Rekha, Muzaffar Ali`s immortal Umrao Jaan, has finally won the Padma Shri. The recognition may have come 29 years after her arguably most memorable screen performance, but she has joined a truly illustrious group. Sahir Ludhianvi, Hindustani cinema`s social conscience and greatest poet, is a member. So are a few legends of screen acting, including Balraj Sahni and Suchitra Sen, as is the melodi
In course of an argument, UP chief minister Mayawati`s counsel in the supreme court contested that the erection of her statues in Lucknow and Noida was part of Mayawati`s political project to empower marginalised social sections through symbols. This argument implied that despite her four stints as the chief minister of the country`s most populous state, Mayawati still considered symbolism as a
Prof. Raman Sukumar is not one of the salesman conservationists that you meet every other day trying to pitch themselves up rather than the wildlife they pretend to conserve. Yet, he is the most respected, most popular, most distinguished, and if one may say, the most saleable face of wildlife conservation in India and Asia – considering that Asian wildlife conservation needs, and can c
Sixty years into the Republic, India’s agriculture sector is serving up some rather unpalatable facts: we have not eliminated hunger; we are not self-sufficient in food; we have not bettered farm incomes. On the other hand, we have bankrupted our natural resources and created a system which is ecologically and economically unsustainable. The absence of famine has not transl
In an exclusive interview with Governance Now`s Shivani Chaturvedi, Union Minister for Rural Development Dr C P Joshi talks about his efforts to make the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) more effective. Strangely, he is persisting with a system that makes sarpanchs both the judge and the jury. The sarpanchs are the ones who get the NREGA projects executed in the
VP wants intelligence agencies accountable to the legislature........ Here we produce the speech he gave at the RN Kao Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on January 19. "I am honoured to be invited today to deliver this lecture to commemorate an iconic personality who dedicated his life to the service of the Republic and created structures deemed essential for the securit
The release of this inaugural issue of Governance Now, on the completion of sixty years of the Republic of India, naturally raises the obvious question as to what have been the achievements, or failures, of our republic in these sixty years. This logically leads to the still deeper question that comes to the mind, viz, did India become a republic only on the adoption of the constitution which d
Good politics is bad for economics, and this is true of fertiliser subsidy. Driven by the political compulsion, fertiliser subsidy has come under severe criticism from all quarters. The IIM Ahmedabad carried out a study which shows that fertiliser subsidy has increased significantly since 1991. It finds huge disparity in distribution of subsidy in different states. The UPA
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister speaks about the Maoist menace..... In an exclusive interview with Governance Now Deputy Editor Prasanna Mohanty, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh says the Maoist menace can be tackled by the judicious use of force and development work. Below are some excerpts on key issues: Q: Why is the administration finding it so tou
