Interview

"Mayawati fancies personal corruption"

National commission for scheduled castes (NCSC) chairman P L Punia has always been finding himself on wrong side of the Mayawati government. There is history behind it. Punia served as a close confidante for the feisty UP chief minister as a bureaucrat. But the parting of her company was bitter.  When Mayawati tried to put blame on him for the Taj corridor scandal, Pu

e-Gov in India should be citizen-centric

Capgemini provides tailored solutions to leading public sector organisations in India and the rest of the world. It supports the public sector with a skilled approach in a number of key areas of expertise, including tax, public security, healthcare, border management and local and regional government. Kishor Chitale, head of India local business services at Capgemini India, spo

Balance between parl and public opinion ideal

United Kingdom House of Commons speaker John Bercow was in India last week - at a time when there ongoing demonstrations in New Delhi for the implementation of Lokpal Bill started. He saw it from close quarters but hesitantly offered his view, while addressing a gathering at Delhi University (DU) on August 19. Edited excerpts of his interaction with students at DU On the

"Seed liability bill needed on the lines of n-liablity"

The seed bil 2010 discussed in parliament on August 4 has several lacunae and will not serve farmers interest, says CPI(M) lok sabha MP and chairman of parliamentary standing committee on agriculture Basudeb Acharia. Acharia wants a seed liability bill along the lines of nuclear liability bill which will fix responsibility on the companies promoting genetically modified seeds in case of any set

"We do not need economists, but philosophers to run the country"

India is big on theory when it comes to development and poverty reduction, says international political economist professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann. He says the approach should be pragmatic, not theoretical. The French economist, working in Switzerland for over 13 years, favours philosophers running the country - in line with philosopher Plato`s beliefs. In an interview with Trithesh Nandan

"Capacity addition targets have been raised"

Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee  had rare words of praise for his cabinet  colleague when he  extolled power minister Sushilkumar Shinde for the highest capacity addition of 10,462 MW between April 2010 and February 2011. In an interview with Sweta Ranjan, Shinde discusses how he plans to deliver “power to all” by nex

"Twitter is a potent weapon to reach out to public"

J & K Chief minister Omar Abdullah believes that twitter, the micro- blogging site, is a potent weapon to put across his point of view to the public. He has 30,000 followers on the site and he reads what he tweets in the next days’ morning newspapers. Omar talked about his tweet experiences and much more in an interview given to Anil Singh, Executive Editor, Star News. Here are edited

"CSCs are AISECT`s major focus at present"

AISECT, established in 1985, is one of the leading IT training and educational services networks in India with over 8,000 centres. It has so far transformed the lives of over 10 lakh students and created over 10,000 entrepreneurs. Santosh Kumar Choubey, chairman of AISECT Ltd , also the director general of the AISECT group and chancellor of the Dr C V Raman University, spoke with Sa

“Our cyber security is like keeping the front door open for robbery”

India’s growing information technology (IT) infrastructure faces security threats in the form of virus attacks, forced crashing of systems and hacking. Last year, for example, the Stuxnet worm is known to have attacked utility companies in India, among other countries. Besides that, the computer systems of the ministry of external affairs and a few defence establishments also came under a

"Much depends on how active India is in bringing black money back"

It will be extraordinarily difficult for India to bring back stolen assets stashed away in tax havens, says Tim Daniel, an expert on black money who is partner with UK-based law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge. In an interview with Trithesh Nandan in New Delhi, Daniel says India should move away from a culture in which nothing can be done without paying a bribe. Daniel h

"We can’t deprive future generations of what we take for granted"

Rajendra K Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and chief executive of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), is among the leading environmentalists in the country. Ahead of the upcoming World Environment Day, he spoke to Neha Sethi about the biggest environmental challenges for India, policy interventions required for sustainable agric

"My bill will empower intelligence agencies"

The supreme court on Monday sought the centre`s response on a PIL demanding a regulatory mechanism and accountability for IB, RAW and NTRO. In this respect, we reproduce an interview with Manish Tewari, who in 2011 introduced a private member`s bill with similar aims. This interview was conducted in June 2011. Manish Tewari, the MP from Ludhiana and a Congress spokespe

"Delhiites are satisfied with CWG infra"

Shunglu Committee holds Sheila Dikshit responsible for the CWG mess in Delhi last year. Don`t you think the state government`s soft approach to reports of graft and the delays in execution of projects were the major factors behind the scale of graft that marked the Games? I have not read the report. So, I do not know what it says. Whatever information I have, is from the

"Need to hear voice of students, teachers alike"

On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 6, at a busstop outside a cluster of South Delhi colleges of the University of Delhi, I spotted a tall man, talking to students and gathering first-hand accounts of the issues that were foremost in their mind. I realised that the man was none other than the eminent mathematician and current vice-chancellor of the university, Dinesh Singh. I wa

"Delhi doing well in implementing RTE"

It’s been a year since the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act came into existence. But many states are yet to notify the rules and start work in this regard. According to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the government body monitoring the implementation of the law, the national capital too has not done enough groundwork. State education minister

‘I am not a rubber stamp sarpanch’

Rukmini Devi Salvi is the sarpanch of Vijapura panchayat in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan. She was recently honoured at the Outstanding Woman Panchayat Leaders Awards held in Delhi by the think tank Institute of Social Sciences (ISS). She was elected as sarpanch in 2010 with just Rs. 2,000 as campaign expenses. In little over a year, she has brought her panchayats solutions for many longrunni

"Phone tapping key to nailing tax evaders"

Sudhir Chandra, chair­man of the central board of direct taxes (CBDT), occupies a room in North Block whose balcony overlooks the majestic Rashtrapati Bhavan. The centrality of its location is symbolic of its significance to governance. Since time immemorial revenue collection has been crucial to sustain any form of governance. And it is the office of the CBDT chairman that devises and

What China can learn from India

Wu Qing, now serving her seventh term as an elected representative in a district People`s Congress in Beijing, feels that the biggest problem in Chinese model of development is Beijing`s top-down approach. In an interview with Trithesh Nandan, she said Chinese government should bring more women into the decision making process. She says that China has a long way to go when it comes to e

"E-procurement will soon become the only way the government does business”

C1 India has become synonymous with e-procurement in the country. How did you manage this feat? We started off as a franchisee of Commerce One, a $30 million American company focused on private sector procurement automation. When we came to India, we saw that the private sector was still not geared to automate and make its procurement system transparent enough. But we sa

"Government is misleading the whole nation"

The government has said that it cannot form a joint committee with civil society members as part of it, because they represent neither legislature nor executive. Your response? This is rubbish. The government is misleading the whole nation. We have given them at least ten precedents where a joint committee drafted a bill. We are not saying that the joint committee will

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


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