Five stories you must read over the weekend -Governance Now

Five stories you must read over the weekend

We replug a list of stories from our magazine and website that you should not miss this weekend

GN Bureau | February 11, 2017

#caveat emptor #service charge #education #women workforce #demonetisation #weekend stories #corruption

Weekend stories

The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), in one of the world’s largest surveys of employment trends, found the number of women employed falling from 126.49 million (29.4 percent of the workforce) in 2004-05 to 103.6 million (21.9 percent) in 2011-12, down by 7.5 percentage points. In India, women’s contribution to the GDP was always low – only 17 percent, against the global average of 37 percent, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Their gradual exit from the workplace darkens this grim tale of unrealised potential.

Read: The distaff conundrum

Education is seen to provide access to stable jobs. India has expanded education in the past two decades. Unfortunately, the quality of education in most of our institutions is such that most graduates are unemployable. The blame lies principally on the poor quality of education in India. Millions of job seekers have impressive sounding diplomas but many don’t have the skills promised by those certificates from substandard colleges and technical institutes. Indian universities impart subpar education and do not find a place in world rankings for higher education institutions.

Read: Grads with grades that go nowhere

The demonetisation of currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denomination that the government announced on November 8, 2016 and the subsequent remonetisation of the economy has affected almost every person in India. It came as a revelation when the media reported that many people in neighbouring Nepal were also adversely affected by the demonetisation of the high value currency notes when they sent a delegation to India to mitigate the note-ban crisis in January. So the Olympian DeMon-ReMon exercise affected billions of people within and across India's borders.
Read: Does the nation have a right to know anything about DeMO-ReMo?

Reports of the presence of lead in noodles and potassium bromate in bread and the recent clarification by the ministry of consumer affairs that service charge in restaurants is voluntary are pieces of the same puzzle. Apart from the obvious food connection, these issues mark a growing shift towards consumer protection, sounding the death knell for the principle of caveat emptor.
Read: Caveat emptor: It's up to you!

There is a common thread between the charges of alleged corruption CBI has filed against former public servants – Manmohan Singh (prime minister), Harish Gupta (secretary, coal), Shashindra Pal Tyagi (air chief marshal) – and by the anti-corruption bureau of the Delhi government against Swati Maliwal (chairperson, Delhi commission for women). In each case the investigating agency has failed to show when and how much bribe was paid.

Read: The graft, the grease, and the bird that watches others eat

Comments

Other News

Need local solutions to climate change: P Velrasu of BMC

Climate change rising temperature and sea levels are posing new risks for coastal cities. With population growth rate of 1%- 2% in India every year, Mumbai too is growing and is population will double from 20 million to 40 million in the coming years. The city is also at the risk of rising sea level. It ne

Civil Services 2022 Top 20 felicitated

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, MoS PMO, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space and MoS Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh on Tuesday interacted with and felicitated the first 20 All India Toppers of IAS/ Civil Services Exam 20

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Record production of rice, wheat, and sugarcane estimated

The foodgrain production of 3305.34 lakh tonnes is estimated in the current agricultural year 2022-23 – higher by 149.18 LMT as compared to the previous year, according to the Third Advance Estimates of production of major crops released by the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

India`s ‘AIRAWAT’ ranks 75th in top 500 Supercomputing List

The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune, has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List on Tuesday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI S