Surat Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana is today known as the man who’s made the city a safe place to live. Earlier he was known in the bureaucratic circles as the man who supervised the investigations in the fodder scam cases as the SP CBI, and DIG of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The 1984 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Gujarat cadre became Surat’s t
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the last of the giants who led South Africa’s struggle against colonialism, is no more. “White supremacy implies black inferiority.” His words were truth to the powers and he devoted his life to opposing systems that protect and abet this superiority. It made him the most recognisable icon of struggle against oppression, injustice and discrimination
You cannot paint over it. The Congress was decimated by the BJP which is led by the controversial but increasingly high profile Narendra Modi, like it or not. He is the flavour. The rest of it is semantics. Whether it was an anti-incumbent defeat or a call for change or a warning flare to the Congress for next year’s general election, the fact is the country was sick to its guts of the sc
I had the privilege of meeting Nelson Mandela in an elevator in Cape Town when the Khaleej Times sent me to South Africa to track the changeover from the apartheid era to a more equal one in racial terms. Couldn’t find him. From Jo’burg to Durban to Cape Town, the ANC kept him well hidden from anyone who was a guest of the government. I remember meeting Chris Hani, his able
3,75,76,324 the number of missing toilets in rural and urban India, according to a report collated by the Right to Sanitation Campaign based on government figures in the report titled ‘In Deep Shit’. What is a ‘missing toilet’? As the phrase suggests, it is a toilet that exists on paper but not on ground. So these missing toilets a
These are excerpts from the judgement on the high profile Arushi murder case. Imagine being judged by someone who has the power to put you behind bars for the rest of your life and yet, makes no sense in his judgement. These bites are out any legal realm and would be fodder for a stand up comic if it wasn’t all so tragic. Go on read it, then shudder with the fear of it…and thank Sl
After reading the Delhi Durbar piece on the Tehelka incident in the morning, I unknowingly blurted out, "That is why this industry is sick!" My senior editor countered, saying that I cannot generalise the whole industry because of this one incident. The whole world is full or perverts, so saying that the media is full of sickos is going a bit too far. I thought over it
Set up in 1988, Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) is a miniratna public sector enterprise under the ministry of railways. It provides multi-modal logistics support for domestic and external trade. Its core businesses are cargo carriers, terminal operations and warehouse operations. In an interview with Puja Bhattacharjee, CONCOR chairman and managing director Anil Gupta
Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at the Washington-based conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has co-authored a working paper on the Indo-US relationship – ‘Falling Short: How Bad Economic Choices Threaten the US-India Relationship and India’s Rise’. As the title explains, his argument is that India made some bad choices in the last couple of yea
India’s large rural and semi-urban population is still out of banking fold, according to the latest report released by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. “Despite, the presence of nearly 90 scheduled commercial banks, the extent of access is still low, with around 35 percent of India’s population financially excluded, and only 28 percent total
In the violence affected areas, it is the education of children that is the worst hit, as many schools have been destroyed due to fight between Maoists and security forces, says a report released by Save the Children, an international NGO working for the upliftment of under privileged children. Jairam Ramesh, minister of rural development released the report titled ‘Caught in Cros
As the Campa Cola compound in Mumbai’s upscale Worli area simmered for the last couple of days, with the supreme court on Wednesday putting a stay on razing of the illegally raised floors and finally putting a temporary lid on the scalding issue, what came to the fore were brazen apathy of the administration and lack of faith in rules among both the builders and the authorities of the tim
They did it again. In the still hot debris of the death by ambush of five Indian soldiers and a shrillness in the hostility, Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Manmohan Singh had a lukewarm coming together in the Big Apple but neither bit into the fruit of what both believe is a poisoned tree. With the now stale as a biscuit promise of happier days to come being the sole outcome of this tryst no
I have nothing against statues. They look nice and pigeons love them. But the one they are planning for Sardar Vallabhai Patel and making it the largest in the world baffles me. What is this thing Indian politician having about statues; they are constantly setting up folks on pedestals. ALSO READ: Who l
The Indian meteorological department (IMD) has been the object of ridicule for long. With a series of inaccurate predictions, including its failure to predict three droughts (2002, 2004 and 2009), the department’s reputation was in tatters. October 12, a black day for Odisha, changed all that, inadvertently becoming a red-letter day for the Met department. Often questioned for cr
As a journalist, you get to meet a lot of people. And there are some who leave an impression on your mind. Dr Nitish Sengupta, erstwhile chairman of the board of reconstruction for public sector enterprises (BRPSE) who died on Sunday, was one of those in my life. I had just started on the public sector enterprises (PSE/PSU) beat for the magazine in May this year and had no clue
The story goes that free passes for Sachin Tendulkar’s last Ranji match, largesse from Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda to his political clientele, have been freely traded for cash. Some went for Rs 10,000 apiece. Are you surprised therefore that the Lahli stadium emptied no sooner the master took just 7 balls to be bowled by a rookie called Mohit Sharma o
As secretary to the government of Arunachal Pradesh, Gaken Ete is holding charge of two departments: information technology and water resources and development. When he joined as the IT secretary in 2012, Ete meticulously planned the execution of e-governance and telecommunications projects. In the past, the IT department had run into trouble for allocating work of few e-governance projects to
The author is a government officer who prefers to remain anonymous. It is quite amusing to note that on one hand government policies are framed after much deliberation and that too after much passage of time, from the date such an idea emanates in certain minds to the date of issue of such a policy for implementation. On the other hand, after declaration of a polic
Us jaded media consumers can tell from a mile away when a star or star-pair is due to have a film released. As the stars acquiesce to promotional and PR tours, the interviews, general interest, red carpet-sightings, romantic rumours swirl toward a crescendo, and reach an enduring frenzy if the film is a success. So, we knew from afar that ‘Gravity’ was coming. I also began to sen
