On Independence Day, we heard the PM saying that his government’s motto is to reform, perform and transform. Also, on September 1, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote, “India’s economy has grown rapidly in recent years, but the country’s bureaucratic quality is widely perceived to be either stagnant or in decline.” It is time to relook at overhauling t
Why is the national commission for women weak? Is it because its mandate is unclear? I don’t know why there is a fallacy about the Act being weak. There are sections in the mandate which have not been put to ideal use. I think we have not examined our mandate to the extent it can be stretched. NCW is a statutory organisation, so a lot lies in the int
The waterlogged roads and huge traffic jams witnessed in Delhi in August hogged the headlines in the media, with the high court judges hitting out at the Delhi government. Even the US secretary of state, John Kerry, joked about the situation in his address at IIT Delhi the same month, by asking the audience whether they had all come by boat. The comptroller and auditor general o
Public-private partnerships (PPPs), the preferred way these days to develop infrastructure like highways and airports, is a curious thing: it is both public and private. Thus, the Delhi airport is on public land, but developed and maintained by a private party. Should the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) check its finances, the way it does for all departments and schemes involving
At a time when the government is trying to shore up its revenues so that it can carry on its ambitious projects, a key sector that has been left out of taxation is agricultural income. Policy makers need to take a sharp look at exempting agricultural income from taxation as there is a possibility of the well-heeled taking this route to pay less tax. The comptroller and auditor ge
Hardeep Singh Puri, one of India’s ablest and most outstanding diplomats, has served as India’s representative to the UN. His first UN posting came in 1981 when as first secretary he was a member of India’s delegation to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Thereafter, he served as ambassador and India’s permanent representative (PR) to the UN in Geneva
Ten years of competitiveness in India’s GDP per capita in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) terms almost doubled between 2007 and 2016, from $3,587 to $6,599. Growth slowed after the 2008 crisis, hitting a decade’s low in 2012–13, said the Global Competitiveness Report 2016–2017, World Economic Forum. This experience triggered India to rethink its policies and
The KVIC has taken a serious note of an article entitled ‘Khadi: Time to revive the nation’s cloth’, by Lekshmi R Nair and D Dhanuraj published in Governance Now (September 1-15 edition). It is very unfortunate
HLL Infra Tech Services Limited (HITES), a wholly owned subsidiary of public sector firm HLL Lifecare Limited (HLL), has recently secured its first global contract to offer consultancy services for the construction of two hospitals in the Republic of Guinea. The company is spearheading experiments to find the best suited model for healthcare infrastructure for rural India. SN Sathu
The government has proposed to provide a new unique identification number to eight crore BPL households, or approximately 40 crore people, for its new insurance scheme, National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS). The idea of a new unique number, according to a senior health ministry official, stems from the facts that not everyone is enrolled in Aadhaar and no one should be denied services for wa
Odisha’s largest district, Mayurbhanj, is set to be free from child labour very soon. District magistrate Rajesh Prabhakar Patil, an IAS officer of 2005 batch, talked to Taru Bhatia about how the ‘Mu Bi Padhibi’ campaign has been instrumental in fighting child labour. How was the ‘Mu Bi Padhibi’ campaign initiated in your district?
“Just 22 percent of the public approves of Modi’s management of India’s volatile relationship with Pakistan. Half disapprove. This harsh judgment is relatively unchanged from 2015,” says the report authored by Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at Pew Research Center. The report – “India and Modi: The honeymoon continues
What do the income disclosure or amnesty schemes reflect on the government? What it suggests is that the government under the normal schemes is not able to take care of tax evasion. It has tried various schemes like the voluntary disclosure scheme in the past but nothing much has been achieved. They cannot come up with voluntary disclosure schemes anymore because
Black money is essentially a popular name for black economy. By now it has ‘evolved’ into a grey, that is an indistinguishable mixture of black (i.e., illegal-immoral) and white (i.e., legitimate-moral), political economy. Also, it continues to be among the major factors holding back inclusive development of India. Evidently, such a pattern of growth in the midst of a booming grey s
Even before the searing image of Dana Majhi carrying the body of his wife could fade, another distraught family in Odisha’s Jajpur was forced to carry a woman’s body on a cart. The two back-to-back incidents highlight the fact that government schemes are failing to provide succor to the poor and the marginalised. After Dana Majhi’s plight became public, Odisha c
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has been questioned by both the opposition and the judiciary for his alleged comments which accuse the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Mridula Mukherjee, author of RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: The Hindu Communal Project, provides a nuanced view on the subject. Mukherjee, also a former director
How is the response to the IDS? The response has been good. A number of declarations have come and there have been a large number of inquiries too. How many declarations have been received so far? Since the IDS data is classified we cannot reveal details. How much undisclosed income do you exp
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has defended triple talaq and polygamy before the supreme court (SC). The argument that personal law is immune from judicial scrutiny will be considered in the court but the board has evoked a debate, within the community and outside, by supporting polygamy as a social and moral necessity and justifying triple talaq, claiming it saved lives
Ola Suleiman is a Syrian from Homs who currently works as communications officer at a non-profit called Mayday Rescue, a disaster-relief NGO in Turkey with offices in Jordan and Netherlands. Suleiman’s participation in the Syrian revolution began in April 2011 when she took part in peaceful demonstrations. She escaped the country in November 2013 since she feared arrest by the Bashar
Now that the SC has given the judgment for returning the land of the farmers in Singur, does this guarantee similar rulings for farmers protesting against acquisition of land in other parts of the country? There are no such guarantees. Different benches are gi
