Here’s the big question. Can every Indian have 24/7 internet connection? Two IIT Bombay professors and a couple of their students from the departments of electronics and aerospace presented a paper in 2007 laying out an innovative and affordable way to provide top-quality wireless broadband connectivity directly to homes through tethered mini aerostats equipped with omnidirectional antenn
Digital literacy is necessary to keep millions of Indians well informed and connected. Debjani Ghosh, vice president, sales and marketing group and managing director for South Asia at Intel Corporation explains how the company is helping the nation in its journey towards digital literacy in an email interview with Praggya Guptaa. How is Intel sup
The national capital votes on Saturday for its assembly. The aggressive campaigning by all political parties came to an end at 6 pm on Thursday. Campaigning took a dramatic turn in the last phase as opinion polls gave a kind of walk over to Arvin Kejriwal-led AAP. If these opinion polls are right, the AAP will return to form government in Delhi. Other state parties and communist
As a co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the internet, Cerf is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications. In an email interaction with Governance Now, he talks about the next phase of evolution of the internet and how India should go about connecting its billion plus people. How do you see the global digi
The former head of transport department of the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi tells Governance Now why public transport gets the short shrift How did public transport become such an ignored area? Up till the early 1980s, urban transport was an irrelevant subject for any government. Three-fourths of India lived in villages. The urban vote
The issue of retaining or omitting the English language comprehension test (ELCT) from the civil services aptitude test (CSAT), which is a part of the preliminary examination (“prelims”) for the combined civil services examination, was debated hotly just about six months ago and seems to be surfacing again. After juggling with the issue for some time, the new governm
Out of 9,816,000 people who died in 2014 in India, 7 per cent succumb to cancer. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) report, cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide, it killed around 8.2 million people in 2012. February 04 is observed as World Cancer Day across the globe. Read about the cancer day here
What are the trends in information management and data storage infrastructure? The world is moving towards the flat file system or unstructured data and to address this requirement we have specific file and content solution that helps store massive amount of such data. This is what we call the content layer. Along with this we have the converged storage infrastru
So many people unemployed, yet an estimated driver shortage of 20 lakh. What explains this? India is full of such paradoxes. There are several reasons for this, but I’d like to point out a couple. One, there is no connect between academia and industry. Mostly, people go through an education for the sake of a degree. It is non-specific and does not prepare t
Some years ago while watching Karan Johar’s hyper-melodramatic take on “loving your parents” I was forced to stand up. The scene set in London was about celebrating our national symbols. Shah Rukh Khan’s son in the film, giving patriotic goose bumps to his parents, sings the national anthem, amidst all white students. Overwhelming as it was for his mother,
The emeritus professor at IIT-Delhi’s centre for biomedical engineering, Prof Dinesh Mohan was formerly the coordinator of transportation research and injury prevention programme. He tells Sopan Joshi about the state of knowledge on road safety and the politics of public transport: How does India perform on road safety parameters?
Why is fuel economy so crucial in India’s automobile market? We are a price conscious society. Till about 50 years ago, we were a deprived society. We have not yet become a conspicuous consuming society like some developed countries. Traditionally, the Indian society has not been a mindless consumer, we have always been mindful consumers. Wasting is looked
As far as WhatsApp jokes go, this one’s the best for me so far. A caller from US asks an Indian what was this talk of ‘monkey bath’ that US president Barack Obama was supposed to have with prime minister Narendra Modi during the former’s visit to India. Puzzled, the Indian realised it was ‘Mann ki Baat’ that his brother-from-another-mother was
As the curtains come down of one of the best Republic Days ceremonials in 65 years, focus shifts to the way forwards. Prime minister Modi’s promises of large scale reforms to make ‘doing business’ in India simple alongside making governance transparent & predictable have been welcomed by Obama and the America Inc. contingent, being wooed by Modi to buy-in into the ‘M
An IAS officer of the 1978 batch of Jharkhand cadre, RS Sharma was the director general of UIDAI before joining DeitY. He is the main driving force behind the ambitious Digital India programme. Talking to Pratap Vikram Singh and Praggya Guptaa, Sharma explains the role of his department in providing services and localised content to the rural population over th
For the sixth time in a row, Centre for Civil Society (CCS) features among the top think tanks in the world ranking 50th among the top think tanks. This was revealed by the annual study conducted by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Programme at the University of Pennsylvania. This ranking is a result of the comprehensive study of 6,681 think tanks from every region of the wor
How does the BJP propose to build its base in Tamil Nadu? For the past four to five years the BJP has been consistently working in Tamil Nadu. And our mobilisation capacity has got demonstrated in the near past. It has increased exponentially. We have been taking up issues which are core to the state. For instance, the Tamil Nadu fishermen issue. We worked to mob
In less than 15 months Delhi is going to vote again. During the last elections in December 2013, the national capital hogged all the limelight of the world as it was a different battle. The battle fought on rules set by one man and a party, fresh off the people’s imagination. Arvind Kejriwal, an outsider, a non-politician, someone representing civil society and crusader aga
Nayana Kathpalia has been fighting to save Mumbai’s open spaces. As the founder trustee of NAGAR, she has been working on solid waste management, improvement in air quality, preserving beaches, mangroves, heritage places, efficient road space management and water conservation. She is also a trustee of the OVAL Trust that has been instrumental in restoring and maintaining Mumbai’s ic
Do you feel that discrimination and violence against people from the northeast is more prominent in Delhi as compared to other metro cities? After visiting several metro cities, the committee observed that the number of people from the northeast living in Delhi was much higher. This can be a reason for larger number of such incidents taking place in Delhi. Peopl
