It is likely that India and China may not repeat, in 2011, the robust growth they have had this year, says a United Nations study. “The year 2010 has seen an impressive recovery of the region’s economies led by the large economies of China and India. But the region is faced with a weakening of growth in the developed economies that affect the pace of recovery,” says th
My barber, whom we call Masterji, is a psephologist caught in the wrong profession. Ever since I have known him, all his electoral predictions have turned out right. But as a voter, he has his own likes and dislikes. Being a Muslim living in Delhi for the past 43 years, he is not fond of the BJP – a feeling shared by his community in the walled city. I remember a visit to his salo
UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi presented her five-point charter to fight corruption in her address to the Congress plenary in New Delhi on Sunday. These are high on rhetoric, low on practical use, except for the last one – state funding of elections. Her five suggestions are: a) Fast-tracking all cases of corruption involving public servants; b) Full transparency in public procurem
Experimenting with new words with the help of a thesaurus was a fad in school days. Over the years it only became a habit as a journalist. Until one day in recent past when I looked up my thesaurus for synonyms for media. The thesaurus looked sadly vulnerable. It did not list the word Radia. Perhaps I looked up an old Collins thesaurus gifted to me by my parents as a kid. Bu
When she was only eight, Nisha was put on the road by desperately poor parents to earn her keep selling cigarettes, gutkha and other odd nicotine fixes. Two years later, today, not much has changed for her. She religiously puts up her makeshift shop every morning at the same spot she claimed for herself then, on a Noida pavement - the one by the DND near sector 16. Her dishevelled
I attended a talk at Oxford by Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1990 and he spoke on Power and Norms: What can the Nobel Peace Prize accomplish? Being an Indian student at Oxford I had one obvious question in my mind “why did Mahatma Gandhi never receive the Nobel Peace prize?” Somebody symbolic of
Around a decade ago, LK Advani gave a sagacious advice to the Ambani brothers. “Let politicians do their politics and run the country; you concentrate on your business,” Advani is believed to have told the Ambanis when they called on him at his office at North Block. The meeting followed what appeared to be brazen attempts by the two brothers to influence public policy and poli
As an expanding economy looks for fuel for further growth, India needs to raise its coal production. But Sriprakash Jaiswal, minister of state (independent charge) for coal, faces challenges from the Maoists as well as from environmental lobbies. In an interview with Sweta Ranjan, Jaiswal discusses his plans to meet these challenges and also the future
I am hard placed to understand the hissy fit Indians are having over the US airport pat down of ambassador Meera Shankar or the one now on another diplomat Hardeep Singh for being asked to show his turban. What part of the American message have we not understood since 9/11? I love the way a billion people go up in arms over abs nothing. In any case, diplomats are just people who j
A significant section of mediapersons, largely those who describe themselves as belonging to the “old school of journalism”, have been experiencing a serious degree of heartburn and gut churn following the recent media exposés on Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, and the NDTV discussion where a collegial panel of scribes put Dutt under the microscope. Such exposés, by their
The winter session of Parliament, 2010 was worst among the 82 sessions since the beginning of the 8th Lok Sabha in 1985, says PRS Legislative, a Delhi based think tank. Parliament was adjourned for the most of the time due to the demand raised by the opposition parties to form a JPC to investigate the 2G. “Lok Sabha worked for 7 hrs and 37 min, 5.5 percent of available time
Infrastructure problems and procedural delays remain major concerns for the foreign companies operating in India, according to the latest report by the FICCI. “86 percent of the respondents have expressed dissatisfaction with regard to quality and quantity of power made available to them, about 75 percent have rated the quality of roads and highways in the country as &lsqu
Bureaucracy in India, a la PJ Thomas and Neera Yadav shenanigans, needs a complete overhaul. Prime minister Manmohan Singh has been advocating, for umpteen numbers of times, transformation of the civil service in the country. Come Civil Service Day (April 21), homily and sermons do surely make headlines, till one more bunch of terminology replaces the earlier ones. That the civil service in Ind
The multitude of scams in recent times and inconspicuous acts of bribery occuring daily have most Indians believing that graft has been on the rise since the past three years, according to a study conducted by Transparency International. “74 percent of Indians believed that levels of corruption has increased during the last three years,” the report titled “Global Corru
Dissing all theories of foreign countries arming the maoists, a new report says that the mining industry in the pockets of the country is helping the insurgents procure explosives. The report released on Wednesday goes on to say that such collusion happens in the knowledge of the centre and different state governments but the authorities turn a blindeye. “It is the mines, b
Today, the Indian media - both print and television - are focusing on the recent corruption scandals involving the UPA government with unusual zeal. However, I fail to understand why almost every commentator, every TV anchor, every editorial writer feels compelled to pay ritual obeisance to the “personal honesty and integrity” of Dr Manmohan Singh while dealing with the scandals ema
India is the 124th freest economy of the world, according to Washington-based think tank, the Heritage Foundation. The abysmally low ranks is despite the Indian economy being one of the fastest growing developing economies of the world. The report which featured 179 countries ranked Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia at the summit, while North Korea with ranks at 179 as the least
Corruption is again dominating the news in India. Long-standing issues, such as broad attempts to avoid taxes, have simmered back to the surface and been joined by new accusations against the wealthy, major companies, and the government. Scandals have crossed finance, property, and telecom. Crimes have been
[Nikam published this column on May 12, 2010 on his website. See the original here.] For the last nearly a month, the name of Niira Radia has been in circulation. Two publications, Outlook and The Pioneer, raised the issue first almost simultaneously. While Outlook concentrated on the is
At 10 pm on November 30, Barkha Dutt, embattled TV news diva and editor of NDTV 24x7, subjected herself to grilling by four editors on her conduct as exposed by the Niira Radia tapes. As prime time news shows go, this was unprecedented, a future course material for media ethics in journalism schools. Barkha`s interrogators were senior editors Dileep Padgaonkar, Sanjaya Baru
