Just when it became apparent that the BJP had fared badly in Uttar Pradesh where the party had pinned great hopes, party president Nitin Gadkari appeared before the press with his usual bravado. Given his penchant for doing politics in Bollywood style, Gadkari cannot be faulted for mistaking content for style. But he committed an unforgivable faux pas which is symptomatic of what ails the
Till recently, whenever I chatted with my friends in the media and academics in Lucknow and Delhi, many of them used to insist that Rahul Gandhi’s travels in dalit villages and sharing meals with them would not have any effect on the dalit electorate. Mayawati too said as much, terming Rahul’s gesture as ‘nautanki’. When the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family visited Bhatt
UP may not have achieved headline-making growth rates, but it has gone a step further, by reducing poverty over a decade. Uttar Pradesh is often regarded as part of the backwaters of development in India. The picture, it seems, is changing and is changing fast. There are at least two threads of change, one that has been noticed by some and the other which has gone almost completely unno
For years we worried about computers taking over the world. Science fiction writers made a fortune out of our fears, the more daring of them even extending the argument to salt shakers and bedside lamps taking over the world. And then it happened. They took over the world; the computers, I mean, not the salt shakers, although the one on my table has been staring at me meaningfully in the past m
India has been named the biggest consumer of narcotics substances in South Asia, according to a report by the INCB, an independent monitoring body for implementation of the United Nations International drug control conventions. “India has a market estimated at $1.4 billion for heroin, while it is $1.9 billion for the entire South Asian market,” said the United Nations Office o
The Karnataka assembly believes that its honour has been besmirched not by members watching porn even as proceedings were on but by the news channel that ran the exposé. Our sanctimonious representatives think they are above public scrutiny, much less reproach; that the very grounds that they conduct their business on are hallowed. The questions posed by the inquiry committee to
The Karnataka assembly believes that its honour has been besmirched not by members watching porn even as proceedings were on but by the news channel that ran the exposé. Our sanctimonious representatives think they are above public scrutiny, much less reproach; that the very grounds that they conduct their business on is hallowed. The questions posed by the inquiry committee to t
After a hectic schedule, Akhilesh Yadav, son of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, stopped overnight at the Shibli College guest house in Azamgarh. Since the district is known to be a Samajwadi Party bastion, owing to predominance of Yadav-Muslim social equations here, he was surrounded by a large number of supporters and also some local chieftains with not-so-clean rec
When internal strife overwhelmed Indira Gandhi and she began losing her grip on both politics and administration in 1970s, she used to famously pass the buck to ‘foreign hand’. More than three and half decades later, having found himself in a similar situation our present prime minister is doing an encore. In a recent interview to an international journal he used the same bogey to e
India remains a country of hungry children, reveals a new report by the international NGO Save the Children. That the scale of hunger among the young ones in India is on a par with Nigeria takes the sheen off the country’s claims of being a economic superpower. “About a quarter of parents in Nigeria (27 percent) and in India (24 percent) report that their children go
Questions have suddenly become more important than answers. At least, the campaign for the Uttar Pradesh election showed that amply. Politically correct questions kept being fielded from all sides throughout the poll campaign. The answers were expected from the electorate who had himself a list of questions to ask. Those, however, were conveniently drowned in the din. After a fu
The low-cost computing device, Aakash has captured the imagination of the nation. While the nation seems divided its success or failure, the global community is keenly looking forward to this information and communications technology (ICT) revolution in education happening in India. Aakash is not the first low-cost computing device (so there is no invention per se). The Simputer, which
While Indian economy has grown up since 1991, the participation of women in this economic growth has been negligible and lots needs to be done, says a study by the US-based think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). It said that India will touch a double digit growth if women get adequate presence in professional life. Citing a UN document, the study mentioned Ind
Ever imagined your teachers speaking about traffic and road norms in class? No? Don’t worry, you might not have learnt road norms as a subject but the chances are that your child might have to study it as part of his/her school curriculum. Mirroring the achievements of the UK and the US, the government has decided to introduce traffic and road norms as a chapter in the subj
The myth of power is self-explanatory: power draws from myths. A sense of reality, on the contrary, acts as a check. Young David’s sling when he took on the giant Goliath, Birsa Munda’s professed power to turn bullets to powder: history is replete with such examples. The steed of power has always galloped on the spur of the moment. Truly speaking, a second thought would
Lt Col (retd) HS Bedi is the founder and chairman and managing director of Tulip Telecom Ltd, which was started in 1992 as software reseller. Today it is a leading player in providing enterprise data connectivity to corporates and has hands-on experience working on e-governance projects across the country. In an exclusive interaction with Pratap Vikram Singh, Bedi talks ab
Some commentators think this government suffers from policy paralysis. Nothing can be farther from truth. The UPA government is working pretty efficiently. It’s a different matter that its initiatives are in the patently wrong directions when not altogether dangerous. Consider NCTC. Or consider the proposal to give a legal backing to the model of code of conduct for electioneering.
When SY Quraishi, supported by his two “peers”, VS Sampath and HS Brahma, who unlike him don’t enjoy constitutional protection, had statues of Mayawati and the BSP’s elephant covered, the three-member Election Commission (EC) trended on Twitter for three days. Images of elephants covered in pink (the colour, by the way, wasn’t chosen by EC) brought t
India ranks in the category of ‘high risk’ countries where poor governance and systemic corruption are the main stay of the government, according to a new study released by the UK-based risk analysis firm Maplecroft. The study also blames India for not taking decisive timely action. “Continuing poor governance is evidenced by the endemic nature of corruption, esp
India has worked at a sluggish pace in trying to meet the millenium development goals (MDGs) and needs to accelerate progress if it has to meet a few of them, says a new report by the United Nations. India will not be able to reduce hunger, under-5 mortality and maternal mortality, said the ESCAP/ADB/UNDP Asia-Pacific MDG Report 2011/12, titled “Accelerating Equitable Achievement
