In the beginning of the year, the Kolkata Literary Meet-2013, held as part of the book fair, brought together over 50 speakers from India and abroad to celebrate the spirit of literature and the culture of reading. The focal theme of the event was Bangladesh. It spanned over five days and included some rare conversations in Bangla, to discuss the future of the language we share w
Premarital sex is no longer something Indians don`t talk about. It`s not a taboo either, and adults of our country no longer look the other way when they get to know that two people are ‘doing it’ before they are married. What the adults do is simple: they just get the couple married off. Young adults of India need to be very, very careful before exercising the freed
Use of debit and credit cards is no more a safer option. While your banking card is safely kept in your wallet, you might still get an SMS from your bank, stating details of the transaction which could have been performed in a city or a country that you might not have even been to in your lifetime. Thanks to ‘skimming’, a process through which fraudsters steal data from banking card
Anyone who has tried to transfer the title of land after the death of the owner knows the hassle involved, not to speak of the corruption. So this becomes a chance for the government to reach out to citizens, a chance for it to show that governance can be empathetic. Imagine the scene if the revenue staff came home to the bereaved instead of the latter having to go to the land revenue o
Delhi University (DU) has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. As if the controversy over the new four-year-undergraduate-programme (FYUP) was not enough, glitches with the online registration for admission in DU have left students with a bitter aftertaste in their dealing with the varsity. Thousands of students seeking admission in the university through online admission
With all Congressmen and women waking up to realise the real value of LK Advani ever since he is said to have said that Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s humility reminds him of Vajpayee, and is said to have been quiet on Narendra Modi’s humility, Digvijay Singh is the man of the moment for all reporters on the BJP beat. As of Monday afternoon, within an hour or two after Advani
The ‘caged parrot’ has suddenly acquired the claws of a crouching tiger, the central bureau of investigation, that is. And all it took for the investigating agency to discover it had a spine was harsh words from the supreme court. The swift action on railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and his nephew in the cash for post scandal is a case in point. In continuing wit
The government sees in the yellow metal a detriment to the nation’s economy. Addressing a meeting of Indian Banking Association’s annual general meeting in Mumbai on Thursday, finance minister P Chidambaram urged banks to discourage their customers from investing in gold. He also said that banks should stop selling gold coins. “Banks have a role to play in dampeni
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently issued a set of clarifications on the numerous queries that had flooded its mailbox, 443 to be precise, following its announcement of the guidelines on issuing fresh banking licences in February this year. It has been a decade since RBI issued banking licences in the country (the last two being issued in 2002-2003) and keeping in mind its financi
Tribal affairs minister Krishan Chandra Deo speaking to Business Standard urged that his ministry be taken on board before any “knee-jerk reaction” is taken on the Chhattisgarh killings. Deo, for long, has been a votary of grassroots development to tackle the Naxal menace. And being the minister in charge of the tribal affairs, it is only logical to take into account his poi
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet,” said Mahatma Gandhi, who laid great emphasis on the righteousness of means and not just on the goals. Unfortunately, however, for e-governance in India and the national e-governance plan (NeGP) that completed its seventh year on May 18, there have been instances of the means being questionable. While
The companies, which are under scanner after common investors complained of irregularities, are not chit funds at all, going by their filings with the registrar of companies (RoC), says a report in the Mint. All these firms, including Saradha, were registered with the RoC as commercial and industrial enterprises. So they are not essentially chit funds. Had they been chit funds, they wo
With the demise of professor Vina Mazumdar in the early hours of May 30, an era in the history of women’s movement in India has come to an end. She was 86, and was probably the last of a generation of women’s movement leaders that includes professors Lotika Sarkar (who passed away a few months ago) and Neera Desai (who died in 2009). Mazumdar was a national research professo
On Wednesday evening, with an A-lister audience breaking into applause, three aspiring gladiators in the national arena vowed to join forces. It was hard not to egg on such an instinctive, if romantic, compact; harder still as I found myself on the perch of moderator. For those just joining in, Arvind Kejriwal of Aaam Admi Party (AAP), the best known among the three political st
I have not seen a better devil-may-care performance before a national audience as when I saw N Srinivasan tackle an aggressive media on Sunday, May 26. This person is the president of the board of control for cricket in India (BCCI). The BCCI is neck deep in trouble over spot-fixing, betting and for running the cricket administration of the country like a mom-and-pop store, which is being rathe
A few months back I found myself in Jagdalpur, 242 km from Chhattisgarh’s capital, in Maoist territory. Until then, and I am ashamed to admit this, I had never been beyond Raipur, the capital of the state of Chhattisgarh. So it felt good to make amends, meet dozens of people wedded to the ground, driving past some of the best plantations of sal in our country. Read ground repo
Shortly after we hit our first wedding anniversary, the questions started. First it was family, asking us for the euphemistic ‘good news’. Then, it was ‘just curious’, well-meaning friends: “When are you guys planning kids?” Soon, Facebook too jumped on the bandwagon, and started targetting me for maternity wear and baby product ads. To its intuitive algorith
The month of May is very hot in most parts of India. This year, it has been unusually hot for the Indian banking and the IT services industry too. Leading Indian banks (ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, AXIS Bank etc) exposed by Cobrapost have been accused of serious violations of norms. IT companies involved in card payment processing services (ElectraCard Services, Enstage Inc) have been in news for com
Jugaad is originally a Punjabi term that is widely used across India. Jugaad is "good enough" or a "quick fix". Jugaad is functionality without optimality. Jugaad is one of those terms that has many meanings. It can be an apology. It can be an insult. It can be an act of surrender. It can be a frustrated acceptance. Jugaad is what my father calls "close enough for gover
The IT Act 2011 gives the government and its agencies multiple tools to address issues related to cyber security, online gambling, betting, international money laundering and financial fraud amongst many others. The government with its misplaced priorities has misused certain provisions to curb freedom of speech, remove politically inconvenient content and harass young netizens of India through
