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The bigger bugging question

Secrecy is intrinsic to statecraft. Yet, it induces a certain degree of paranoia among even the consummate practitioners of statecraft. That is why union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee lost his cool when he was told that his office was bugged. So furious was the finance minister that he even dispatched a missive to prime minister Manmohan Singh and asked for a “secret probe”.

"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

Making sense of MCA21 data

The ministry of corporate affairs has finally mandated that a set of companies will file balance sheets, profit and loss account, the director’s and auditor’s report for the year 2010-11 onwards by using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) taxonomy. This language is used for the electronic communication of business and financial data and facilitates preparation, analysis a

High prices in agricultural commodity to stay: FAO, OECD

The prices for essential food items are likely to stay high, according to latest report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The `agriculture outlook for decade 2011-2020` said that prices for cereals could average as much as 20 percent higher and those for meats as much as 30 percent higher, co

Price of fatigued pilots

The latest report on the Mangalore air crash regarding the suspicion that Air India might have “tampered” with the pilots’ flight roster and forced Capt Zlatko Glusica to fly despite fatigue has revived concerns over fatigued pilots. Even a year after the Mangalore air crash last year killed 158 people, a lot remains to be done to mitigate pilot fatigue. The Flight and

Private chor vs public thief

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 corruption. Howeve

"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

For a functional National Green Tribunal

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) came into existence a year ago, but did not become functional till recently due to challenges to the NGT Act, 2010.  The tribunal was set up to enable affected parties to appeal against any infringement of environmental laws and to entertain cases of civil liability pertaining to environmental laws in India. The predecessor to the NGT, the erstwhile Nation

Financially excluded households put India to shame

This is a report that puts the country to shame. `Trillion dollar economy: opportunities and challenges for banks`, brought out by Ernst and Young and Assocham claims that India has the second highest number of households in the world which are left out of the formal finance sector. “There are 600,000 unbanked villages in India and only 38 percent of the country’s bank branc

Cut-offs not the only problem

The paranoia about cut-offs, though understandable, is also comic. It is simplistic to see the ‘cut-off jolt’ as a bolt from the blue. It has been in the offing for quite some time. We had enough time to initiate preventive measures. We did nothing. This may sound surprising but is true, nonetheless, that conducting admissions is not any less traumatic than securing them. Ye

Public feedback as a mere formality

The government has made a strong case that only the elected representatives have a right to frame laws. A spokesman of the Congress party has even labelled a section of civil society "unelected tyrant". But the government`s own devices of inviting public participation leave much to be desired. The Department of Information (DIT) under Kapil Sibal recently invited feedback on t

The 100% conundrum

My dear wife stops reading my column the moment I refer to St Stephen’s, my alma mater. So, let me try begining with Hindu College, the perfectly eminent institution across the road. Kavita A Sharma applied to Hindu College straight into second year. She wanted an exit from medicine and the then principal agreed to admit her. The initial results weren’t very encouragi

Death of a swami

Swami Nigamanand is dead. The 36-year-old swami died in Haridwar after fasting for 114 days to protest illegal mining along the Ganga. Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh said in New Delhi a day later that the matter was the Uttarakhand government’s responsibility. The BJP-ruled state government will surely pass off something equally unpalatable for an explanation or blame the centre

Insourcing is the in thing

Outsourcing is as old as – wait, let me get my researcher to check that out for you. Ancient civilisations didn’t think twice before getting neighbouring civilisations to build irrigation canals, for instance, in return for sharing the benefits of farming. If you think about it, getting somebody else to do your work cannot be a modern concept. The caveman who hired a smarter caveman

Democracy minus people

Can there be anything more telling about the insensitivity and brutality of a democratically elected government which sends cops to surround villages where young children and women are lying on the ground for days together to resist forcible eviction from their land by declaring their protest “unlawful”? Photographs of people’s protest from Jagatsinghpur in Orissa, wh

Rethinking poverty

Gandhi’s oft-quoted talisman says: whenever in doubt, consider the case of the poorest person. The question is: how? India is a welfare state, it spends two percent of its GDP to fight poverty – a higher percentage than any other country in Asia and about three times China’s figure, according to a recent World Bank review, and yet the poor have become only poorer and their number has possibl

Waiting for a Mamata in Orissa

The Posco story is getting more pathetic day by day. There are the agitators – Dhinkia being the epicenter – who want to intensify the stir against forcible land acquisition. Though the district administration has suspended the land acquisition for five days – till June 17 – for a local  agrarian festival, the anti-Posco activists including women and children contin

“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

Myopia over DTAAs

In recent weeks, one Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) every week (the last being with Mozambique), has been our average. However, our handling of the Vodafone tax case has left much to be desired. The government of India has been entering into DTAAs with various countries to provide for reduced rates of tax on dividend, interest, royalties, technical service fees etc received

Media power: myth and reality

In recent years the increasing influence of the media has changed the shape of politics all over the globe. Consequently, it has raised provocative questions about journalism’s role in the political process. There are questions about media’s effect on the political system and the subsystems – the legislature, the executive and the lobbies. Is media power in politics a

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


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