After being in business for around a year and a half, the competition commission of India (CCI) on December 2, passed its first final order where it held that the practice of imposing prepayment charges by banks and housing finance companies on the early repayment of home loans is not anti-competitive. The impression is CCI tottered its way to be able to come of age. This first ord
On Tuesday, for the fifth consectuive day, it took me more than 80 minutes to cover a distance usually covered in 55 minutes - Noida Sector 16 - Tilak Nagar on the metro. Last year when the metro entered Noida, it brought relief for many people working here. A relief from hours of waiting at the bus stops or fighting with the autowallahs, who did not have permit to enter Noida an
Polio cases in India have drastically fallen as compared to last year, according to a recent report by Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a wing of World Health Organisation (WHO). India’s 2010 record on polio shows only 41 new cases as against 672 in 2009. Out of the 41 cases from India, 19 are from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two of the most affected states, compared to 60
India in 2010 truly arrived on the international scene because of its sustained economic momentum which insulated it from the financial crisis that has engulfed the world since 2008. India is likely to register a growth of 8.75 percent during the quarter ending March 2011. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have projected India’s growth
Last week, the department of personal and training (DoPT) found itself in a strange situation. It received more than 13,000 emails in response to the proposed RTI rules. The huge chunk of emails sent its server for a toss. The department was flooded with phone calls from all over the country with people telling the officials that the emails they had sent had bounced back. It had to rope in tech
While Delhi readies new deterrents to private motorised traffic on city roads, how much is it really geared to take on the demands on public transport that will arise as a result? How aptly will it address issues of technology and logistics? The city is planning to bring in congestion charges that will tax vehicles plying on roads during peak traffic hours of the day. It might prove eff
Wildlife conservation in India has become synonymous with tiger conservation. The majestic animal, which is also India’s national animal and a magnet for tourists, hogs the limelight in the media and also catches the fancy of people at large. But there are many lesser-known birds and animals which have been identified as being ‘critically endangered’ in a list prepared by the
Lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure cost India a whopping $54 billion in 2006 - close to 6.4 percent of the country`s gross domestic product (GDP) - according to a World bank study. “Inadequate sanitation causes India considerable economic losses at $53.8 billion (Rs.2.4 trillion),” the report Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), a global partnership administered by th
At its plenary session in Burari, we are told, the Congress did not have time to ponder over its history. It should have, if for no other reason than the fact that 2010 is its 125th anniversary. Yes, there was a dramatised enactment of the first session of the Indian National Congress
It is likely that India and China may not repeat, in 2011, the robust growth they have had this year, says a United Nations study. “The year 2010 has seen an impressive recovery of the region’s economies led by the large economies of China and India. But the region is faced with a weakening of growth in the developed economies that affect the pace of recovery,” says th
My barber, whom we call Masterji, is a psephologist caught in the wrong profession. Ever since I have known him, all his electoral predictions have turned out right. But as a voter, he has his own likes and dislikes. Being a Muslim living in Delhi for the past 43 years, he is not fond of the BJP – a feeling shared by his community in the walled city. I remember a visit to his salo
UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi presented her five-point charter to fight corruption in her address to the Congress plenary in New Delhi on Sunday. These are high on rhetoric, low on practical use, except for the last one – state funding of elections. Her five suggestions are: a) Fast-tracking all cases of corruption involving public servants; b) Full transparency in public procurem
Experimenting with new words with the help of a thesaurus was a fad in school days. Over the years it only became a habit as a journalist. Until one day in recent past when I looked up my thesaurus for synonyms for media. The thesaurus looked sadly vulnerable. It did not list the word Radia. Perhaps I looked up an old Collins thesaurus gifted to me by my parents as a kid. Bu
When she was only eight, Nisha was put on the road by desperately poor parents to earn her keep selling cigarettes, gutkha and other odd nicotine fixes. Two years later, today, not much has changed for her. She religiously puts up her makeshift shop every morning at the same spot she claimed for herself then, on a Noida pavement - the one by the DND near sector 16. Her dishevelled
I attended a talk at Oxford by Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1990 and he spoke on Power and Norms: What can the Nobel Peace Prize accomplish? Being an Indian student at Oxford I had one obvious question in my mind “why did Mahatma Gandhi never receive the Nobel Peace prize?” Somebody symbolic of
Around a decade ago, LK Advani gave a sagacious advice to the Ambani brothers. “Let politicians do their politics and run the country; you concentrate on your business,” Advani is believed to have told the Ambanis when they called on him at his office at North Block. The meeting followed what appeared to be brazen attempts by the two brothers to influence public policy and poli
As an expanding economy looks for fuel for further growth, India needs to raise its coal production. But Sriprakash Jaiswal, minister of state (independent charge) for coal, faces challenges from the Maoists as well as from environmental lobbies. In an interview with Sweta Ranjan, Jaiswal discusses his plans to meet these challenges and also the future
I am hard placed to understand the hissy fit Indians are having over the US airport pat down of ambassador Meera Shankar or the one now on another diplomat Hardeep Singh for being asked to show his turban. What part of the American message have we not understood since 9/11? I love the way a billion people go up in arms over abs nothing. In any case, diplomats are just people who j
A significant section of mediapersons, largely those who describe themselves as belonging to the “old school of journalism”, have been experiencing a serious degree of heartburn and gut churn following the recent media exposés on Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, and the NDTV discussion where a collegial panel of scribes put Dutt under the microscope. Such exposés, by their
