A few months back I found myself in Jagdalpur, 242 km from Chhattisgarh’s capital, in Maoist territory. Until then, and I am ashamed to admit this, I had never been beyond Raipur, the capital of the state of Chhattisgarh. So it felt good to make amends, meet dozens of people wedded to the ground, driving past some of the best plantations of sal in our country. Read ground repo
Shortly after we hit our first wedding anniversary, the questions started. First it was family, asking us for the euphemistic ‘good news’. Then, it was ‘just curious’, well-meaning friends: “When are you guys planning kids?” Soon, Facebook too jumped on the bandwagon, and started targetting me for maternity wear and baby product ads. To its intuitive algorith
Nitish Sengupta, a renowned economist and a career bureaucrat, is at present chairperson of the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE), which is mandated to examine cases of sick central public sector enterprises (PSEs) and recommend their revival or closure. The board is also mandated to monitor emerging sickness in PSEs. Out of 248 central PSEs, 67 have been ref
The month of May is very hot in most parts of India. This year, it has been unusually hot for the Indian banking and the IT services industry too. Leading Indian banks (ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, AXIS Bank etc) exposed by Cobrapost have been accused of serious violations of norms. IT companies involved in card payment processing services (ElectraCard Services, Enstage Inc) have been in news for com
Jugaad is originally a Punjabi term that is widely used across India. Jugaad is "good enough" or a "quick fix". Jugaad is functionality without optimality. Jugaad is one of those terms that has many meanings. It can be an apology. It can be an insult. It can be an act of surrender. It can be a frustrated acceptance. Jugaad is what my father calls "close enough for gover
The IT Act 2011 gives the government and its agencies multiple tools to address issues related to cyber security, online gambling, betting, international money laundering and financial fraud amongst many others. The government with its misplaced priorities has misused certain provisions to curb freedom of speech, remove politically inconvenient content and harass young netizens of India through
Hahahahahahaha….no revelation. Cricketers cheat. Big deal, not as if we didn’t know that! The circus has been in town for years. So why the howl of anguish and surprise that there is a new and sordid chapter being written in this saga? Do you really watch the IPL for skill and truth and the holy grail? Please. Get a life. The IPL is a set of performing seals doing just that
At 40, Arun Kumar Kori wears more than one hat. She is the only woman, and a dalit to boot, in the Akhilesh Yadav cabinet in Uttar Pradesh and runs the women welfare department — an important portfolio at a time when crime against women is such a raging national issue. She also has the culture portfolio. Having joined the Samajwadi Party at a young age, Kori contested the L
A week before India comes under the mandatory `review mechanism` at the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, two reports released on Wednesday tore into India`s preparedness to beat corruption. The two laws specifically mentioned that India doesn`t have laws on public procurement and addressing corruption in the private sector. “India has approximately 35
As a city, Delhi has a glorious past and seems set for a gloomy future. It is the present that’s in a bit of a flux. If you analyse the first master plan of the city, designed by the British, experts say you will find the city was developed on the lines of American cities of the 1960s and ’70s — sprawling roads and low-rise housing. And loads of greens.
The supreme court hauled the central bureau of investigation (CBI) over coals for letting the political executive dictate its probe report on the coal block allocation scam calling the investigating agency a “caged parrot” singing its master’s tune. “It pains us to see the CBI director accept that regular interaction between investigating officer and ministry officia
I had wished that the four-year undergraduate programme will not be implemented. But I had no basis for such expectation. Arun Jaitley of the BJP had expressed his fear in a speech that he delivered at a seminar on education policy last year where he asked us to be alert as the fresh attempts of the present government at opening up FDIs in the consumer market segment was definitely going to be
While plenty of variables are required to hook up with one another and go bust all together to set a political disaster in motion, almost none of these variables apply to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Machiavellian calculation: Doesn’t apply Simple arithmetic: Doesn’t apply Momentary failure of commonsense: Doesn’t a
Raymond W Baker is a despised figure in the tax haven countries. He is the founder and director of Washington-based think tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI), which has brought out many reports on the illicit money that flows from countries and is parked in 60-odd tax haven countries. His reports have created buzz around the world. Author of ‘Capita
Another child, a 3-year-old, was raped yesterday by a worker in Delhi. India has to face the fact like many other countries that it is a host to pedophiles. That men who assault children are not limited to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on TV or live only in America and the UK.That is a cinematic lie we have conveniently espoused and it has blinded us into believing it is not in our
Parliament worked for only half the time alloted to budget session this year compared to 2012 budget session. “Total productive time in Lok Sabha was 95 hours, i.e, only 49 percent of the scheduled time. This was significantly lower than the 2012 budget session, during which the productive time was 89 percent,” said a document prepared by PRS Legislative Research, a Delhi based thin
In 27 pages, and a (B) case later, writers Tarun Khanna, Aldo Musacchio and Rachna Tahiliani offered a setting, “to study the relationship between electoral politics and managerial performance in the largest state-owned company in the world: Indian Railways.” The case, “Indian Railways, Building a Permanent Legacy?” added to the halo that Lalu Prasad, then railwa
I am in Delhi to help my sister move house. It can be quite a pain, even if it is only two floors up in the same apartment block. But it seems that was the easy part. We have moved every darn thing from the smallest to the biggest and the lightest to the heaviest, but our phone, we are told, shall not budge. Because, MTNL, the sarkari phone company tells us, there are serious discrepancies in t
Most students have either proceeded on summer vacation or will be having holidays in a few weeks’ time. For school children, this is the time to unwind, learn and grow. For many of the college students, this can be a time for engagement with their own inner self and also with the larger society. Let me share some thoughts which might be useful to those who would like to
After unearthing leading private banks of the country, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank involvement in black money, Cobrapost editor Aniruddha Bahal did not sit idle. He went a step forward, this time investigating public sectors banks. What came out was shocking: many public sector banks were involved in money laundering, according to his sting operations. Edited ex
