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
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
Amid heated debate over bringing back unaccounted money stashed abroad, a child rights group has claimed that child labour generates Rs 1.2 lakh crore of black money in the country every year. According to a report `Capital Corruption: Child Labour in India` by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), the figure was arrived at by calculating the number of child labourers, income earned by t
The draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 hosted by the National Advisory Council (NAC) on its website for public scrutiny, apparently rewrites some key principles of the Constitution of India, Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 and Indian public services. It is the downside of allowing social activism to overshadow the
Anna Hazare`s protest for the Jan Lokpal Bill has an unlikely twin - the Tea Party movement in the US. And we are not talking of how both embody citizens` voices against the government. The conditions of their births vary greatly - Tea Party started in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis while Hazare`s protest started in 2011, when the UPA government ignored the Lokpal Bill,
No self-respecting democracy or government would have allowed her greatest painter to die in exile. India did. Our leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have promptly described his demise as a "national loss". That’s a crazy and hypocritical thing to say after you did nothing to assure a man his fundamental right to life and personal liberty. I hope t
No self-respecting democracy or government would have allowed her greatest painter to die in exile. India did. Our leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have promptly described his demise as a "national loss". That’s a crazy and hypocritical thing to say after you did nothing to assure a man his fundamental right to life and personal liberty. I hope t
Could India have saved the embarrassment before the international community because of the so-called oversight in the list of 50 most wanted fugitives residing in Pakistan? The list of most wanted terrorists was handed to Pakistan government in May this year. However, it later emerged that two alleged fugitives out of the list were in India. One of the listed terrorists, Wazhul Kumar Kh
Phula, Shyama, Madhu, Rani ki mummy, Chintu ki mummy and other women of Motilal camp, a sprawling slum near Munirka were all there. Having wrapped up their daily chores which included sending their kids off to school, and cooking breakfast for their husbands, they had gathered at a community centre run by Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), an NGO working in the field of right to informatio
Among the more disturbing aspects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Obama Moment and its aftermath is our utter collective callousness towards the thousands of peaceful protesters who were beaten and driven out of Ramlila Maidan in the dead of night. Both the government and the Congress party that leads it are brazening out the decision to swoop on sleeping satyagrahis, rain lath
After India won the cricket world cup this year, the Delhi government gave MS Dhoni Rs 2 crore and the Punjab government gave Yuvraj Singh Rs one crore for their outstanding performance. The other players in the winning squad were similarly rewarded for bringing home the cup. For most disabled students, topping the school exams is no less than winning the world cup. But never have the s
In politics, consistency has never been a great virtue. If Uma Bharti’s re-induction in the BJP is any indication, the party is all set to launch her as the face of its campaign in Uttar Pradesh polls, ignoring the fact that she has rubbed the party the wrong way in every conceivable manner. When BJP president Nitin Gadkari shared the dais with the mercurial sadhvi, he must have bee
Haves and have-nots (and Jantar Mantar) How it all boils down to inclusion Close to two decades of liberalisation has not only enriched the middle class but also expanded it. A range of business and services – IT and telecom, for example – has created jobs for millions and the families that were loosely speaking lower middle class in 1991 are now middle middle
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
The government has finally made a new directorate for criminal investigation - income tax (DCI) to take forward the five-fold strategy to tackle black money. Earlier, in February 2010, on signing the first Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with Bermuda, our finance minister informed the visiting steering group of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that
There has been a debate recently about the quality of research and its impact. I will not deny that there is a huge need for quality improvement in research and its theoretical, applied and other social and policy impacts. But how to trigger processes which breed impatience in the mind of scholars about the problems which our society is facing and which, for some reason, we have learned to live
Why is it so important to bring prime minister under Lokpal’s scanner? The civil society groups reasoned for bringing the PM under the ambit of the Lokpal saying that such a move does not render the PM "dysfunctional". The members of civil society groups said, “At any time, the prime minister holds many portfolios. Does it mean that all those ministries wou
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
A nation of over one billion people and not a hangman to slip the noose over death row’s Mahendra Nath Das, who has exhausted all his pleas and can only wait for the lumbering bureaucracy to find a trained hangman who can do the knot properly and according to custom. This is no easy task and with executions becoming rarer the family business has died out with sons no longer ready
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
