First, some exhibits. Today’s edition of the business newspaper Mint carries a small announcement on the front page: Note to readers Dear Reader, The Media Marketing Initiatives on Pages 13 and 29 are the equivalent of paid-for advertisements, and no Mint journalists were involved in creating these. Readers would do well to treat them as adverti
Our union law minister Salman Khurshid made some breathtaking observations that reflect how this government is fixated on growth at any cost. First, his take. Speaking to the Indian Express on Sunday, he said: “What will affect the functioning of the government is if other institutions do not understand the kind of political economy we are faced with today: what is needed t
No government in the past had been even subject to the enormous and multiple challenges in governance that the present dispensation faces. Issues and concerns making the challenges monumental include the perceived low public confidence and credibility in the government, instances of corruption of never-heard-before proportions inflicting numerous sections of the dispensation, inept handling of
Literacy and employment - two crucial indicators of socioeconomic well-being - are critically low in Muslim communities of Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, two of India`s largest states. According to a new report brought out by Abusaleh Shariff, member secretary, Sachar committee, “The literacy level of Muslim OBCs in urban areas in Andhra Pradesh, has not increased at the matric
When I logged on this Vijayadashami morning, the apple.com home screen announced the demise. My next stop was facebook. Several friends had already pasted the piercing black and white picture on their homepage. Twitter had thousands of tributes; President Obama’s and Bill Gates’s among them. The speech at Stanford had been delivered six years back, but its
Even as the top economists in the government concern themselves with 8 percent growth, they seem to be missing the urgent concerns. Health and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen talks of India`s nutritional failure and the ramifications it could have in an interview with Governance Now. Dr Sen says that large parts of the country are under the grip of a stable famine
The much publicised National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 has wheels within wheels. The bill is uniquely prepared as it consolidated the provisions of acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement on one single platform. Some key FAQs on the bill are as follows: 1. What is the add-on in the definition of ‘Person Interested&r
Not long ago (to be precise exactly 15 years back), Narendra Modi passionately talked about a dream he had been nursing for a while. Like a wandering ascetic, he wanted to walk along the course of the river Narmada in a spiritual tradition which seeks pursuit of god through penance. In Gujarati society, penance is deeply ingrained in the people’s psyche because of influence of Jainis
When it comes to crime, India’s largest state UP has the highest incidence of firearm fatalities. Adding insult to injury, a report says that the state also has the highest number of cities nationwide where this occurs. “Most cities (Allahabad, Agra, Kanpur, Meerut and Varanasi) in UP had a high percentage of firearm fatalities due to accidents and a very low percentage of firearm f
India stands an ignominious second in global rankings when it comes to skewed sex ratio - right after neighbour and rival China. "Nearly four million poor women go ‘missing’ each year in developing countries," said the ‘World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development`, released by World Bank. The report says that in China and India, the number
A child preparing for a school exam the other day thought he’d save time and energy by simply asking me some questions. And I was pleased, as anyone would be who thought that children still believed adults had all the answers. “What is Archimedes’ Principle?”, he asked, and I realised all of a sudden that my education had consisted of a series of unconnected images that
Jairam Ramesh loves to hog the headlines and play to the gallery. This he did through his tenure as the environment and forests minister admirably and frequently without making an iota of difference to the pathetic watchdog’s job that the ministry has been doing. He is at it again, this time as the rural development minister. First he introduced a poorly drafted and self-defeating Land Ac
Almost one billion people around the globe go to bed hungry every night, but it is "excess nutrition" that kills more, according to world`s largest humanitarian organisation IFRC. "At least one billion people are undernourished while a staggering 1.5 billion people are overweight, including an increasing number in low and middle income countries," World Disasters Rep
Abusaleh Shariff does not mince words. The chief economist at the New Delhibased thinktank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) does not look for euphemisms when he criticises the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for ignoring the plight of the Muslim community. Shariff served as member-secretary to the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee to prepare a repor
Union law minister Salman Khurshid announced on September 18 that the government was planning to bring in reservations for Muslims in educational institutions and government jobs. He didn’t provide details but going by his disclosure that the Andhra Pradesh model was being considered, it may be safely assumed that the plan is to provide four percent reservations for the religious minority
The government has hiked the fees for undergraduate engineering courses at IITs from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, which will apply from 2013. The hike leaves out SC, ST and OBC students and graduates from the general category who are unable to afford it or choose to study further.Those being charged can pay the amount in easy instalments after they take up job offers. While the hike is a welco
Ministers in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh`s government have grown richer by an average Rs10 crore since the 2009 general elections, says a report by an election watchdog. Among the ministers who have gained the most in the past two years, Dr S Jagathrakshakan of DMK tops the list with an increase of Rs64.5 crore - from Rs5.9 crore in 2009 to Rs70 crore 2011, according to the analysis b
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.”
