Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India campaign has the potential to be one of the most transformative programmes in recent times. It includes creation of ICT infrastructure like high-speed internet at gram panchayat level, on-demand availability of government services like health, education, and digital empowerment of citizens. The Digital India vision is in sync wit
Adjectives were flying high inside the seat of power and with plenty of import and meanings. The parliament on Thursday witnessed an intelligent play of words and politics of different opinions. While the opposition parties thought the government was adamant on not letting Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement on conversion issue, the government called the opposition arrogant for holdin
There are black days in history. Opaque and beyond the pale of human understanding. We know it is not a perfect world and we are imperfect people and, therefore, we do imperfect things. But these black days are not about imperfection. They fall so deep into the dark of the abyss within us and without that they take us back to the days of savagery and tell us that though the years and centuries
The human race (that means you) does incredibly stupid things. A friend of mine is stuck in India because his passport has expired. You nitwit, didn’t you see the date? How do you travel without checking your passport? Very easily. Like him, there are thousands every day caught in their own ignorance. We even lose the document. Every time I read in the classifieds co
I had been racking my brain all day today trying to pinpoint what exactly led to the tragic Uber cab incident in which a professional was raped by the driver of the cab she had hired through the aggregator. I made hectic calls to Meru, Mega and Easy cabs trying to find out, both as a concerned woman passenger and a curious journalist, what their safety policies are. In between I indulged in cur
It must be wonderful to sit behind a counter and accept and reject applications made to your country by people who want to go there and you don`t particularly want them to come. The power and the glory, for a brief shining moment I am a better man than you, Gunga Din. I am so pleased that Mr Modi has given the citizens of 53 countries the okay to pop in to India and get a visa on
The Subramanian Panel has made some path-breaking recommendations, but, unfortunately, has not followed the sound dictum of ‘maximum governance, minimum government’, and the work of new regulator should draw upon those recommendations. For example, recognise the potential of the digital transformation by providing clarity on the facts in resolving the inherent tensio
The world is now in an era where warfare will be asymmetric in nature and will be conducted using non-traditional means. Such means include, but are not limited to, cyberwarfare, economic warfare, food security warfare, water warfare, and information and social media warfare. Each of them can severely impact the efficacy of the traditional military capability. Each requires a different kind of
“Jo Kaha So Kiya (we did what we promised).” That is the slogan on posters prominently bearing the picture of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal. These are signs of the poll fever which is set to return to the national capital in a virulent form. While driving from Ghaziabad to Delhi one gets slightly distracted by such tall claims. What did he exactly do in
One of the most recurring motifs in the legal academy is the potential of travesty inherent in judicial systems. The prison statistic released by the national crime records bureau (NCRB) for 2013 bears solemn testimony to this fact. India is still governed by the Prisons Act of 1894 in which imprisonment seems to be the raison d’etre of the penal system. With a peculiar mix of colonial la
The prime minister’s call to 77 secretaries to the government of India to support a transformation as they prepare their budget proposals is timely. Linking it with ‘outcomes’, identifying deliverables and regular review meetings will not, however, lead to a transformation in the absence of hard political choices, identifying national priorities and re-allocating budgetary res
Earlier this year, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement [LARR] Act, 2013 was brought into force, replacing the archaic Land Acquisition Act of 1894. The new legislation, in the works for several years, is an effort to address the historical injustice dealt upon land owners facing unscrupulous agencies of acquisitio
The old boys know it and so do the young upstarts. The world of the internet is never going to be the same. That’s the gist of two fascinating days of debates, discussions and breakout sessions at CyFy 2014: The India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance. Every single expert from almost every single corner of the networked world said the nuts and bolts of the internet governa
Chaudhary Charan Singh is arguably one of the most enigmatic political personalities of independent India. His political life, effectively covering five decades (1937-87), borrows the best from the freedom struggle led by stalwarts of the Gandhi-Nehru era, even as it leaves a dubious legacy for his political successors. Truly, this former prime minister is an enigma that gets adequately unravel
The Narendra Modi juggernaut continues to move forward. With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging as a victor in the Maharashtra and Haryana vidhan sabha elections, the Modi phenomenon is pushing political opponents towards political irrelevance. Setback for coalition politics The results of the vidhan sabha elections indicate that the electorat
I have always doubted the genuineness of the ‘audience-poll’ lifeline that Amitabh Bachchan gives his ‘hot-seat’ participant at his popular quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC). I question the authenticity of the practice when the participant decides his answer on the basis of what the majority of the audience present at the show chooses to be the right answer.
What’s so auspicious about October 17, 2014 that the Narendra Modi government decided to go to the supreme court and filed an application stating that names of people with black money in foreign bank accounts cannot be revealed due to restrictions under the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA)? It’s not as if the government, its ministers and mandarins, woke up yesterd
The monsoon clouds that had arrived earlier this year would soon be retreating, marking the end of yet another cycle of rain. Meanwhile, the cloud (computing) direction papers that the government of India had brought out earlier this year are awaiting an effective formation. Cloud computing seems to have moved quite a bit in terms of enterprise adoption ever since the government announce
The Digital India agenda has created opportunities for many ministries and departments of the government to come together and develop integrated solutions. But many technology providers, and indeed even some policy planners, have begun to consider Digital India opportunity as synonymous to the development of smart cities and the “Internet of Everything”. In reality, t
Prime minister Narendra Modi may or may not have put the so-called gag order on his ministers from interacting with the media. While there is no confirmation on any such official gag order, reporters covering ministries, and even cabinet committee briefings, talk about such an order from the highest echelons. The idea, it appears, is to prevent the ministers from putting their fo
