Interview

Telangana was always a separate entity: Madhu Goud Yaskhi

As an attorney in the United States, Madhu Goud Yakshi’s heart always palpitated for the people of Telanagana. He gave up his law practice in New York after around 3,000 people committed suicide demanding statehood for the region during TDP’s rule in the late 1990s and early 2000s, returned home and dived straight into politics. He fought the elections on a Congress ticket in 2004,

"PSEs gradually becoming extended arm of admin ministry"

The Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE), an apex body of central government-owned public enterprises, has a mission to improve overall performance and to strengthen effective and sustained engagement of these companies with all stakeholders. Leading the organisation at present is director-general UD Choubey, a former chairman and managing director of GAIL (India) Ltd. In a

"Cyber security needs to be holistic"

Excerpts of interview with Akash Agarwal, country head, EC council. EC-Council is the world’s largest certification body for Information Security professionals. Agarwal handles EC Council’s business operations in the area of information security, trainings and certifications for business acceleration. Here he talks about the threat of online (in)security and how knowledge about them

"As leader of the ship PM can`t say his integrity is beyond question"

In a complex country like India, where imaginative leaders are needed to make the best of emergent realities, Manmohan Singh failed to provide that thrust. Prof Valerian Rodrigues, who teaches political science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, tells Trithesh Nandan that the prime minister made everything centralised, leaving enormous burden on the next prime minister. Edited

"PM should have learnt art of biting"

Will history be kind to Manmohan Singh? Yes, believes Prof GK Chadha, former vice-chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and now president of South Asian University, who was one of the earliest students of Manmohan Singh. He spoke with Trithesh Nandan at length about the prime minister’s legacy. Edited excerpts from the interview: Do you thin

"We need to simplify our tax structure"

Dr Ajay Kumar is a 1985 batch Indian administrative service (IAS) officer of Kerala cadre. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, Kumar was heading the IT department in Kerala as principal secretary before taking over as joint secretary of the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY). When he joined DeitY, the department didn’t have electronics division. He was instrumental in the

"Aakash IV will be a 100% made in India product"

Professor Rajat Moona is a graduate in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur and holds a PhD degree in computer science and automation from IISc Bangalore. He is a teacher and a scientist with several patents and research papers to his credit. As the director general of the centre for development of advanced computing (C-DAC), he has been instrumental in finalising the specifications for Aakas

"Rotary expects India to become fully literate by 2017"

Till a few years ago, polio was not uncommon in India. But there has not been a single case of polio in the last three years, and India will be declared polio-free in March 2014. Rotary International, the service organisation working for humanitarian causes, has also contributed in large measure to this achievement. Gary Huang, the president-elect of Rotary International, was particularly impre

Tapping masala dabba savings

Women have always been sound financial managers and yet they own only 1 percent of the individual assets in the country. In an interview with Srishti Pandey, Usha Ananthasubramanian, CMD of the newly opened Bharatiya Mahila Bank, the country’s first all-women public sector bank, talks about why it is important to bring out the money kept in the ‘masala dabbas’

We now have a lady officer in every police station: Mumbai top cop

Satyapal Singh wanted to become a scientist – he did his MPhil in chemistry – before he joined the IPS (Maharashtra cadre, 1980 batch). Singh’s first posting was assistant superintendent of police of Nasik. He then went on to become the superintendent of police of Buldhana. Prior to taking up the very critical assignment of heading the Mumbai police, he was Maharashtra

Higher voter turnout will add depth to system of governance: CEC

In an exclusive interview with Trithesh Nandan,VS Sampath, chief election commissioner explains how the election commission (EC) has ensured that. He also assures us that the EC is not going to lose momentum, and plans are already afoot to ensure more voter participation in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Edited excerpts from the interview: Recent years have witnessed a heart-wa

It`s people`s money, so we have to use it carefully: Surat top cop

Surat Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana is today known as the man who’s made the city a safe place to live. Earlier he was known in the bureaucratic circles as the man who supervised the investigations in the fodder scam cases as the SP CBI, and DIG of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The 1984 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Gujarat cadre became Surat’s t

`Dedicated freight corridor will be a game changer`

Set up in 1988, Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) is a miniratna public sector enterprise under the ministry of railways. It provides multi-modal logistics support for domestic and external trade. Its core businesses are cargo carriers, terminal operations and warehouse operations. In an interview with Puja Bhattacharjee, CONCOR chairman and managing director Anil Gupta

"There is a little bit of India fatigue in the US"

Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at the Washington-based conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has co-authored a working paper on the Indo-US relationship – ‘Falling Short: How Bad Economic Choices Threaten the US-India Relationship and India’s Rise’. As the title explains, his argument is that India made some bad choices in the last couple of yea

The days of ridiculing the weatherman are over!

The Indian meteorological department (IMD) has been the object of ridicule for long. With a series of inaccurate predictions, including its failure to predict three droughts (2002, 2004 and 2009), the department’s reputation was in tatters. October 12, a black day for Odisha, changed all that, inadvertently becoming a red-letter day for the Met department. Often questioned for cr

E-district project rollout in 6 months in Arunachal: IT secy

As secretary to the government of Arunachal Pradesh, Gaken Ete is holding charge of two departments: information technology and water resources and development. When he joined as the IT secretary in 2012, Ete meticulously planned the execution of e-governance and telecommunications projects. In the past, the IT department had run into trouble for allocating work of few e-governance projects to

"Cong doesn`t maintain proper relationship with allies"

Tariq Anwar quit the Congress in 1999 to join Sharad Pawar in founding the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Today he is the only representative of Bihar in the union council of ministers (he hails from Bihar, though currently he represents Maharashtra in Rajya Sabha). In an exclusive interview with Bhavdeep Kang, Anwar discusses the NCP-Congress ties, the Bihar scenar

Nisha Singh: from cracking Google puzzle to tracking Gurgaon muddle

Engineering from Mumbai University, MBA in finance from London Business School, corporate honcho in Siemens and Google, and then a straight dive into municipal politics. Now 38, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon councillor Nisha Singh zooms in on the outsider-turned-insider perspective of politics and tells Srishti Pandey why and how sitting on the cryptic fence is not going to change our lives.

"2,50,000 gram panchayats in two year... a tall order"

The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) is an attempt to bring broadband connectivity to the remotest corners of the country by connecting 2,50,000 gram panchayats in a network. To oversee the project, a special purpose vehicle, Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), was created. Under it three agencies, BSNL, Power Grid Corporation of India and Railtel, were chosen as the implementing enti

Striking at the root cause of crime

Abhayanand, who took over as Bihar police chief in August 2011, has been looking at some out-of-the-box ideas to curb crime, corruption and black money. In an interview with Pankaj Kumar, he explains his theory: if economic crimes are committed for sake of money, and criminals get away with it by exploiting loopholes, then the solution is in making crime unprofitable. He has fo

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


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