Columns

Grounding safety to let airlines stay afloat

Poor airlines companies! First, they flew their lot directly into losses. Now, the DGCA wants to cancel some licences also?! Already in tailspin, Kingfisher Airlines was damned in a report by the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) over several lapses in safety standards. The aviation authority says that the lapses merit a cancellation of licences. It has not spared the stat

UP polls: wolves are buying sheep’s clothing by the yard

In a hurriedly called press conference on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party tried to wipe clean the egg on its face. A few hours after Mayawati’s tainted former minister Babu Singh Kushwaha joined the saffron party on Tuesday, there were 60 raids on his premises in UP, Delhi and Haryana. While the BJP questioned the timing of the raids, political pundits questioned the party&rsqu

Indian cricket team`s broken bottle!

Many years ago in Dubai when the Monday night squash league was fun I remember one match leading 9-0, 9-0, 6-0 and thinking okay, this is a cakewalk. Suddenly, the opponent changed tack and before I knew it he had won the third game and was cruising in the fourth. A team mate, yelled, “Come on, get on with it and show some bottle.” I didn’t, scrambling l

All they want is dignity

More than anything else, dignity seems to be in short supply the world over. Take dignity as a sum total of basic human rights, or the freedom to shape one’s future, and you will see why the world is angry, why the just concluded year witnessed so many street protests. Though ‘dignity’ seems more a state of mind than a piece of statistics, Social Watch Internati

New year and the run of gift horses

There are two causes of dread in the gift-giving season. One is, gosh! What do I gift dear so-and-so, and its cousin, gosh! I hope dear so-and-so doesn’t give me that useless gift again. Then there is that unanswered philosophical question: when does the statute of limitation on the New Year end? Do you still stick out a hand, widen your eyes, put on a smile and wish everyone you meet a &

Reining in corruption

The standoff between the government and the civil society over the proposed Lokpal showed reluctance of the ruling establishment to design effective institutional mechanism to rein in corruption in the country. The recent discourses in development economics emphasise upon the importance of a good institutional environment that promotes transparency and accountability in administration, business

House of Parties

(This was first published in the September 16-30 issue of the Governance Now magazine. Given the way the debate on the Lokpal bill ended in the Rajya Sabha last night, we thought reviving this was timely.) "The parliament has spoken. The will of the parliament is the will of the people,” so said a visibly relieved prime minister in the evening on Saturday, August 27,

Who wants Lokpal anyway? Not Congress, for sure

After 43 years of dithering on the anti-corruption bill, the Lok Sabha finally passed the newest version of the Lokpal bill late Tuesday. The bill, thus, is now past the first hurdle. However, an united opposition thouroughly lambasted the government in the house for bringing a `patently unconstitutional and deeply flawed bill` and for `violating the spirit of consenus. Going by

Seven lessons we can learn from creative children

When Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, our former president, honoured the creative children from around the country on Nov 11 at the Ignite function at IIMA organised by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and Honey Bee Network, he underlined the need once again for rethinking the pedagogy for future India. There is no doubt that children are generally born creative. Why should then schools and colleges

Is India serious about the northeast?

Many in India subscribe to the idea of unity in diversity for India. Unity presupposes reciprocity among the segments. One may ask if the supposed unity in the Indian context merely exhibits some semblance of institutionalised order. However, the term unity enjoys official patronage and it is particularly upheld by those who are the stakeholders of the policy of united India free from the

It is time Lalu grew up

Amidst the verbal duels parliament witnessed on December 22 when the Lokpal Bill was tabled for discussion, the lone parliamentarian who stood out for his theatrics was Lalu Prasad, that irrepressible king of buffoonery. Lalu was busy stirring what he believes is `rustic charm` and `earthen wit` into the debate, launching a vitriolic broadside at social activist and Jan Lokpal crusader

CEC & Anna’s men: polls apart

Chief election commissioner Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi is bang on the job. A day after announcing dates for elections in five states (Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur), he is dead serious about dealing with electoral challenges of all kinds, not excluding even the perceived ones. In a statement (during an interview with PTI) which just fell short of bordering

Economic superpower with malnourished belly

While some claim India is an emerging economic superpower, we still have a long way to go before achieving the kind of growth that goes beyond numbers, that translates into better lives for millions. Growth has been given priority over development, gross domestic product over gross national happiness. Take nutrition for example. The international food policy research institute (IFPRI), an inter

Color-ful porn

On November 22, I addressed my column in The Pioneer to self-regulation bodies in the media space. I argued that via Colors, a fairly respectable TV channel, pornstar Sunny Leone is being heavily cross-promoted across the internet, mobile applications and the social media space. I did name Press Council chief Markandey Katju and News Broadcasting Standards Authority chairman JS Verma. But I rea

North Korea, nukes and confusion over condolences

The news of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s death has been received with much speculation with questions related to the nature of political transition in this isolated country, their future foreign policy and the inside situation. Most importantly, the international community is watching closely the nation’s nuclear policy with raised eyebrows asking, “Who controls the Nukes

Why govt is co-opting judiciary

Assuming that the committee that selected PJ Thomas as chief vigilance commission would have included the chief justice of India (CJI) too, how would it have impacted the judicial review of the decision? The answer to this query lies in the domain of ambiguity. But there is no denying the fact that it would have added a rather complex dimension to the appointments of functionaries whose assignm

Maya skips homework

If chief minister Mayawati’s plan to divide UP into four isn’t going anywhere she herself has to blame for it. She hardly had left the union home ministry with any choice other than sending back her proposal with multiple queries. Her rejoinder that the union government wants to keep the issue ‘pending’ by picking holes cuts no ice. To begin at the beginni

Katju`s intellectual monopoly and Allahabad Uni hangover

Justice Markandey Katju’s assertions, most of which I suppose are picked up by media these days, are too big for his petite table in the press council of India office. The ludicrousness of his statements augurs, if not demands, a bigger role for the man. This time he has demanded Bharat Ratna for Mirza Ghalib and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. No, a Nobel demand for Shakespeare is not to be

Food security, Lokpal and lessons in policymaking

Nothing, it seems, moves our elected government as political expediency. Note the alacrity with which the government moved to clear the food security bill and induct RLD leader Ajit Singh into the cabinet on Sunday in sharp contrast with its vacillation over the Lokpal bill. Amid reports of rotting stocks in the FCI godowns even while a large chunk of population faced starvation,

Sattvik: Food for thought - and policy action

The action research on exploring market-based mediation for generating opportunities for knowledge and resource rich but economically disadvantaged people has generated several new alternatives. We realised that women groups from over 15 districts of Gujarat tried to commercialise their products and cooked traditional foods, they may not be able to compete well with the professionals or more ex

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


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