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

‘Better than the entire world’: Here’s the ‘India book’ for ages

The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India By Gopalkrishna Gandhi Aleph Books, 624 pages, Rs 999 Vet

Why the youth’s ‘affair’ with stock market is usually tragic

Nine out of 10 individual traders in the equity Futures and Options (F&O) segment have incurred net losses, according to a recent SEBI study. What’s even more striking is that a significant portion of these traders are young individuals – students, early professionals and first-time earners

Why recognizing unpaid work makes sense

Across the globe, unpaid domestic and caregiving work remains an unseen yet essential contributor to economic and social well-being. Women, in particular, dedicate significant hours to household tasks and caregiving, yet this labour remains excluded from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations, leading t

News broadcast needs to reinvent, innovate: Sudhir Chaudhary

Popular news anchor and veteran journalist Sudhir Chaudhary says the news broadcast industry has not reinvented itself in the last 20 years, leading to news consumption gradually shifting to other platforms. Unlike social media influencers with millions of followers, there are no stars in the news industry

How education can transform lives — and society

The Moving of Mountains: The Remarkable Story of The Agastya International Foundation By Adhirath Sethi Penguin Enterprise

What the sharp change in South Asian geopolitics means for India

More than a week after the chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, created a ripple in South Asia by asking China to expand its economic base in his country as it is “the only guardian of the ocean” for India’s seven landlocked northeastern states, New Delh

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