“The paper's self-confessed love affair is with the advertiser and its ...” — Sucheta Dalal Quote

The paper's self-confessed love affair is with the advertiser and its flourishing bottomline gives it the power to desecrate editorial space and express the confident view that all other media houses will soon follow its example.

The postal department does indeed undertake a lot of thankless work and is forced to provide services below cost for bookpost and the like. The answer may lie in some form of a universal service obligation fund, not price-fixing.

For Indias 40 million taxpayers, the bulk of whom are salaried employees, forking out hefty service tax is a double whammy the government taxes them on income earned as well as all their expenditure.

Apart from World Cup merchandising, television companies and game-specific advertising, you see restaurants and bars working overtime to drag people into their eateries with the lure of large projection screens and special World Cup menus.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

I used to know Madison Avenue advertisers. I didn't like 'em. Bunch of jerks.

What if in a permission-based structure, you could decide if you wanted to provide value to advertisers or to political groups? Or, for instance, share your medical data for cancer research? All those options should be available for an individual to make.