Stories to read over the weekend

We replug a list of five stories and interviews that you should not miss this weekend

GN Bureau | March 3, 2017


#UP elections   #Prashant Bhushan   #food subsidy   #Birsa Munda   #demonetisation   #land acquisition   #Jharkhand   #weekend stories  
Weekend stories
Weekend stories


Whether it is for learning, banking, communicating, accessing government services, investing in the stock market or starting a social media campaign, access to the internet has gone beyond being just a need. And after demonetisation, and the movement towards a cashless economy, stalwarts of civil society and those who believe that advocates of technology have begun to recognise that equitable access to the internet should be approached as if it were a right: a new RTI, so to say. Or, as the late Devang Mehta of Nasscom had envisioned it more than two decades ago: roti, kapda, makan and bandwidth. 
 
 
I have documents about black money being laundered and routed into India. I had also written a letter [to the authorities] during the UPA time. They did nothing in this regard. I had written about a Singapore company investing Rs 6,500 crore in four companies of Mukesh Ambani… Consider all the institutions to fight corruption. It is close to three years now [of the government] and the Lokpal has not been appointed. The whistleblower protection Act has not been notified... No black money has come out – all currency has come back in the system, says activist and supreme court activist Prashant Bhushan.
 
 
The lumbering waddle of the Indian internet has been a rich fount of humorous tropes. It fuels a sub-culture that shines an unflattering spotlight on a truth that’s comic and tragic in equal measure. Sample this: slow internet is more painful than breaking up with your girlfriend. Funny. But a trope is a rhetorical device, an easy to grasp intellectual essence that often outlives the truth and obscures the need for a deep-rooted and forward-looking thought process. Take five lesser known facts about Indian internet of today.   
 
 
When Narendra Modi chose Varanasi, the Hindu holy city, as his constituency to run for prime minister in the 2014 general elections, the symbolism was not lost on anyone. As the city goes to the polls in the last phase of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh on March 8, a mapping of his BJP’s prospects here could be obliquely seen as a comment on what his constituents think of the first half-term of his prime ministership and his big-ticket ideas like demonetisation. However, assembly elections have a local dynamics of their own. And the party’s performance will likelier reflect on the centralisation of power in the BJP’s party structure – which has since Modi’s ascent become its hallmark, and both its strength and its weakness at the local level.
 
 
The government's expenditure on subsidies sustaining the public distribution system (PDS), meant to provide subsidised foodgrain, have risen over the years while the ratio of people below the poverty line has gone down, says and analysis of PDS grants for 2017-18 by PRS Legislative Research. 
 
 
 
 

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

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter