As far as WhatsApp jokes go, this one’s the best for me so far. A caller from US asks an Indian what was this talk of ‘monkey bath’ that US president Barack Obama was supposed to have with prime minister Narendra Modi during the former’s visit to India. Puzzled, the Indian realised it was ‘Mann ki Baat’ that his brother-from-another-mother was
As the curtains come down of one of the best Republic Days ceremonials in 65 years, focus shifts to the way forwards. Prime minister Modi’s promises of large scale reforms to make ‘doing business’ in India simple alongside making governance transparent & predictable have been welcomed by Obama and the America Inc. contingent, being wooed by Modi to buy-in into the ‘M
In less than 15 months Delhi is going to vote again. During the last elections in December 2013, the national capital hogged all the limelight of the world as it was a different battle. The battle fought on rules set by one man and a party, fresh off the people’s imagination. Arvind Kejriwal, an outsider, a non-politician, someone representing civil society and crusader aga
The internet today is used by 3 billion people, or roughly 40 percent of the world’s population. While it was used by less than 1 percent of the world’s population in 1995, the first billion was reached in 2005, the second in 2010, and the third billion in 2014. And it has been growing consistently at 8-10 percent over the last two years. Many countries have understoo
The scrapping of the 65 year old planning commission is an astute political recognition of the impatience of half the population, which is also below 25 years of age, with frameworks, policies and politics that have long lost their relevance. The failure of ‘planning’, as we defined it, is apparent even to a non-economist. China has raised per capita incomes to three
The government of India is a closed shop; its bureaucracy is recruited in its youth and rises in the hierarchy in order of seniority. One exception to this rule is the chief economic advisor, who is sometimes a professional economist who has made his name outside. Arun Jaitley has recently recruited Arvind Subramaniam from Peterson Institute in Washington. This is laudable both because Arvind i
When 24 out of the 45 Bharat Ratnas awarded till date belong to a single community (read brahmins), it indicates a problem. It indicates how in a country where diversity is such that the language changes every 20 kilometres, it is only a single community capable of producing more than 50 percent of the worthy Indians. The problem thus becomes two-pronged. Is it that in a highly d
A few months ago, prime minister Narendra Modi declared in his Independence Day speech the new government’s intentions to replace the existing commission with one more in sync with the socio-economic realities of the country. This declaration only served to formalise what a chain of events had been working up to: earlier this year, for the first time since it was set up in 1950, the commi
Here are the bald facts. In Hyderabad, Mili Srivastava had ordered a book from Flipkart, the e-commerce giant, and it arrived before it was due. She was away from home when she received an SMS with the delivery boy’s details and asked her domestic help to take the delivery. The delivery boy was not the same as the one whose details had been sent to her phone. He attempted to rape the
With two ordinances on Monday, the new government has achieved a record of sorts: there have been nine ordinances so far in about seven months. The ordinance route is emerging as the instrument of the Modi model of governance. The government in fact began the business with an ordinance – amending the TRAI law so that its former chairman Nripendra Mishra can be made principal secretary to
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India campaign has the potential to be one of the most transformative programmes in recent times. It includes creation of ICT infrastructure like high-speed internet at gram panchayat level, on-demand availability of government services like health, education, and digital empowerment of citizens. The Digital India vision is in sync wit
Adjectives were flying high inside the seat of power and with plenty of import and meanings. The parliament on Thursday witnessed an intelligent play of words and politics of different opinions. While the opposition parties thought the government was adamant on not letting Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement on conversion issue, the government called the opposition arrogant for holdin
There are black days in history. Opaque and beyond the pale of human understanding. We know it is not a perfect world and we are imperfect people and, therefore, we do imperfect things. But these black days are not about imperfection. They fall so deep into the dark of the abyss within us and without that they take us back to the days of savagery and tell us that though the years and centuries
The human race (that means you) does incredibly stupid things. A friend of mine is stuck in India because his passport has expired. You nitwit, didn’t you see the date? How do you travel without checking your passport? Very easily. Like him, there are thousands every day caught in their own ignorance. We even lose the document. Every time I read in the classifieds co
I had been racking my brain all day today trying to pinpoint what exactly led to the tragic Uber cab incident in which a professional was raped by the driver of the cab she had hired through the aggregator. I made hectic calls to Meru, Mega and Easy cabs trying to find out, both as a concerned woman passenger and a curious journalist, what their safety policies are. In between I indulged in cur
It must be wonderful to sit behind a counter and accept and reject applications made to your country by people who want to go there and you don`t particularly want them to come. The power and the glory, for a brief shining moment I am a better man than you, Gunga Din. I am so pleased that Mr Modi has given the citizens of 53 countries the okay to pop in to India and get a visa on
The Subramanian Panel has made some path-breaking recommendations, but, unfortunately, has not followed the sound dictum of ‘maximum governance, minimum government’, and the work of new regulator should draw upon those recommendations. For example, recognise the potential of the digital transformation by providing clarity on the facts in resolving the inherent tensio
The world is now in an era where warfare will be asymmetric in nature and will be conducted using non-traditional means. Such means include, but are not limited to, cyberwarfare, economic warfare, food security warfare, water warfare, and information and social media warfare. Each of them can severely impact the efficacy of the traditional military capability. Each requires a different kind of
“Jo Kaha So Kiya (we did what we promised).” That is the slogan on posters prominently bearing the picture of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal. These are signs of the poll fever which is set to return to the national capital in a virulent form. While driving from Ghaziabad to Delhi one gets slightly distracted by such tall claims. What did he exactly do in
One of the most recurring motifs in the legal academy is the potential of travesty inherent in judicial systems. The prison statistic released by the national crime records bureau (NCRB) for 2013 bears solemn testimony to this fact. India is still governed by the Prisons Act of 1894 in which imprisonment seems to be the raison d’etre of the penal system. With a peculiar mix of colonial la
