Mornings for me are almost always rushed – the half-an-hour waking up session with the daughter, packing her lunch box, filling the water bottle and helping her get ready before rushing out to make it in time for the school bus. Today was even more rushed. Husband and I had to be in time for her assembly. We made it in record time – beating even her school bus to the school
Several big investment projects got stuck in the decision-making lull in the last two years of the UPA administration. The situation got grimmer after 2G and coal scam revelations. This, in effect, led to formation of a project monitoring group (PMG) under the cabinet secretariat to expedite project implementation, followed by the electronic cabinet committee on investment (eCCI). In an interac
Being an unabashed admirer of Dilip Kumar, it is quite difficult for me to cast a critical eye at his work. Though limited in my understanding of cinema, Dilip Kumar remains the ultimate superstar; his dialogue delivery and mannerism still hold me in trance. My training as a journalist dissuades me to get overawed by any personality, particularly with those in power. But this training failed wh
A sense of déjà vu hit hard while reading a news report on Infosys being sued in the US. Infosys is an equal opportunity employer: that was the ‘strong’ defence offered by the Indian multinational giant, taken to a US district court for allegedly discriminating against US citizens who did not know Hindi. The former employees have alleged they were
The ongoing crisis in Iraq posed the first serious external test for the NDA government. New Delhi’s handling of the rescue and evacuation effort has been commendable. Yet the government needs to look beyond the immediate crisis. In particular, it should reconsider some fundamental assumptions that have long underpinned India’s response to instability in West Asia. Such an exercise
It was not only the people of the country but opposition political parties were also eagerly waiting for the Union budget to be presented under the leadership of prime minister Narendra Modi. With the budget in the public domain now, people are rejoicing but the opposition appears to be clueless and searching for loopholes to take on the budget. But as the PM said, the budget is a sanjeevini to
Set up in 1965, the Association of State Road Transport Undertakings (ASRTU) has been working towards bringing together the state transport corporations on a common platform to pool their resources and knowledge to help them improve their performance. In an exclusive conversation with Shubhendu Parth and Pragya Gupta, ASRTU executive director PS Ananda Rao talks about the challenges that
The PM’s blog on his first month, the foundation course for members of Parliament and now the budget have begun to shift the balance between subsidies for the rural poor and growth that will provide employment in industry and move the agrarian population to cities and into the middle class. Whose ‘ache din’ is a question that has remained unanswered? Th
The prime minister’s blog entries on completion of first month in power, the foundation course for MPs and the railway budget have all been a lost opportunity to begin a national debate on our longer term future to build public opinion that will enable long term investments and ensure implementation, an area where we have failed many times in the past. Decisions have so far
A medical practitioner-turned-politician, Dr Harsh Vardhan got cracking in his new role as the union health minister as soon as he assumed office. Besides promising better health care facilities and making regular rounds of key hospitals, the Lok Sabha MP from Chandni Chowk, Delhi, has also written to finance minister Arun Jaitley seeking to remove tax exemption granted to beedi manufactures an
Gujarat was allocated 9 million acre feet (MAF) of water from the Sardar Sarovar dam under the Narmada water dispute tribunal award. The state plans to use that water through the main canal. The level of the main canal is 110 metres. The moment the water in the dam is above that level, it will enter the canal and after that Gujarat can make use of it. Gujarat already has more th
So there I was, standing outside, smoking, when it fell in front of me. A one-rupee coin. I looked up, saw a pigeon flying off the building’s high ledge in a hurry, as if scared of me. Truth be told, I tried to move off faster – as fast as my big-fat body allows – lest it poop on me. I looked up. Realising that the bird had had actually taken fligh
As soon as the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) decided to permit the final dam height, Medha Patkar was back in Badwani, the base of the Narmada Bachao Andolan she has been leading since the mid-1980s. Here, on a rainy day, she listened to about 80 people whose homes and fields were going to be submerged by the Narmada waters. The indefatigable activist patiently discussed with them the legal o
Not many people outside West Bengal had heard of Tapas Pal till yesterday. Not many people will know Tapas, possibly after tomorrow. But for two days, Pal, a yesteryear Bengali matinee hero with one film (Abodh) with Madhuri Dixit, has suddenly become the talk of the town. For his filthy and yet asinine remarks. On Tuesday, he was trending on Twitter nationally – certainly a first
Q. Most state transport corporations are now looking at using technology to improve efficiency. What is Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) doing in this direction? We are in the process of implementing electronic ticketing machine. Tickets in buses are at present given out by conductors, which is time-consuming. An electronic ticke
By 2020 the demand for electronic goods in India is expected to breach the US$400 billion mark, with the import bill estimated to set the country back by US$300 billion. In fact, it is expected to trump the energy import bill. India is staring at an import nightmare of unprecedented proportions that can push the country into a spiral of high imports that would necessarily require higher externa
The budget which finance minster Arun Jaitley (a renowned lawyer himself) presents on July 10 is likely to carry the baggage of Right to Food which the UPA II thrust on the reigning government. Happily or unhappily he is slated to set aside a huge corpus for the Act whose time has not come yet. It would be plain ignorance on my part if I could wish the Narendra Modi government would hav
Growing discontent in Indian democracy over the last few years is a cause of concern. The country has more than 65 percent of its population below the age of 35 and will become the world’s youngest country with 64 percent of its population in the working age group by 2020. This would put pressure on the government for providing employment opportunities and citizen-centric governance.
Sanjit `Bunker` Roy is the founder of Barefoot College. In 2010, he was selected by the Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for his work with illiterate and semi- literate rural women in developing countries. He spoke to Shreerupa Mitra-Jha. You gave up a privileged life to work in a particularly underdeveloped part of the country. So w
India`s big companies now have an extended responsibility on hand - of turning the `do good` stipulation of the government - indeed `good`. Because social responsibility is not demonstrated by choosing from a basket of ‘good deeds’. Neither can good deeds offset bad ones. The R in CSR (corporate social responsibility), in its true sense, refers to the application of sincere conscience on the p
