World Environment Day held since 1972 in the month of June stimulates awareness of the environment and enhances political action. After a period of forty years the international scientific community is calling for a deeper involvement of the social sciences and considering human-environment interaction not in term of trade-offs to protect nature but how best to serve society for the longer term
The new Companies Act 2013 recognises that companies emerge from the rich diversity and economic culture within India. CSR acknowledges the need for companies to contribute back to the societies they come from. One of the best ways to contribute is to strengthen this rich economic culture that is the culture of self-employment. Unlike many developed and developing countries, over
The first reactions to the denial of anticipatory bail of the Facebook user from Goa, Devu Chodankar, would obviously be full of condolences to the death of freedom of expression in India. Come on! Impending arrest for an innocent Facebook post? Really? A harmless, innocent post on a one of the many group pages on a social networking couldn’t mean anything. Of course it is the dawn of the
The foreign policy of a major power seeking to influence world events has to be based on a national consensus to have the assurances other countries would require for stable relations over the longer term. Narendra Modi now has the national vote, the stock market and foreign institutional investors have given their full confidence and have high expectations and the world is watching to see whet
For the party that believes information technology is a big enabler for empowerment, equity and efficiency, will the ascent of BJP into power mean the end of road for Aadhaar? While Nandan Nilekani, the former chairman of the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI), and the Manmohan Singh government had been projecting Aadhaar as the essential tool to drive several socia
There was a time when elections were a backbreaking, time-consuming process – and counting more so. Each ballot had to be counted, and often recounted. And between the two arduous chapters of what sugar-sweet analysts genially call celebration or festival of democracy came the even more arduous – and tense and risky – phase of keeping the sealed ballot boxes out of harm’
About two weeks back, a respected and highly accomplished independent director of Infosys tweeted saying; – “At a recent Infy board meeting, I was most impressed by Rohan Murty`s brilliant tech-loaded presentation, which will enormously benefit Infy." She withdrew it in haste little while later, saying she was carried by the brilliance she saw in the presentation in wrongly twe
For long during the 34 years of the Left Front administration in West Bengal, the Congress had an ‘explanation’ for the Front’s sweep: scientific rigging. The accusation was hurled especially at the CPI(M), the leading partner of the Front in both the state and nationally. The opposition party in the state – subsequently the opposition parties, after Mamata Baner
The success of any policy or programme depends on how well we understand the human behaviour. Over time the evidence from psychology, sociology, neuroscience and other disciplines has found humans are not so rational. Such evidence needs to be taken into account by policy makers and implementers. A clear understanding of human behaviour – including appreciation of certain biases &
He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. But since it would be a bit too harsh a proverb to use for the occasion, let’s just say he who tweets to embarrass others often gets embarrassed on Twitter. Congress party general secretary Digvijay Singh is learning it. The “hard way” or not is for him to figure out. For the moment, let’s just say the disconcerting way.
I t is over fifty years since Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Prem Bhagat submitted their report on the Indian army’s performance in the war against China. Yet going by the response to parts of the report recently released by Neville Maxwell, it feels almost as if we are back in 1963. Much of the commentary on the report eerily echoes the post-mortems performed in the im
[Here is the text of the 15th D P Kohli Memorial Lecture Gopalkrishna Gandhi delivered on April 15 in New Delhi. Courtesy: http://cbi.nic.in/speech/15dpk_20140415_chiefguest.pdf] I am grateful to Sri Ranjit Sinha, Director CBI, for giving me this valuable chance. And I take this opportunity
I own a house close to the Metro station in Vaishali, Ghaziabad. It’s just a kilometre from Anand Vihar – the ISBT and railway station in east Delhi – and about 15 km on road from Connaught Place, the heart of the national capital. It’s less than half an hour by the Metro; add about 10 minutes for New Delhi railway station Noida, the other hub of the capital region (NCR)
Fixed tenure for civil servants is now a part of the All-India Service Rules. The supreme court’s judgement on stability of tenure for civil servants was based on the expectation that insulating them from political interference will lead to efficient service delivery and increased efficiency. This takes a simplistic view of the institutional dimensions of governance, and the desired resul
Bruce Colville, well-known American writer of children’s books, said, “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny, control of the flow of information is the tool of dictatorship.” It will be democratically incorrect to be associated with tyranny and dictatorship. Our government offices are abuzz with tête-à-tête about the Right to Information (RTI) Ac
There is a tiny division in the massive Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the US. Its size doesn`t denote its importance, or the flurry of activity that’s besieged it recently. The unit, called the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) office, is mandated by Congressional law to map, document and track all unmanned aerial vehicle flying in American airspace by September 2015. The fl
Any kind of growth cannot be sustainable until it is inclusive, that is to say, every section of the society is prospering. It was with this realisation that the concept of financial inclusion (FI) dawned in India. FI is often misunderstood to be limited to banking but it is much more than that. To begin with, it is about reaching out to every household with three banking services &nda
In the early eighties, after completing my post-graduation, I was looking for a job. Journalism was not one of them till I fell in love with a newspaper called The Telegraph published from Calcutta (it was not Kolkata then). Under the stewardship of its dynamic young editor MJ Akbar, The Telegraph was certainly out of the ordinary. Unlike the Delhi-based national newspapers that used to practis
Those who instigate riots know the rule to be `fireproofed`—and to thrive on dangerous fundamentals. Beyond such calculated moves, the sufferers and their humane observers live in oblivion. Quite often, we see the frail silent image of Manto hanging on wall and his literatures meeting disdained responses, likewise as: I`ll fly all from here--not to listen, these are at service, always at
A friend of mine has sent me a one liner. India’s choices for the elections are between a bluffer, a duffer and a muffler. It isn’t very funny, but it is tragically valid. In a nation of 1.2 billion people we have no men and women of stature, people who can walk tall and make you admire them. Instead, it is all clay feet and straw. Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru talked about &
