Let`s face the odorous truth. India is not going to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of turning `open defecation free` (ODF) by 2015. Not by 2020 and not even years beyond. And this is not "vested ramblings" from donor agencies like the World Bank, UNICEF or Water Aid, that have been critical of the rural development ministry administered subsidy-driven total sanita
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is in an unenviable position. He has spent seven years safe in the knowledge that everybody knows he is not his own man. He has remained largely a spectator as his party president has run a super cabinet of sorts and many of his cabinet colleagues their independent fiefdoms. His first term was remarkable for his singular assertion on the India-US civil nucl
A high-level political commitment is an imperative for pushing forward the e-governance drive in the country. ICT projects in the country are as old as two to three decades. However, successive governments have paid mere lip service to creating a conducive ICT ecology in the country. The developed countries, which invested in ICT and other emerging technologies much before the others in
The Constituent Assembly and late Dr BR Ambedkar worked tirelessly to give shape to the Indian constitution promising us liberty, equality, rule of law and peaceful existence. The constitution was made to be a self-contained document setting out the fundamental rights, the directive principles of state policy, the constitutional plan for the separation of powers amongst different organs of gove
Rapid soil degradation is causing desertification of 81.45 million hectares, or 24.8 percent of India`s geographic area, a ministry of environment and forests report says. The new report, submitted to the UN convention to combat desertification (UNCCD), estimates that 32 percent of the total land area in the country is affected by land degradation. It identifies water and s
The Maharajah who could once become a lover boy in Paris, a sumo wrestler in Tokyo, a pavement artist, a Red Indian, a monk... who could effortlessly flirt with the beauties of the world (as quoted on the Air India website) is now gasping for breath. The late J R D Tata, the man behind the national carrier, could have never imagined that a day would come when the employees of his
Just when the attention of newsmen across the nation was fixed on the Lokpal issue, the government excluded the central bureau of investigation (CBI) from the purview of the right to information (RTI) act. And how did you and I come to know about it? The agency, responding to the RTI query filed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal told him that as per a June 9 notification, it had been in
The first ever cumulative impact assessment (CIA) study of hydro-power projects being built on Bhagirathi and Alaknanda, two tributaries of river Ganga, has come as a big disappointment. Carried out by the Alternate Hydro Energy Centre (AHEC) of IIT (Roorkee), which submitted its report to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) recently, the study ignores the very r
Visit any hospital in Delhi and you will find a display board carrying the message that sex selection test is prohibited. Still, the number of girl children is diminishing in India. Many analysts believe that the practice of aborting the girl child has taken such deep roots that there may be no escape from it. But when it becomes a global phenomenon, what would you call it? Mary Anne Warren coi
The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), a network of organisations working on water issues, has rejected a cumulative impact assessment of the Ganga basin hydropower projects done by the Alternative Hydro Energy Centre (AHEC) of the IIT Roorkee. In a letter to union environment minister Jairam Ramesh, Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP dismisses the report as biased in favo
The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People (SANDRP) a network of organisations working on issues related with water sector has rejected cumulative impact assessment of the Ganga basin hydropower projects done by the Alternative Hydro Energy Centre of the IIT Roorkee. In a letter written to Jairam Ramesh, minister of environment and forest (MoEF), Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP says the rep
Secrecy is intrinsic to statecraft. Yet, it induces a certain degree of paranoia among even the consummate practitioners of statecraft. That is why union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee lost his cool when he was told that his office was bugged. So furious was the finance minister that he even dispatched a missive to prime minister Manmohan Singh and asked for a “secret probe”
Romeo and Juliet may not have been a tragic play had both of them been class 12 pass outs aspiring to take admission in Delhi University this year. So what if Juliet studied all year round to make it to the first list of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) but couldn’t through because of having a science background. And so what if Romeo did not study all year round because he was
Secrecy is intrinsic to statecraft. Yet, it induces a certain degree of paranoia among even the consummate practitioners of statecraft. That is why union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee lost his cool when he was told that his office was bugged. So furious was the finance minister that he even dispatched a missive to prime minister Manmohan Singh and asked for a “secret probe”.
J & K Chief minister Omar Abdullah believes that twitter, the micro- blogging site, is a potent weapon to put across his point of view to the public. He has 30,000 followers on the site and he reads what he tweets in the next days’ morning newspapers. Omar talked about his tweet experiences and much more in an interview given to Anil Singh, Executive Editor, Star News. Here are edited
The ministry of corporate affairs has finally mandated that a set of companies will file balance sheets, profit and loss account, the director’s and auditor’s report for the year 2010-11 onwards by using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) taxonomy. This language is used for the electronic communication of business and financial data and facilitates preparation, analysis a
The prices for essential food items are likely to stay high, according to latest report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The `agriculture outlook for decade 2011-2020` said that prices for cereals could average as much as 20 percent higher and those for meats as much as 30 percent higher, co
The latest report on the Mangalore air crash regarding the suspicion that Air India might have “tampered” with the pilots’ flight roster and forced Capt Zlatko Glusica to fly despite fatigue has revived concerns over fatigued pilots. Even a year after the Mangalore air crash last year killed 158 people, a lot remains to be done to mitigate pilot fatigue. The Flight and
The spate of scams that hit the body politic during the last few months and the startling public disclosures from the Radia tapes had already made discussions on corruption the most favourite national pastime. Now, Anna Hazare’s fast, the constitution of the Lokpal bill drafting committee and the surge of popular support have firmly focused the spotlight on the issue of corruption. Howeve
AISECT, established in 1985, is one of the leading IT training and educational services networks in India with over 8,000 centres. It has so far transformed the lives of over 10 lakh students and created over 10,000 entrepreneurs. Santosh Kumar Choubey, chairman of AISECT Ltd , also the director general of the AISECT group and chancellor of the Dr C V Raman University, spoke with Sa
