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
A delegation of the All Manipur Thanga People’s Welfare Association and All Loktak Lake Areas Fishermen’s Union Manipur appeared before the national human rights commission (NHRC) in New Delhi on April 29. They appealed the panel to intervene and defend their rights to fishing and livelihood on phumdis in the Loktak lake. The Loktak lake, 236.21 sq km in area and the largest
This is the height of hypocrisy — all these so-called VIPs exploiting the death of Sarabjit Singh and fetching up at his funeral as if they cared that much. The same people did diddly-squat to get him released from a Pakistani prison. Sarabjit was not even a blip on their radar, and even after he was ‘thrashed’ in the jail the Indian government did sweet all to show it meant b
I was born a year after the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, which had claimed a distant relative, an incident I was to learn much later in life. Besides the few times someone in my family would talk about it, I had no knowledge or understanding of what it had been for Sikhs in those three days in November 1984. For me, the riots were, and will remain, a second-hand memory, gleaned from the acc
As the apex court put it in the coal block allocation case, independence of CBI functioning is of paramount importance and it must not move with the crutches of the executive. One wonders why CBI has then been put under superintendence of the government under the DSPE Act (more below). The CBI, in its website clearly declares th
Chinese incursions into the Indian territory are not new. And our political leaders resorting to linguistic misadventure in response is also, unfortunately, not new. There were incursions in Aksai Chin ahead of the 1962 war. When the inimitable Piloo Mody raised the matter in parliament, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was otherwise a gifted orator, tried to downplay the issue
Following a supreme court directive, over a hundred flats in Campa Cola compound, at Worli in Mumbai, face the threat of demolition. When Campa Cola had acquired the land for residential use, they were permitted to build only five-storey houses. But the builders flouted the rules and built 20-storey houses instead. Twenty-five years on, amid protests by the residents, the supreme court
It’s a beautiful story gone horribly wrong. A Muslim urban development minister of a state goes with his young chief minister to the United States to address students at the prestigious Harvard University about successfully conducting a Hindu religious fair and the largest in the word, the Maha Kumbh. The brief beauty of the story ends here and the students never get to hear that lecture.
On April 26, when law minister Ashwani Kumar said he was innocent, despite having seen the CBI’s draft report on the coal blocks allocation bound for submission in the supreme court, he was not lying. At a meeting of the UPA the same day, moments after CBI director Ranjit Sinha submitted an affidavit in the supreme court saying the draft was shown to Kumar and senior offic
Oversight, transparency and accountability are terms unknown to most chit fund operators, who deal with the poor man’s hard-earned savings. Recent developments in the Saradha group’s chit fund case in West Bengal have thrown up multiple governance challenges for both the state and the central government. While a complete failure to govern has led to this large-s
Get over it. You are not that important Mr Urban Development Minister of India’s UP state, whatever your name is. If the American customs guy held you back for ten minutes, big deal in the cosmic sense. Come one, it’s their job, thousands of us get held up everywhere at airports and we don’t whine and whinge and boycott the event we are going to that country for anyway. Somebo
A smoker has two friends: a stick and a matchbox. And s/he as many foes: a nonsmoker and tax. Lately, though, the foe count is increasing as both nonsmokers and taxes head north. Add to it a third foe, the opportunistic politician, and a smoker’s personal, Hamletesque tragic circle is complete. A couple of couplets from a couple of politicians in the last co
The recent case of a five year-old girl being raped and brutally assaulted by a neighbour has revived memories of the December 16 gangrape in Delhi. While rape as a crime is not new in our society, what is new — or has become a trend of sorts of late — is the sexist remarks by politicians in the aftermath of any such case. In a way, this turns the victim into an accused, and
The end of the cold war led Francis Fukuyama to write an essay — “The End of History?” — signalling the end of a bipolar world and a move towards the dominance of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. While the collapse of the Soviet Union also implied, for some, the beginning of a unipolar world, the reality in this day and age, however is vas
On a day Delhi Police chief Neeraj Kumar gave his force as good as a clean chit on two charges — offering Rs 2,000 to parents of the five-year-old rape victim to hush up the case and an assistant commissioner of police slapping a protester — badminton ace Saina Nehwal smashed the credibility of Kumar’s force as if swatting a fly. ”After what I am hearing,
The rape of the five-year-old kid and the ghoulish toys placed on top of her mobile stretcher capture the Delhi psyche. They [the government] send her in a dire state to a cheap municipality hospital without showing any sense of urgency and then fling unhygienic toys on her sheets! But it’s a sweet gesture, don’t you see, even if it defies medical science and why should they send he
There are many connections that architects make — between bricks and mortar, foundations and roof, between the insides of the buildings and outside. But, some connections, they forget to make. Whenever housing societies are built, campuses are created or new townships are established, architects forget to leave some plots of land with native biodiversity int
