NHAI chairman Raghav Chandra talks about steps taken by the highway authority to speed up highway construction projects, improve maintenance of highways and make them safer and more user friendly. Excerpts from an interview with Yogesh Vajpeyi. How much highway construction was done last year and what are the plans for this fiscal? We have
Are you aware of the MIT study which projects acute water stress in India 35 years from now? Why wait for 35 years? Even now 11 states are facing a water emergency. It is a crisis. And we should consider ourselves lucky if we survive till 2050. It is a terrifying situation. Where is it more severe? Almost ent
Bhumata Brigade founder Trupti Desai, sporting a short haircut and wearing a Nehru jacket, led a group of women into the sanctum sanctorum of Maharashtra’s Shani Shingnapur temple, dramatically ending a 400-year-old ban on the entry of women. Desai talks about her firebrand activism that has caught the imagination of people. Are you crusading against gender divide
A dancer, choreographer, art administrator, organiser of Delhi Art International Festival and a writer with a mission, Pratibha Prahlad, was honoured with Padma Shri this year. In conversation with Geeta Sahai, she talks about the importance of cultural diplomacy, managing cultural scenario and encouraging the promotion of arts and art forms. She also candidly shares notes
Dehradun is among 23 cities which have been asked to resubmit their proposal for the smart city project by the ministry of urban development. The Uttarakhand government carried out an opinion poll to get public feedback, which would help in revising its proposal. As per reports, approximately 26,000 votes were received by the authorities. Dr R Meenakshi Sundaram, IAS, the nodal officer of t
After the violent Jat agitation held earlier this year, the Haryana government agreed to give 10% reservation to the community in special backward class category. However, the Jats aren’t satisfied with this development at all. The Akhil Bhartiya Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (ABJASS) has recently threatened the government to fulfil their demands of reservation under OBC category or witn
Dinesh Thakur, 48, first hit headlines in May 2013, when his campaign against his former employer Ranbaxy’s unsafe practices and lax quality control in its US facilities concluded successfully: the drug-maker was forced to pay $500 million to the authorities. Thakur, as the whistleblower in the case, received $48.6 million. He has since turned his energies to researching and campaigni
AAP’s original concept of mohalla sabha has undergone some changes this year. Atishi Marlena, who is advisor to the deputy CM and is spearheading the initiative, talks about the emergence of a new brand of grassroot politics and reaching out to people through mohallas across the city. How will the exercise of people’s participation be di
An estimated half of India’s 1.2 billion people do not have access to toilets, forcing them to defecate in the open. Ram Kripal Yadav, minister of state for drinking water and sanitation talks about the challenges as well as the efforts to turn India into an open defecation-free country. What is being done for half of India which does not
In 1992, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Mexico City as the world’s most polluted city. After that, the Mexican government enforced stringent pollution control measures. Two decades on, it is still struggling to invent and reinvent policies to decrease vehicular and industrial pollution. In 2014, WHO described Delhi as the most polluted city in the world. In an email conv
Jehangir Khan is the director of Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) and the UN Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT) in the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) in the UN Secretariat. The plan of action (PoA) that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon submitted to member states has been developed through the CTITF. Khan spoke to Shreerupa Mitra-Jha on the recently-held Geneva confer
How is your organisation trying to help the riot victims of Muzaffarnagar? The riots have taught us the importance of building ‘sadbhavana’, goodwill, among the communities. It has shaken all of us out of stupor and taught us that we need to remain vigilant against the trouble mongers among us. Sporadic instances of small issues snowballing into commu
Why has nobody been punished for the Muzaffarnagar riots so far? The most apparent reason for the accused walking free after all the witnesses turned hostile in four of the cases so far is the weak prosecution. The officer appointed by the UP government to press cases against the accused, who had been identified by the survivors, was negligent in discharging his
In 2006, a group of cultural activists got together and collected contributions from the people of Gorakhpur to hold a film festival. It was quite different from regular film festivals as it refused corporate or government support or screen only those films which were politically correct. Soon, the initiative, called Cinema of Resistance (CoR), grew roots in more than 15 ci
In 2014, the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation (ILO) set foot in Odisha to guide the state in ensuring and extending basic guarantees of income and health to the poor and the most vulnerable through its joint UN project, ‘Social Protection Floor’ (SPF). Odisha became the testing ground for SPF which links exclusion and poverty, and leaves it to a country to
Governance Now got in touch with Gurpreet Singh alias Santa and Prabhpreet Singh alias Banta, who have been living up to their stage names for 18 years. Sick of being held responsible for bringing disrespect to the community, the duo has now decided to change their names to Jugli and Shugli. When and how did you become popular as Santa and Banta?
At the age of 82, Ela Bhatt remains as active as she was decades ago when she launched a remarkable trade union of poor women, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), in Ahmedabad and thus pioneered a unique grassroots movement. Bhatt, a Gandhian, has served in various capacities – as a nominated MP, as a member of the planning commission and on a number of international organ
Close to the World Cultural Festival organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living (AoL), purportedly, causing damage to the flood plain of river Yamuna in Delhi, the centre is mulling changes in the environmental laws to make such vandalism unaffordable. The proposed changes in the law would scale up the fines to a minimum of Rs 5 crore as against Rs 1 lakh. Will this act as a de
How would you describe the last one year in terms of rolling out e-governance services and various ICT interventions in Delhi? The government of national capital territory of Delhi (GNCTD) intends to convert all services including internal functioning on the e-platform in a time-bound manner. As part of the e-governance initiatives for G2C and G2B, free Wi-Fi is
Can you explain the cash transfer system under NFSA, 2013? The law categorises beneficiaries as priority households and antyodaya anna yojana (AAY) families. The AAY families (the poorest of the poor) get 35 kg of ration. Otherwise, it is 5 kg per person. We are giving two options to the states. One, cash transfer; and second, the states can chose to install point of sa
