In recent years the love affair of the public with the higher judiciary seems to be coming to an end. From tainted judges to resisting the public declaration of assets, the role of the higher judiciary has come under intense scrutiny. The common perception is that the judges are retreating behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing to abide by the very standards that they set for others. This is qu
All of us have a Right to Livelihood. Millions of us are without one. We have a Right to Education. About half the country is illiterate. Tribals have a Right to Forest Land. Acres of forests are disappearing. We really don’t know the right figures but anywhere between 27 percent to 77 percent of the country is poor, craving for food. About 46 percent of our childr
Ram Jethmalani’s candidature has so rattled the Bharatiya Janata Party that the party with a difference has holed up all its 79 legislators in Rajasthan in a five-star hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur—a practice so far reserved only for making or breaking a governments and not for winning a Rajya Sabha seat as is the case now. Worse, the party has the required numbers to ensure vict
Ask not what your government can do for you; ask what you can do for your government. If you live in Delhi, in fact, this year you don’t even need to ask. Your government has not only pre-empted your query but also has been answering it repeatedly, even long after satiating your inquisitiveness. In the process, it has forced you to pay more for just about every public service and to bear
Think of all possible ways to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi. Your list is not likely to include a big-budget, grandiose ‘temple’ that will also be a sort of club for industrialists. And that’s what is coming up in the capital of Gujarat. But, then, this is none other than chief minister Narendra Modi’s way of paying tribute to Gandhi. The 34-acre project is going
Minister for communication and IT A Raja was to travel to Estonia to learn lessons in e-governance with a 26-member delegation but he had to cancel his trip as he did not get permission from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The delegation had three MPs and 22 officials as well. It was strange that the minister who had no time to attend the 13th annual conference on e-governance
If the future is bleak, turn to history. That seems to be the only intellectual diversion the BJP leaders have these days, that is whenever they are free of internecine feud. In a gathering of some BJP chief ministers and senior leaders in Mumbai, ostensibly to attend a workshop on good governance, it was the turn of the redoubtable Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to give delegates a lesso
If Bollywood mirrors popular culture, trigger-happy cops backed by an insidious state have always been portrayed as saviours. Consider the plot of any movie like ‘Ab Tak Chhappan’ or ‘Wednesday’: a meticulous conspiracy to promote violence is not only regarded as an effective antidote to rising criminality or extremism but also finds approval of the state and society. Th
Former chief justice of India A H Ahmadi made an interesting observation while defending his decision to dilute charges against Union Carbide executives in the Bhopal gas tragedy case. He said: “There is no concept of vicarious liability. If my driver is driving and meets with a fatal accident, I don’t become liable to be prosecuted under 304-II (of IPC)”. That’s highly
There is a beautiful parable about an emperor who though naked believes that he is wrapped up in a divine cloth. The emperor would get angry and bump off anybody who pointed out his nakedness. But the story would have taken a different turn if the emperor started flaunting his nakedness as a divinity-ordained quality. This is exactly what Sharad Pawar has been doing in the IPL bidding case. The
In studying how the mighty institution of the Market functions in India, one can appreciate the wide gulf between organised and unorganised sectors of the economy, which allows the former to batten on the latter. If you are a craftsperson, driver, tailor, sweeper, carpenter, plumber, roadside food vendor, housemaid, rickshaw puller, or private security person, you are likely to be servi
Arundhati Roy, our leading public intellectual, has made a rare clarification. She says she never wrote the phrase “Gandhians with a gun”, used to describe Maoists in an essay she wrote for the Outlook in March. The phrase appeared in the sub-headline and Roy says it was written by the magazine. The Br
As I have been saying over the past few days, the Election Commission is clearly under pressure. They better be. Not only have they stopped making irrational claims about electronic voting machines over the past month, they have begun a clean-up exercise to overcome some of the of EVM security lapses. In a seven-page communiqué to all state CEOs dated May 3, 2010, the Elec
The National Advisory Council has been reconstituted after a gap of four years. Once again Congress president Sonia Gandhi is its chairperson. The NAC was originally set up by a government order in June 2004 to monitor the implementation of the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme (CMP). The functions of the NAC include the formation of policy of the government and assistance in
It is a man’s world after all. We even refer to God as he. Even my liberal parents get a headache if one day I decide to come home late, whereas, my male friends wax eloquent about their after-hours escapades, which mostly are a ‘men-only’. Good girls stay in after dark; it’s not safe, you see. I live in the national capital- a city bordering some of the
The movement of ‘very important persons’ or VIPs on Wednesday -- only days after the Mangalore plane crash -- put to risk three commercial flights, with over 450 passengers on board, when they were diverted from Delhi airport, according to a Times of India report. The three flights had been dangerously short of fuel when they were diverted from Delhi to Jaipur airport withou
All governments, in order to govern their subjects efficiently, convert the population into homogeneous categories and also try to transform people into statistics. These ‘statistics’ and ‘categories’ are tools of governance and the state also imagines them as the basis for planning for development. Since caste is a vital structure of Indian society, policy maker
When a prime minister talks, a nation listens. That’s what happened earlier today when Manmohan Singh addressed his first press conference in four years. But because prime ministers say so little, as did Manmohan this morning, it is what they don’t say that makes better news than what they say. And it is what they mean that makes better sense than what they say. So, h
The 80-minute-long press conference by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be summarised in six words: he came, he saw, he prevaricated. Being only the second press conference addressed by the prime minister during his six years in office, it was expected to be eventful, if not path-breaking, coinciding as it did with the completion of the first year in his second stint. As expected, the
I and two colleagues, working for Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF), a Delhi-based NGO, set ourselves on a search for a well-functioning gram sabha in late 2008. By the standards of ‘local self-governance’, a gram sabha should meet regularly and collectively decide all issues of development and social justice in its jurisdiction, leaving the elected and unelected panch
