Maharashtra government has taken some innovative steps in its budget to make health an important issue in daily life Most of the aliments (blood pressure, diabetes and heart diseases) are due to lack of proper lifestyle. As a first
What would you do if you see your house under water; city deluged and it raining heavily? Most of us would, probably, scream for help or start praying. However, some gutsy people do things differently. This is the story of one
Nine successful bidders of captive coal blocks will have to wait to take control of the coal mines till the government takes a final call on the bidding price. The government is re-examining nine winning bids out of the 33 coal blocks auctioned so
In the mid-1990s when BSP chief Kanshi Ram was not diffident about making “opportunism” his political ideology, it was frowned upon by media and mainstream politicians. However, two decades later a certain academic-turned-politician ha
A lawmaker in the US has resigned after revelations that he was spending tax payers money on redecorating his office and also undertaking tours. However, these kinds of resignations rarely happen in the world’s largest democracy – Indi
As India eases FDI (foreign direct investment) norms the FDI has more than doubled to $4.48 billion in January, the highest inflow in last 29 months. Compare this to China and India seems to have done reasonably well. February FDI rose just 0.9 pe
I had grown up hearing the name Kashi frequently. Every now and then people would express their desire to settle in Kashi out of anger, disappointment, sadness, neglect but rarely for religious reasons. After every fight, my grandmother would scol
Gurjars hit the streets in 2008 to demand the scheduled tribe (ST) status, instead of the other backward classes (OBC) tag they had, so as to get more benefits of quota in education and jobs. Later, the community filed a formal petition arguing in
Air India, the national carrier which was declared sick by heavy industry minister Anant Geete, received another jolt recently when no candidate turned up for the walk-in interview to recruit new pilots. The airline is already strug
Taking a tough stand on sexual abuse of schoolchildren, the central board of secondary education (CBSE) has asked all schools to set up toll-free helpline for children facing sexual exploitation. In a circular to all affiliated scho
The supreme court on Tuesday cancelled the previous government’s decision to grant reservations to the Jat community under the other backward classes (OBC) category. The apex court refused to consider the Jat community
Expressing ‘deep concern’ over the gangrape of a 72-year-old nun in West Bengal and the attack on a church in Haryana, the prime minister has sought for immediate reports on these incidents. Prime minister’s office
In parliament on Monday, the Congress party raised what it called ‘Snoopgate-2 , the alleged espionage of its vice president Rahul Gandhi by Delhi police. On March 12, Delhi police officials visited the residence of Gandhi, wh
Last month while wandering through Green Park market I stopped at a magazine stall. While flipping through the pages of Readers digest a garish yellow-blue cover of a DVD on the wrought iron stand outside the shop caught my attention. The cover ha
The 2,500 words guidelines for its 1.39 billion active users worldwide Facebook has listed its standards for posts. Users post everything under the sun and sometimes their imagination runs riot; and the Facebook, which is a communication pla
Narayan Desai, who passed away on Sunday, was arguably the last of the original Gandhians – original in the limited sense of the first batch. Born in 1924, the only child of Gandhi’s alter ego Mahadev Desai not only played in the Mahat
[This profile and interview of Narayan Desai, who passed away on Sunday, was published in Governance Now in the January 1-15, 2011 edition.] An octogenarian, sitting on a dais close to a banyan tree on the lawns, was narrating Mahat
There are three things not worth running for – a bus, a woman or a new economic panacea. If you wait a bit, another one will come along,” said the first Viscount Amory, British chancellor of the exchequer, in the 1960s. It is too much
Temporal landmarks, especially in the multilateral fora, are marked tools for strengthening institutional memory and more importantly for highlighting procedural failures as well as accomplishments. The substantive rationality of such dividers oug
Even more than a year after the law on prevention of sexual harassment of women at workplace was enacted, most of the organisations are still struggling with the challenges of dealing with harassment and gender sensitisation. To cre
