Muhammad Saleem Beg has served as director-general, tourism, in Jammu and Kashmir and also headed the state chapter of INTACH before being elevated to the statutory commission involved in protecting India’s rich cultural and archeological wealth. Hailing from Srinagar, Beg spoke to Governance Now about the recent Kashmir flood. Excerpts: How much of the flood in Kashmir wa
On September 18, Sam Kahamba Kutesa of Uganda took over as the president of the UN General Assembly for its 69th session. He was elected to the post in June. He proposed Delivering on and implementing a transformative post-2015 development agenda as the theme for the session. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said the role of the 69th Assembly president will be “especially important during
As India readies to develop 100 smart cities, the national institute of urban affairs (NIUA) is bound to play a crucial role in the ambitious project. Established in 1976, it is a premier agency for research and training in urban governance. It enjoys the support of the ministry of urban development, states, urban and regional development authorities and other agencies. Its director Jagan Shah,
Shankar Aggarwal, a 1980 batch IAS officer of UP cadre, who recently took over as the urban development secretary, talks to Pratap Vikram Singh and Puja Bhattacharjee about the ministry’s vision, planning and challenges of setting up smart cities. How does the urban development ministry define a smart city? How will these cities be different from the existing cities?
Agriculture is a politically sensitive sector, and wheat, being a staple in many regions, is more so. India still does not have policies that would allow the country to use wheat efficiently. First, it does not have enough places to store it and, second, there is no guarantee that wheat production would be robust in the coming years due to its dependence on monsoon. This year, f
The Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO), a public sector undertaking, is mandated with building affordable housing and promoting urban development. Of the 16.54 million houses sanctioned by HUDCO so far, over 95% have benefited the economically weaker section (EWS) and low income group (LIG). Speaking with Jasleen Kaur, HUDCO chairman and managing director Medithi Ravi Kan
An eminent academician and administrator, Dr SS Mantha has been at the forefront of bringing in radical changes at the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). In an interaction with Pragya Gupta, he tells how India can improve its gross enrolment ratio and the crucial role technology plays in helping the AICTE tackle corruption and lack of transparency. Excerpts:
A Padma Shri award-winning theatre director, actress and impresario, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry is also a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee. Her recent directorial work was License – The Untitled Saga. She has also directed Ariel Dorfman’s Nachiketa Liberetto with the Opera Circus in London. Since 1990, Mansingh Chowdhry has been teaching at the Department of Indian Theatre in Panjab Univ
From an item girl to her new avatar as a politician, Rakhi Sawant has courted many controversies. In an interview with Governance Now, she speaks about a recent heated exchange with Maharashtra home minister RR Patil, her agenda as a politician and why she joined the Republican Party of India. What prompted you to join politics? Sometimes you are destined
The Narendra Modi government has set an ambitious target of `58,425 crore for disinvestment in 2014-15. Disinvestment secretary Ravi Mathur, who has the responsibility to earn the largest chunk of revenue for the government, is, however, confident of meeting the target. In an interview with Jasleen Kaur, the 1979-batch Rajasthan cadre officer explains why How soon can the
TCA Anant, secretary, ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI), explains how data is produced and processed in India, and the role technology plays in it. Excerpts from an interview with Shivangi Narayan: Data collection in India has mostly been a paper-pen process. How much technology is in use now? In general we have been automating small and
How do you react to the decision by the GEAC to approve field trial of GM crops, particularly since the matter is still pending at the supreme court? The GEAC comes across as a rubber stamp for the industry as it claims to have approved 60 of the 70 pending applications. This comes at a time when the issue around the safety of open air field trials is debated in the supr
Several big investment projects got stuck in the decision-making lull in the last two years of the UPA administration. The situation got grimmer after 2G and coal scam revelations. This, in effect, led to formation of a project monitoring group (PMG) under the cabinet secretariat to expedite project implementation, followed by the electronic cabinet committee on investment (eCCI). In an interac
Set up in 1965, the Association of State Road Transport Undertakings (ASRTU) has been working towards bringing together the state transport corporations on a common platform to pool their resources and knowledge to help them improve their performance. In an exclusive conversation with Shubhendu Parth and Pragya Gupta, ASRTU executive director PS Ananda Rao talks about the challenges that
A medical practitioner-turned-politician, Dr Harsh Vardhan got cracking in his new role as the union health minister as soon as he assumed office. Besides promising better health care facilities and making regular rounds of key hospitals, the Lok Sabha MP from Chandni Chowk, Delhi, has also written to finance minister Arun Jaitley seeking to remove tax exemption granted to beedi manufactures an
As soon as the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) decided to permit the final dam height, Medha Patkar was back in Badwani, the base of the Narmada Bachao Andolan she has been leading since the mid-1980s. Here, on a rainy day, she listened to about 80 people whose homes and fields were going to be submerged by the Narmada waters. The indefatigable activist patiently discussed with them the legal o
Q. Most state transport corporations are now looking at using technology to improve efficiency. What is Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) doing in this direction? We are in the process of implementing electronic ticketing machine. Tickets in buses are at present given out by conductors, which is time-consuming. An electronic ticke
Sanjit `Bunker` Roy is the founder of Barefoot College. In 2010, he was selected by the Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for his work with illiterate and semi- literate rural women in developing countries. He spoke to Shreerupa Mitra-Jha. You gave up a privileged life to work in a particularly underdeveloped part of the country. So w
Not long ago, the central industrial security force (CISF) was considered a redundant force. Circa 2014, CISF is a zero-budget force with a versatile and challenging role, securing India’s key airports, PSUs, mines, ports, and other key assets. In an interview with Pankaj Kumar, OP Singh, a 1983-batch IPS who was recently appointed additional director general, CISF airport sector, discuss
Neiphiu Rio is a three-time chief minister of Nagaland. A founding member of the ruling Nagaland People’s Front (NPF), he won the Lok Sabha elections, and resigned as chief minister to take up a larger role in New Delhi. In an interaction with Pratap Vikram Singh, Rio talks about points of contention between his state and the centre and his plans for development of the northeast. Excerpts
