The Olympics is about to start and the skeletons have been stumbling from the closet. Huh! What is the big deal here? The skeletons were already there in the closet. It is just that, now, they are falling down. Definitely, gravity is at fault. The story is long, but let us begin from the Beijing Olympics 2008. Medals, honors, awards, rewards etc for the winners and a firm resolve
The human body is a maddeningly complex system that rarely reveals its inner workings to the outside world. Consider this. The average human being is exposed to a billion different kinds of bacteria, viruses and micro-organisms on a daily basis. Each of these invisible creatures can cause anything from a feeling of feverishness to a fatal brain haemorrhage. Yet most of us keep going on about ou
As the world is witnessing financial crisis, the international philanthropic aid might be shrinking to India and other countries but India has committed more funds to fight AIDS. “BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) increased domestic public spending on HIV by more than 120 percent between 2006 and 2011. India, too, has committed to increase domestic funding to
Former Army Chief General VK Singh, before stepping down, had written a secret letter to the defence minister AK Anthony saying Indian Army lacked a lot of basic warfare gear such as ammunition for tanks. He had also stated that the tanks in use were night blind as they were not equipped with thermal imaging sensors. The Army Chief stressed that the force had enough ammunition only for three-to
Working for over 10 years in various technical and leadership roles with Microsoft India, Mandar Naik currently holds the position of director, platform strategy, with the company. In his this role, Naik has been working on the emerging open source ecosystem on Microsoft’s client, server and cloud platforms. In an exclusive interaction with Samir Sachdeva, Naik talks about Microsoft&rsquo
There is a crisis in the country at all levels. Most institutions, elite or otherwise seem to be becoming more centralised, impervious to the feedback from below, lacking horizontal and vertical accountability and are also getting alienated from common interest. Why is such a spectacle being enacted? On one hand we see widespread upsurge of democratic aspirations all around the world, a
The Child Development Index released by Save the Children shows that Japan is the best place in the world to be a child while Somalia is the worst. The report also notes that while many countries in the world made remarkable progress in child health, education and nutrition – the three premises that form the basis of this report – India slipped by 12 ranks between 1995 and 2010. The
Book details The Battle for Employment Guarantee Edited by Reetika Khera Oxford University Press, 264 pages, Rs 695 MNREGS has been a topic of hot debate, even before the law was enacted. Critics see it as wastage of huge public money in ‘mud work’, whereas supporters think it answers the need to save the
Mamata Sharma, chairperson of National Commission for Women (NCW), had to associate herself with the Guwahati gang-molestation affair in a manner distasteful to her. She felt compelled to apologise before the media after Alka Lamba committed a faux pas by naming the victim at a press conference. Lamba, despite not being part of the NCW, virtually led its fact finding team to Guwahati. The only
Strange are the workings of the human mind. Just a few weeks back Rajesh Khanna was trending on twitter, massacred for his advertisement for Havells. There’s no question the ad had no business to be made. But the viciousness of its critics left your columnist trying to defend: `Don’t deny a man his right to a living; don’t just show case him in a time warp!’ Not
Perhaps it was Carlyle who said, “Give me a man who sings at his work.” Fatigue, or more simply lack of interest in the assigned work or office environment, is common. This happens perhaps because we do not question ourselves or introspect. Do we have an attitude where a humbler existence is felt owed to certain duty vested in us that empowers us to be useful to others? The question
When Kallol Dutta took over as chairman cum managing director of the Andrew Yule group, the public sector unit’s accumulated loss was around Rs 432 crore. In the headquarters and at other units run by the group, there was palpable despondency and dejection. Dutta, an engineering graduate from Kharagpur and a quintessential Bengali who loves football more than any other game, made an exemp
There is something sad about a poll to discover the second greatest Indian. The top job is taken, let`s celebrate the also-rans. Once that joke has had its run, what next? A poll to find the 16th greatest Indian Woman Who Was Born in the First Half of a Leap Year? This can go on and on, and perhaps will. Nobody, as Edmund Hillary might have said if someone had cared enough to as
The khap panchayat in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district has its own way of dealing with the problem of women being harassed by the “roadside Romeos”. It has issued a firman barring women up to the age of 40 from going to market unescorted, using cellphones and going for love marriages. They have also warned women to be ready to face consequences in case of a violation of the kh
The impact of global financial downturn is observed alike in developing and developed countries. But who is to be blamed for current economic problems? Nations around the world differ on this count. The US-based think tank Pew Research Center says in its latest survey that a staggering 92 percent of Indians blame their government for the financial mess. “Only 17 percent Indians found bank
Richard Matthew Stallman, often called the father of the free and open source movement, is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. He has launched the GNU project, aimed at creating a free Unix-like operating system. He is also the pioneer of the CopyLeft concept and is a social activist campaigning against software patents and copyrights. During his recent visit to India he spoke to Samir
On June 20 this year, four-year-old Mahi fell into a bore well in Koh village in Manesar near Gurgaon. It was her birthday. She made front-page news in all leading newspapers and ate into prime time TV. Reports stated that help arrived 90 minutes later. Too late, they said. By the time she was pulled out 80 hours later, she was dead. Everything in India is late, except the media, the ever-waiti
In Manipur the movement for the introduction of the inner line permit (ILP) system is gaining momentum. On 5 July, a public interest litigation (PIL) that had been pending in the Gauhati high court was withdrawn, the ILP Demand Committee formed in 2006 by Federation of Regional Indigenous Societies (FRIENDS) was superseded and a Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit (ILP) was formed. The Joint C
Four weeks ago, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, basking in the light of Gujarat’s progress, remarked that “casteist” politics had arrested Bihar’s development. Nitish Kumar’s riposte was swift and brutal. The Bihar chief minister asked Modi to mind his own business and not give gratuitous advice to others. That clash between two chief ministers, both
Facing financial downturn and dearth of development assistance by the donor agencies, the United Nations in its new report suggests an innovative idea to assist the poor countries in meeting their development goals by taxing billionaires across the world. “A billionaire’s tax, would consist of a small tax of, say, 1 percent on individual wealth holdings of $1 billion or more
