“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
Hahahahahahaha….no revelation. Cricketers cheat. Big deal, not as if we didn’t know that! The circus has been in town for years. So why the howl of anguish and surprise that there is a new and sordid chapter being written in this saga? Do you really watch the IPL for skill and truth and the holy grail? Please. Get a life. The IPL is a set of performing seals doing just that
As a city, Delhi has a glorious past and seems set for a gloomy future. It is the present that’s in a bit of a flux. If you analyse the first master plan of the city, designed by the British, experts say you will find the city was developed on the lines of American cities of the 1960s and ’70s — sprawling roads and low-rise housing. And loads of greens.
I had wished that the four-year undergraduate programme will not be implemented. But I had no basis for such expectation. Arun Jaitley of the BJP had expressed his fear in a speech that he delivered at a seminar on education policy last year where he asked us to be alert as the fresh attempts of the present government at opening up FDIs in the consumer market segment was definitely going to be
While plenty of variables are required to hook up with one another and go bust all together to set a political disaster in motion, almost none of these variables apply to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Machiavellian calculation: Doesn’t apply Simple arithmetic: Doesn’t apply Momentary failure of commonsense: Doesn’t a
Another child, a 3-year-old, was raped yesterday by a worker in Delhi. India has to face the fact like many other countries that it is a host to pedophiles. That men who assault children are not limited to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on TV or live only in America and the UK.That is a cinematic lie we have conveniently espoused and it has blinded us into believing it is not in our
In 27 pages, and a (B) case later, writers Tarun Khanna, Aldo Musacchio and Rachna Tahiliani offered a setting, “to study the relationship between electoral politics and managerial performance in the largest state-owned company in the world: Indian Railways.” The case, “Indian Railways, Building a Permanent Legacy?” added to the halo that Lalu Prasad, then railwa
I am in Delhi to help my sister move house. It can be quite a pain, even if it is only two floors up in the same apartment block. But it seems that was the easy part. We have moved every darn thing from the smallest to the biggest and the lightest to the heaviest, but our phone, we are told, shall not budge. Because, MTNL, the sarkari phone company tells us, there are serious discrepancies in t
Most students have either proceeded on summer vacation or will be having holidays in a few weeks’ time. For school children, this is the time to unwind, learn and grow. For many of the college students, this can be a time for engagement with their own inner self and also with the larger society. Let me share some thoughts which might be useful to those who would like to
Some things are never immediately evident. Like the startling parallels between the digital and metaphysical worlds. Both are constantly buffeted by the illusory consciousness created by the artificial distinction between faculties of mind and of heart. But both, in their own unique ways, scythe through that illusion to reveal the fundamental oneness of their respective worlds. It’s a one
During my tenure of three years and nine months at the central information commission (CIC), I must have received thousands of RTI queries relating to illegal construction. Most of these weren’t questioning minor violations either. In 2009, one application had questioned the construction of over 70 buildings. I sent my staff to take pictures of these buildings. Though the municipal corpor
