Finance minister Arun Jaitley has set a disinvestment target of `69,500 crore for 2015-16. Disinvestment secretary Aradhana Johri, the 1980-batch IAS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre, calls it an ambitious target. The disinvestment revenue in 2014-15 has been the highest so far, but Johri is confident of meeting the even higher target for the coming fiscal. In an interview with Jasleen
The Lok Sabha has passed the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill, 2015. After the upper house nod, it will replace the ordinance that has paved the way for auctioning of coal blocks, which were put on hold due to the supreme court order creating a lot of uncertainty in the sector. Anil Swarup, secretary at the coal ministry, in an interaction with Shubhendu Parth and
Pradeep Kumar Jena, a 1989 batch IAS officer, is principal secretary of water resources department, Odisha. Until December 2014 he also held the charge of the information technology department. In an interaction with Pratap Vikram Singh in December, Jena talked about the steps to promote electronics manufacturing and strengthen e-governance in Odis
‘Mission Hazaar’ aims at taking the gender ratio to 1,000 girls for every 1,000 boys. At present, there are only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys in India, but it is much lower in states like Haryana. As part of the campaign, a survey was conducted among young people from schools and colleges in four districts of Haryana by an international human rights organisation, Breakthrough,
Kashinath Singh, a distinguished scholar and writer, is regarded as one of the best chroniclers of the city of Varanasi. Only a few people know the city as well as he does. Born in a village 40 km from the city, he came to Varanasi for his higher secondary education. Since then he has lived in the city – initially as a student at the Banaras Hindu University, which is also where
Entrusted with the task to create a resource pool of 500 million skilled workers by 2022, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state (independent charge) for skill development and entrepreneurshipis on a mission. In an interaction with Jasleen Kaur, Rudy talks about the newly created ministry and challenges ahead. What is the purpose of a separate ministry for skill de
As the new chairman of Prasar Bharati, A Surya Prakash has a lot on his mind. From the `13,556 crore losses in 2011-12 to stiff competition from private channels, the organisation is struggling to find its feet. In a freewheeling interview with Ankita Lahiri, he clears the air on some of these issues and discusses his plans to revamp Prasar Bharati. Excerpts:
How do you strike a balance between the environmental needs and economic and industrial growth? Environment-related compliances are important and non-negotiable, but development cannot be forsaken. Hence, there is a need to adopt a sustainable approach. Rajasthan falls in arid and semi-arid agro-climate zone, deficit in water resources. The state board has stress
Ruskin Bond is perhaps the only Indian author of English language to have created a vast wealth of children’s literature. Despite being famous, Bond is quite unassuming and does not believe in public relations and does not even have an email id! He has been awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award, Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan for his writings. He won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial
What is ‘Digital India’ and how will it benefit the common man? It will make the common man more empowered. It will bridge the gap between digital haves and digital have-nots. We need Digital India more for the poor and under-privileged people. For example, if a rickshaw puller from Bihar comes to Delhi then all his documents like BPL card, birth cert
The man responsible for driving urban development in Madhya Pradesh is also well versed with the ICT and has played a key role in shaping the growth of IT industry in the state. In an interaction with Governance Now, he talks about the smart city plans of the government. How do you define a smart city? Which cities in Madhya Pradesh you plan to develop under the
Union chemicals and fertilizers minister Ananth Kumar is a veteran politician. He served as a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In his home state Karnataka, he has always been a force to reckon with in the BJP, at times evoking extreme reactions within the Sangh Parivar. Kumar’s induction into the Narendra Modi cabinet was a logical conclusion to his long innings in politic
Digital literacy is necessary to keep millions of Indians well informed and connected. Debjani Ghosh, vice president, sales and marketing group and managing director for South Asia at Intel Corporation explains how the company is helping the nation in its journey towards digital literacy in an email interview with Praggya Guptaa. How is Intel sup
As a co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the internet, Cerf is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications. In an email interaction with Governance Now, he talks about the next phase of evolution of the internet and how India should go about connecting its billion plus people. How do you see the global digi
The former head of transport department of the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi tells Governance Now why public transport gets the short shrift How did public transport become such an ignored area? Up till the early 1980s, urban transport was an irrelevant subject for any government. Three-fourths of India lived in villages. The urban vote
What are the trends in information management and data storage infrastructure? The world is moving towards the flat file system or unstructured data and to address this requirement we have specific file and content solution that helps store massive amount of such data. This is what we call the content layer. Along with this we have the converged storage infrastru
So many people unemployed, yet an estimated driver shortage of 20 lakh. What explains this? India is full of such paradoxes. There are several reasons for this, but I’d like to point out a couple. One, there is no connect between academia and industry. Mostly, people go through an education for the sake of a degree. It is non-specific and does not prepare t
The emeritus professor at IIT-Delhi’s centre for biomedical engineering, Prof Dinesh Mohan was formerly the coordinator of transportation research and injury prevention programme. He tells Sopan Joshi about the state of knowledge on road safety and the politics of public transport: How does India perform on road safety parameters?
Why is fuel economy so crucial in India’s automobile market? We are a price conscious society. Till about 50 years ago, we were a deprived society. We have not yet become a conspicuous consuming society like some developed countries. Traditionally, the Indian society has not been a mindless consumer, we have always been mindful consumers. Wasting is looked
An IAS officer of the 1978 batch of Jharkhand cadre, RS Sharma was the director general of UIDAI before joining DeitY. He is the main driving force behind the ambitious Digital India programme. Talking to Pratap Vikram Singh and Praggya Guptaa, Sharma explains the role of his department in providing services and localised content to the rural population over th
