December brings with it the end of the year, a welcome chill in the air and the Christmas vacations. So, last December vacation, off I went to explore India’s largest biosphere reserve with my family. After a four and half hours’ bus journey, most of which I spent dozing, we reached Gotkhali. There we boarded a steamer which took us through the Pitchkhali river to our destination &m
National Water Policies are extremely important legal and institutional tools as they reflect the basic intent and direction that the government is planning to take regarding water resources. To ensure that this is a direction acceptable and beneficial to all, open public consultations need to be the backbones of such policies. Thus looking at the immense importance of water to society & en
A government school teacher in Madhya Pradesh`s Betul district got drunk in front of his students and, behind the closed doors of a classroom, ordered girls as young as seven to dance for him — and the caned them for "not dancing properly". All on Republic Day. The man had sent a class V student to fetch liquor from a shop half-a-mile away. He was put under suspension on
The Gujarat Lokayukta ruling has left constitutional mandate to respect federalism, rights of a popularly elected government and scope of governors’ duties and rights at crossroads in the face of interpretation of the provisions of the Gujarat Lokayukta law. The Gujarat high court ruling also means the institution of Lokayukta is more isolated than ever, also increasing th
Sixty-four years ago on this day, on 30 January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. India has several statues, universities and roads named after the Mahatma. Almost every city in India has a Gandhi statue. Mahatma Gandhi roads are found in many cities. Mahatma Gandhi Setu is a bridge over the Ganga connecting Patna and Hajipur, 5.575 km long and was considered the longest bridge in India un
Nirmal Chandra Jha, chairman of the Coal India Limited (CIL), has many plans that could further enhance the growth of the Maharatna public sector enterprise, which is the world’s largest coal producer. Jha, a postgraduate in mining engineering from the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, has a rich and diverse experience of over three decades in this industry. As the director (technical) of
India ranks a low 125 in the Environment Performance report of the prestigious Yale University, which should be a wake-up call to Indian political leaders at all level, its officials said. “India`s low rank on the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) should be a wake-up call to Indian political leaders at all levels,” said Daniel C Esty, Director of the Yale Center fo
[After sending this column, our columnist said, "I hope at least one reader will change his or her habits (after reading this)." We would be happy to hear from you if this column lead you to reflect on your behaviour.] The recent 28th shodhyatra in Mizoram has been quiet cathartic for me personally. I had been aware of the need to conserve water and proper practices w
In a democracy, where elections matter, negative campaigns add a tangy twist to the atmosphere. That’s what has been seen in primaries of the US presidential elections and five state assembly elections in India. However, comparing both would be like comparing apples and oranges. In the runup to the Uttar Pradesh election, the issue of Uma Bharti being an outsider is being raised i
Global business leaders are confident of witnessing growth at pre-financial crisis levels in 2011, driven by the potential in emerging economies like India, a survey released said The CEOs consider China as the most important country for future growth, followed by the US, Brazil and India, as per the PwC survey. The CEOs said they considered China the most important country for future g
If his guns go blazing the way they are now, justice Katju has the potential to soon force the editors to create a new reporting beat exclusively for his comments which are so regular and riotous. Right now, the media is not taking him as seriously as the other way round. There is so much of warmth, a sense of caregiving, an overseeing benign eye when he tells media persons, “You have los
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) believes India is likely to weather the latest global slowdown better than most countries, provided it ensures rising income levels for the working class and enough jobs for a growing working-age population. According to the annual report on global employment by the ILO, “The main challenge is not unemployment, but rather the hig
At a time when there are few dalit entrepreneurs, Hari Kishan Pippal has carved a niche in Agra. His journey from rags to riches is a story of discrimination, struggle, caste taunts and hardship. His companions were some public sector banks, which gave him loans to run the business. There was hardly any support from the government at a time when big businessmen like Tatas gets sops to set up fa
The unique identity (UID) initiative seems to be the latest causality of a turf war between the finance ministry headed by Pranab Mukherjee and the home ministry headed by P Chidambaram. The discomfort between the two senior Congress ministers was evident in many cases whether it was the reported bugging of the finance minister’s office or the finance ministry note to the
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised India for not offering palliative care or pain management to hundreds of thousands of people suffering from incurable diseases like cancer. In its latest report, the organisation also said that despite tall claims made by the government, there had hardly been significant access to health care. “The Indian government has failed to
Taking a cue from the Supreme Court’s lessons to the taxman on basic principles like jurisdiction, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee called Law Minister Salman Kursheed within minutes to take his own lessons on basic principles of law. If only the government ran refresher courses on such elementary issues, the economy would have been rated a few notches higher by Moody’s for o
The man responsible for inquiring against top public functionaries in the national capital territory (NCT) of Delhi hasn’t been given the elbow room to decide whether he can have a new sweeper in his office. For more than two years, Justice Manmohan Sarin, the NCT Lokayukta, has suffered two sweepers given to him on lien by the state government he is supposed to rap. The s
Pardon me for my long-windedness. But we have to get this straight. When a smart young stalker got hold of Angelina Jolie’s mobile number and started bombarding her with text messages and obscene calls from random numbers, cyber experts from the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) had to step in. After around a month they caught him. A criminal case was filed in the Los Angeles superior
Pratham’s report on the state of education in rural India is both predictable and shocking. Predictable because it repeats the same set of findings year-after-year – (a) school enrollment remains over 90 percent but (b) quality of learning, both reading and mathematical abilities, continues to be pathetically low and declining, (c) attendance of students and teachers als
Mayawati’s once all-powerful, favourite officer is now her bête noire. PL Punia, the Congress MP from Barabanki and the chairman of national commission for scheduled castes (NCSC), served the BSP supremo as her principal secretary over her three tenures as the chief minister. An accused in the Taj Heritage Corridor scam, Punia was later given a clean chit by the CBI. Yash Vardhan Sh
