Governance has existed in various forms since the dawn of civilisation coercing mankind to develop and implement effective mechanisms for facilitating the needs of citizens, through efficient administrative policies and practices. Governance is central to economic growth and prosperity, and to this day, sovereign nations, big and small, strive to evolve efficient governance mechanisms.
Most of India’s rural population and much of its urban population live and work in the informal sector. As the government cannot provide quality healthcare free of charge across the informal sector, and is extremely challenged in basing subsidies on effective means-testing, most people in the informal sector pay for healthcare at the point of service. Many delay or avoid healthcare due to
The harsh reality of what actually goes into the plates of lakhs of children across the country in the name of midday meals have come out with a full, ghastly force in Chapra, in Bihar’s Saran district. While the odd death or two almost regularly in faraway villages and towns hardly ever make it to the leading news packet, this incident, with the death toll now reaching 21, and many more
Anyway you look at it, that was not a smart remark, Mr Modi, and your comparison sucked. They say smart people say and do the stupidest things. I don’t know you and have always held that I’d like to actually find out what you stand for and why people who love you do so unconditionally and are ready to defend you despite anything to the contrary. But I have searched for quotes t
It is 7th July and that last hour of the day when a red sun quietly prepares to leave for home. It’s raining cats, dogs and squirrels. Friends Santa Singh and Banta Singh are in their inaugural edition Maruti 800, which in its forced afterlife has acquired the colour of rust and traded its ignition for a mind of its own. Nobody but it knows when to start and conk out. It is on today.
This is for the first time in the history of industrial economic development that green business (blue economy), which looks at both biological and non-biological feedback system to be sustainable (cradle-to-cradle approach compatible with industrial ecology framework), seems to be doing much better than linear, ‘take, make, faink (dispose)’ economy. Over the last five years, circul
There are two events which have occupied the attention of the nation of late. In both cases, I felt we have not focused on the real issues. Something that I feel most concerned about in the coal block scam is that the concept of checks and balances is missing. Why do we have a series of people at all as the checks of the system? The assumption is that if someone makes a mistake somebody
The affidavit filed by the central government before the supreme court regarding autonomy of the central bureau of investigation (CBI) and the chargesheet filed by CBI in the infamous railway board recruitment scandal stand at opposite poles. The centre, in its affidavit before the supreme court, vows to take a string of measures to make CBI autonomous in this functioning by ens
The flash floods and calamity wrought by the heavy rains in Uttarakhand have once again drawn our attention to the persistent negligence of lessons brought home by such tragedies in the past. Would we not forget about it by the time you read this magazine, when newspapers and channels will have something else to talk about; politicians will be concerned about how to win the next elections; and
Over the past two months, the Indian Premier League (IPL; T20 tournament) was rocked by scandals of illegal betting, match- and spot-fixing and conflicts of interest. IPL team owners, players, umpires and cricket administrators were accused of being involved with the betting syndicates. But what went unnoticed was that these issues had been highlighted last year in a book – Bookie, Gamble
The law minister along with law officers and officials of the PMO were virtually caught red-handed in attempting to doctor the CBI status report in the coal block allocation scam. The supreme court expressed its annoyance at what the government and the CBI had done. It has now called upon the government to file an affidavit detailing the steps that the government intends to take in order to imm
Two members of Mahatma Gandhi’s inner circle, Swami Anand and Kaka Kalelkar, were both great prose stylists, great authorities on Indian culture and religions, and both smitten by the Himalayas. They made a pilgrimage of the ‘Char Dham’ together and returned to write travelogues – in each other’s mother tongues: Swami in Marathi, and Kalelkar in Gujarati. Both work
The flash floods and calamity wrought by the heavy rains in Uttarakhand have once again drawn our attention to the persistent negligence towards lessons brought home by such tragedies in the past. Would we not forget about it by the time you read this magazine, when newspapers and channels will have something else to talk about; politicians will be concerned about how to win the next elections;
Let me give you a hypothetical situation to beat home my point. Your neighbour’s house is devastated by a natural calamity which spares yours. There is loss of life as well as property. Now, for some reason, you cannot help them physically but choose to provide them financial assistance. How much will you offer them? Of course, it will depend on what income bracket you belong to. In that
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
