Soon after the downfall of the USSR, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama theorised in his book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ (1992) that the age of communism was over and the western capitalism was now going to be the permanent feature. Four years after this proclamation of the ‘victory’ of capitalism, however, the tiny Himalayan nation of Nepal was
Founded in 2009, the AGI aims to address the concerns and interests of the Indian geospatial industry. In conversation with Ridhima Kumar, AGI’s executive director Bharti Sinha talks about the changing attitudes of the government towards the industry and its willingness to encourage the use of geospatial technology in India.
The pre-1993 executive-led system of appointment of judges lost favour with people for trampling upon judicial independence. The post-1993 judiciary-led collegium system faced criticism for lack of transparency and accountability. The trust deficit continues to be a challenge with the new system under the national judicial appointments commission (NJAC) raising fears on both counts.
Do we in India have the concept of privacy? The supreme court is hearing a bunch of petitions that have objected to Aadhaar because it infringes on citizens’ privacy. The government has said ‘right to privacy’ is not a fundamental right. It does not figure in the constitution, of course, even if the apex court has read ‘right to privacy’ as part of the all-importan
Established in 1996 as a joint venture between Esri Inc of USA and NIIT Technologies of India, Esri India is the country’s leading GIS software and solutions provider. In an interview with Ridhima Kumar, Esri India’s president, Agendra Kumar gives a brief overview of the GIS industry in India, its challenges and the future prospects.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the third UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and has held the position since 2014. Tauli-Corpuz was also the chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues from 2005 to 2010. Her work for more than three decades has been focused on movement building among indigenous peoples and also among women, and she has work
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garcés is the elected chairperson-rapporteur of the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group (OEIGWG) on Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights. She is a top Ecuadorian politician and diplomat who is currently the ambassador of her nation to the UN Office at Geneva. Earlier, Garc&eacut
Bhaskar Chatterjee, director general and CEO of IICA (a think tank of ministry of corporate affairs), is a retired IAS officer. His current role is the logical followup to the last post he held, as secretary of the department of public enterprises (DPE). He spoke to Sweta Ranjan about his role in drafting the new Companies Act, which introduced the
India’s malnutrition is back in international news, and for rather intriguing reasons. Some nasty articles have appeared in one of the most prestigious international magazines, the Economist – ‘Sparing Mr Modi’s blushes’, in the June 27 edition, and ‘Of secrecy and stunting’, in the July 4 edition. Regardless of its pretentions, the Economist appears to
Year 2014 was the warmest year on record. This has been confirmed in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) State of the Climate in 2014 report which published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Jeet Thayil, an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician, is well known for his first novel, Narcopolis that won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was also shortlisted for Man Booker Prize and Hindu Literary Prize. He has worked as a journalist in Mumbai, New York and Bengaluru. Nowadays he focuses more on music and says no real musician likes to s
Once the Congress lost its majority in parliament long ago, it had to reconcile itself to forming coalitions and sharing ministries. The Congress liked to keep important ministries like home and finance; its allies, enjoying a few uncertain years in power, preferred lucrative ministries. Their favourite cash cow was the railways. Corrupt ministers promoted corrupt bureaucrats. That is how the r
The national commission for women (NCW) aims to be more proactive. It is seeking more powers. However, the demands for punitive powers to arrest and imposition of penalty have been opposed by the law ministry. The chairperson of NCW Lalitha Kumarangamalam shares her views with Sweta Ranjan on these and other issues.
Nungshi and Tashi Malik have become the world’s first female twins to successfully climb the famed `Seven Summits` (highest peaks in all continents). They have achieved the success climbing Mt Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mt Everest (Asia), Mt Elbrus (Europe), Mt Aconcagua (South America), Mt Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania), Mt McKinley (North America) and Mt Vinson
British journalist and health worker Shereen El Feki dared to rush where most fear to tread. But she’s nobody’s fool. She researched on sex in the Arab world. The result: her first book, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and The Orwell Prize. She has served as vice-chair of the UN&rs
A 1978 batch IAS officer, Alok Ranjan is driving the development agenda of the Uttar Pradesh government in the run-up to 2017 assembly election. In an interview with Pratap Vikram Singh, Ranjan talks about administrative reforms in the state. How far have you succeeded in tackling the power crisis? We ar
The media make parrots out of us. Instead of working things out for ourselves, we are taught to repeat formulae by rote. The formula on Greece is well known. It went on borrowing as if there was no tomorrow. Such wise and kind uncles as the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank kept lending to it, and urging it to mend its ways. But it did not. So it went bankrup
India has ‘moderately’ reduced open defecation by 31 percent since 1990 but succeeded significantly in providing access to improved drinking water to more people in urban and rural areas, says a report by the United Nations. The report “Progress o
Perhaps the most overlooked comparison in Asia is that between India and its civilisational sibling, Indonesia. These two eclectic democracies have more in common than India and China, yet they are only rarely hyphenated. While China’s per capita GDP in 2013 (adjusted for purchasing power parity) was at $9,800, the equivalent for India was a mere $4,000, putting it much closer to Indonesi
“The top 30 defaulters are sitting on bad loans of Rs. 95,122 crore, which is more than one-third of the entire NPAs of public sector banks.” That is the tailpiece in an article in the Economic Times of June 11, 2015, titled “RBI in favour of developing better strategies to deal with bad loan problem”. That also happens to be the standard quote in the flood of articles o
