 'While everyone pays lip service to succession planning being entrenched in the functional DNA of family-owned business enterprises, it's still not an area of focus for a lot of family businesses', points out Shyamal Majumdar.

From properly spaced desks to visual signals, office life is expected to change beyond recognition, predicts Shyamal Majumdar.

'A large number of people are suddenly waking up to the fear of losing jobs,' says Shyamal Majumdar.

It's impossible to get the actual number of people dying and not getting compensation but the number is obviously much more than stingy official estimates. In any case, nowhere in the world are people sent inside gas chambers without oxygen cylinders and masks. Unofficial estimates suggest that on an average, one sanitation worker dies every five days all over the country, writes Shyamal Majumdar.

'The focus for IT companies will shift from adding scale to building a smaller, more specialised, talent pool with specific domain expertise,' says Shyamal Majumdar.

'India Inc has been afraid to criticise the government of the day for many years now, and it is perhaps unfair to blame the current one alone,' says Shyamal Majumdar.

Mumbai is the most hard working city in the world. Mumbaikars work for an average of 3,315 hours annually. In comparison, a full-time employee in Beijing works for an average of 2,096 hours a year, says Shyamal Majumdar.

New technologies such as block chain are throwing up new opportunities; so the axe is bound to fall on those who are still stuck in the past and not reskilling themselves, says Shyamal Majumdar.

'A heavy tanker takes time to move, but when it starts rolling, it's difficult to stop it,' Indian Hotels CEO Puneet Chhatwal tells Shyamal Majumdar.

While auditors have come in for a lot of praise for their proactive stand against what they perceive to be dodgy practices followed by companies, there is still a long way to go, says Shyamal Majumdar.

Jargon-heavy management bluster is taking over everyday office chat.

The founders of IndiGo may have thought it's time to go for a rejig of the top leadership team which can take care of the growing demands of an airline that has grown much bigger than they could have ever imagined, says Shyamal Majumdar.