Among the more disturbing aspects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Obama Moment and its aftermath is our utter collective callousness towards the thousands of peaceful protesters who were beaten and driven out of Ramlila Maidan in the dead of night. Both the government and the Congress party that leads it are brazening out the decision to swoop on sleeping satyagrahis, rain lath
After India won the cricket world cup this year, the Delhi government gave MS Dhoni Rs 2 crore and the Punjab government gave Yuvraj Singh Rs one crore for their outstanding performance. The other players in the winning squad were similarly rewarded for bringing home the cup. For most disabled students, topping the school exams is no less than winning the world cup. But never have the s
In politics, consistency has never been a great virtue. If Uma Bharti’s re-induction in the BJP is any indication, the party is all set to launch her as the face of its campaign in Uttar Pradesh polls, ignoring the fact that she has rubbed the party the wrong way in every conceivable manner. When BJP president Nitin Gadkari shared the dais with the mercurial sadhvi, he must have bee
Haves and have-nots (and Jantar Mantar) How it all boils down to inclusion Close to two decades of liberalisation has not only enriched the middle class but also expanded it. A range of business and services – IT and telecom, for example – has created jobs for millions and the families that were loosely speaking lower middle class in 1991 are now middle middle
It will be extraordinarily difficult for India to bring back stolen assets stashed away in tax havens, says Tim Daniel, an expert on black money who is partner with UK-based law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge. In an interview with Trithesh Nandan in New Delhi, Daniel says India should move away from a culture in which nothing can be done without paying a bribe. Daniel h
The government has finally made a new directorate for criminal investigation - income tax (DCI) to take forward the five-fold strategy to tackle black money. Earlier, in February 2010, on signing the first Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with Bermuda, our finance minister informed the visiting steering group of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that
There has been a debate recently about the quality of research and its impact. I will not deny that there is a huge need for quality improvement in research and its theoretical, applied and other social and policy impacts. But how to trigger processes which breed impatience in the mind of scholars about the problems which our society is facing and which, for some reason, we have learned to live
Why is it so important to bring prime minister under Lokpal’s scanner? The civil society groups reasoned for bringing the PM under the ambit of the Lokpal saying that such a move does not render the PM "dysfunctional". The members of civil society groups said, “At any time, the prime minister holds many portfolios. Does it mean that all those ministries wou
Rajendra K Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and chief executive of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), is among the leading environmentalists in the country. Ahead of the upcoming World Environment Day, he spoke to Neha Sethi about the biggest environmental challenges for India, policy interventions required for sustainable agric
A nation of over one billion people and not a hangman to slip the noose over death row’s Mahendra Nath Das, who has exhausted all his pleas and can only wait for the lumbering bureaucracy to find a trained hangman who can do the knot properly and according to custom. This is no easy task and with executions becoming rarer the family business has died out with sons no longer ready
The supreme court on Monday sought the centre`s response on a PIL demanding a regulatory mechanism and accountability for IB, RAW and NTRO. In this respect, we reproduce an interview with Manish Tewari, who in 2011 introduced a private member`s bill with similar aims. This interview was conducted in June 2011. Manish Tewari, the MP from Ludhiana and a Congress spokespe
Bhatta-Parsaul villages in Greater Noida may have become the new symbol of disquiet over land acquisition but they represent a larger, worldwide challenge to policymakers. Large-scale acquisition of farmland in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia has made headlines over the past one year. Africa has become a prime target for land grabbers from the corporate sector, with money
There is a clear pattern in the way a section of our "intellectuals" has reacted to the recent people’s movements against corruption – the Anna Hazare campaign on Lokpal and now Baba Ramdev’s agitation against black money. This section has bluntly brushed aside both the movements. The point is not whether such movements will be able to achieve what they set o
Twenty-nine students, studying between class III and class VIII, were asked to leave school. Not because of bad behaviour, poor attendance or having failed a class but because they were infected with HIV. This is what happened in a government school in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, where the headmaster barred these children from attending regular classes because of the fear that the othe
The prime minister has promised to resurrect land acquisition reforms. But the bill in the works is quite a shoddy piece of legislation. It doesn’t even have the decency to say, “I’ll take your land, but I’ll make you
The question that struck me after seeing the India census 2011 report is: Is the Pre-natal Diagnostic Technique (Prohibition of Sex Selection) (PCPNDT) Act a toothless piece of legislation? That seems to be the case as the sex ratio has turned from bad to worse. While the normal ratio for children between 0 and 6 is about 950 girls to 1000 boys, the 2011 census shows that the number of girls ha
Should the PM and other dignitaries/high offices be within the ambit of the Lokpal or not? I believe Anna Hazare and Co are being too ambitious in wishing to put everybody under the Lokpal radar. They should instead take a pragmatic approach and demand that the Lokpal should have powers to probe only the PM and the select few. Think about it. The proposal is not half as counterin
Stakeholders including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and professional services firms are now worse off with a half-hearted approach of the government allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in limited liability partnerships (LLPs) in a piecemeal measure, while also withdrawing the advantages enshrined in the LLP Act, 2009. This has raised more questions than answers about the fate
Shunglu Committee holds Sheila Dikshit responsible for the CWG mess in Delhi last year. Don`t you think the state government`s soft approach to reports of graft and the delays in execution of projects were the major factors behind the scale of graft that marked the Games? I have not read the report. So, I do not know what it says. Whatever information I have, is from the
What is world class? About two decades ago when the Canadian government wanted to modernise itself and its public services, it appointed a group of consultants to go around the world and find out what constitutes the quality of world-class organisations. This team came out with the following qualities of world-class organisations which they preferred to call as “adaptive organisations&rdq
