The handling of convicts such as Afzal Guru, Ajmal Kasab, Arif alias Ashfaq – the ugly faces of the attack on parliament, the Mumbai attack and the attack on Red Fort respectively, –symbolise the increasing sense of loss and despair over the judicial delivery system only delivering stillborns to the citizens. The judicial delivery system has repeatedly come under the
I have written earlier about how small towns are producing big innovations, how small institutions are producing big minds and even bigger hearts. Concern for social needs, whether of small industry or the informal sector, is not found universally among all social, professional or educational segments. But those who have it are often motivated by the urge to produce innovations for the larger s
Ladies Choice is terror, wrote Jean Paul Sartre – unless what he said was ‘Freedom is terror’, in which case you are free to choose what you like while we attack the problem from another angle. “We are at the crossroads,” wrote Woody Allen, “one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us choose correctly.”
The hockey finals between India and Pakistan for the Asian Championship one day after the thrilling 2-2 semi final draw was not telecast by either country even though they have pretended for over half a century that it is their national game. India won 4-2 in the end at the shootout while a large part the country and its eleven flannelled fools looked up at the English sky and hoped to win the
India slid to the 56th place in the World Economic Forum`s (WEF) global competiveness index this year, while last year it placed 51st. Switzerland is at the top of the list while India`s neighbour and competitor China is ranked 26. “The score difference between India and China has increased six-fold between 2006 and today, the gap expanding from less than 0.1 to 0.6
Every year since 1982, the ministry of women and child development has been promoting September 1-7 as the national nutrition week. But, what the nation witnessed on September 3, 2011, in an expose by the Times Now, were the tragic deaths of 11 new born infants, less than five days old, at the Kurnool government hospital in a space of 48 hours. Some of us may recall a similar tragedy that
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
A day before the Cabinet took up the National Sports (Development) Bill, 2011 (“Bill”) for consideration, a reputed astrology site read: “As per the prasna chart, Sun which indicates Government, is in its own sign Leo. This signifies that the Government would like to pass the Sports Bill 2011 to bring Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) under scanner. Jupiter
The spate of scams that hit the body politic during the last few months and the startling public disclosures from the Radia tapes had already made discussions on corruption the most favourite national pastime. Now, Anna Hazare’s fast, the constitution of the Lokpal bill drafting committee and the surge of popular support have firmly focused the spotlight on the issue of corrupti
So long as a nation has a death penalty somebody will hang. But whether justice is served is the question. The eight-week stay given by the Madras high court to the three convicted killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who were scheduled to meet the hangman on September 9 underscores the flaw in a judicial system that creates so wide a gap between the crime and the punishment that
Australia`s second-largest city Melbourne has been rated the world`s best city to live in, and India`s Mumbai is one of the worst, according to a new survey. In the survey of 140 cities around the globe, India’s financial capital Mumbai was ranked 116. In 2010, Mumbai was ranked 117 while Delhi was 113. Delhi did not find a position in the Economic Intelligence Unit`s new
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
What made Pranab Mukherjee, the Congress’ most politically savvy and sensitive leader, to dismiss Team Anna so disdainfully Wednesday night? What made him go back on all his and his government’s previous assurances on the Lokpal bill and also dismiss Anna’s fast as none of his or his government’s business? The answer clearly lies in the views expressed by
It was rather cute of moderator Paul Beckett of WSJ to introduce Ratan Tata (Harvard AMP, 1971) as the owner of the lovely hotel when a few hundred Harvard Business School (HBS) alums gathered in the Taj Mahal Ball Room Tuesday. The fast at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground lent character to this eclectic huddle of dark suits. On hindsight, it was only natural that Anna Hazare’s collision agai
It was rather cute of moderator Paul Beckett of WSJ to introduce Ratan Tata (Harvard AMP, 1971) as the owner of the lovely hotel when a few hundred Harvard Business School (HBS) alums gathered in the Taj Mahal Ball Room Tuesday. The fast at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground lent character to this eclectic huddle of dark suits. On hindsight, it was only natural that Anna Hazare’s collision agai
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
What started as a legitimate fight to check, curb and legislate against corruption has now taken on a direction which even Anna Hazare and his team of civil society activists could perhaps not have contemplated. Because of their inherent nature, it is always difficult to predict the direction any movement takes, but it would be hard to accept that Team Hazare expected the kind of mass appeal an
Anna has baffled most politicians, a large number of public intellectuals and middle-class heroes like Nandan Nilekani, Aruna Roy and Arundhati Roy. Every now and then we hear Anna’s movement being described as ‘undemocratic’, ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘anti-parliament’. But is Anna’s fast and peaceful people’s movement around hi
Despite what they might have claimed about curtailing corruption, successive governments over the last 14 years, sanctioned prosecution only in about 1.73 percent of the cases registered with central vigilance commission (CVC). The government has also sanctioned fewer cases with the central burau of investigation (CBI) over these years. “Country’s main anti-corruption body,
Law minister Salman Khurshid, a noted legal eagle himself, proposes to enact the Legal Practitioners (Regulation & Maintenance of Standards in Professions, Protecting the Interest of Clients and Promoting the Rule of Law) Bill, 2010, (“the Bill”) which could result in: (i) diluting and duplicating the scope and applicability of the Advocates Act, 1961, (ii) taking aw
