The planning commission, despite the hue and cry from all quarters, stuck to it guns on the recently released poverty figures. While there has been a revision of the poverty bar, it has to be considered that the methodology and the statistics it uses in the calculation of the figure is incorrect, to put it mildly. The plan panel admitted that inequality rose after 2004-05, albeith "
Gurgaon, which aspires to be a modern, cosmopolitan city has had its image sullied by the recent gangarape of a young woman. In an interview with Times of India, the deputy commissioner of police, Gurgaon (east) Maheshwar Dayal says that the city is safe for women and the issue has been blown out of proportion. The city police, after the crime occurred, reportedly advised women to
After much humiliation at the hands of the whimsical Mamata Banerjee and the UPA government held hostage by Trinamool support, railway minister Dinesh Trivedi had to quit over the budget he presented last week. The fare hikes he had proposed did not go down well with Banerjee. The Trinamool minister in the union cabinet was attacked by party colleagues just as he was flayed by the opposition. H
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had refused a ticket to known criminal D P Yadav and the spinmeisters insisted that the party was trying to break away from the image of its previous stint at the helm as being a `gundaraj`. At the same time, Yadav and co maintained that the `gundaraj` eithet was a creation of those opposed to the party. However, Akhilesh`s cabine
Gurgaon police have asked women to stay indoors at home after 8 pm in order to curb the incidences of rape in the city which have risen recently. While on the face of it, the curfew may be in the interest of self-preservation of women, it is a regressive move. The move suggests that the city streets can`t be made safe for women and they have no right to public space after a certain time. The ci
A Governance Now reader has raised a valid point. About party tickets to Rajya Sabha being considered for defeated political heavyweights in the recently-held elections to the state assemblies. Such people are rehabilitated by giving them a place in the Upper House. They stand defeated in direct elections but are lapped up by their politician pals for a safe landing—the Rajya Sabha. Such
Narendra Kumar, a young IPS officer posted in Madhya Pradesh`s Morena district, was mowed down by a tractor carrying illegally quarried stones as he tried to stop it. It is being alleged that the killing was at the behest of the mining mafia. The spread of the mining mafia is now almot complete. From Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh in the south to Uttarakhand in the north, from Rajasthan in the west
The assembly elections 2012 returned the third consecutive decisive mandate in Uttra Pradesh. Mayawati`s Bahujan Samaj Party had been voted into power with simple majority in 2002 and 2007, while this year the voters have given Mulayam Singh Yadav`s Samajwadi Party the power to rule on its own. The era of political combines like BSP-BJP alliance of the mid `90s seems to have passed
Economic growth is always touted as a government`s most significant achievment. But are incumbents really able to ride the GDP wave? Columnist Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar forwarded a theory (based on a Economic Times study) recently that holds that 63 percent of incumbents in the last decade were voted back to power because of high economic growth during their tenure. Punjab seems to u
The chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi believes that the governance of polls needs only a strengthening of the existing model code of conduct. He said that the code did not need a statutory backing. Instead, it needed some "fine-tuning" to be more effective in the present context. Keeping the election code a matter of good faith has proved effective so far, as evide
Road safety and traffic violations will now cost you penalties upto five times higher than earlier. While there is a genuine need to have strong deterrents to such violations, are hiked fines the way to go? With the fines going up, violators are more likely to grease palms of corrupt cops to avoid having to pay a heavier fine. It could compel hitherto upright citizens to engage in bribe
Even before it could take a decision on summoning the three former ministers found watching pornographic video clippings on a mobile phone, the legislative assembly committee — constituted by Speaker KG Bopaiah to probe the episode — has begun the process of grilling representatives of television channels for telecasting the damning footage. The questions ranged from “
The centre has ordered the central bureau of investigation to probe alleged Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) violations by four NGOs involved in the Kudankulam protests. While NGOs need to respect the law of the land, especially with respect to their funding, the government ordering such a visible crackdown on the organisations seems retaliatory and akin to bullying of the voluntary
India’s case against the removal of Dow Chemicals as the sponsor of the London Olympics 2012 got strengthened after the latest Wikileaks reports that revealed that it used US-based intelligence firm Stratfor to keep tabs on activities of Bhopal gas tragedy activists. The union sports ministry has done well to ask the International Olympics committee president Jacques Rogge to remove Dow C
The Noida police goofed up big time when they let out personal details of a minor gang-rape victim during a press conference. The minor girl, a class 10 student in Noida, was gang-raped in a car by five of her neighbours on February 24. The insensitive cops went a step further and made an assessment of her character with a statement that “she was willingly drinking vodka” with the b
The poser before the supreme court is to decide if homosexuality is unnatural. The LGBTQ rights activists say it is not citing examples from both human history and natural world around us in which members of many mammalian species (including simians, our closest animal relatives) have exhibited homosexual behaviour. Then, there is our own history to contend with. Graeco-Roman mythology, Hindu m
The government wants to wean cadres away from the maoists with cash lures. Arms surrender will get them anything between Rs 3-5 lakh. According to a report in The Telegraph, the reward a surrendering personnel of the banned outfit carries on his/her head will got to him/her. Now, the surrender-cum-rehabilitation policies of states have always carried cash rewards — in Jharkhand a
The government is reportedly considering a move to grant legal status to the model code of conduct (MCC) for electioneering. MCC has been in news of late after two central ministers got election commission notice for alleged violations of the code. An argument has been made out that making MCC legal will give it teeth, and politicians will think twice before breaking it. On the other hand, the
SpiceJet pilot Utprabh Tiwari deplaned a woman with cerebral palsy from a Goa-bound flight deciding all by himself that the woman couldn`t fly alone. Ironically, Jeeja Ghosh, a 42-year-old teacher at the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, was on her way to a conference on mainstreaming t
West Bengal chief minister is out to paint Kolkata blue — all government buildings, flyovers, roadside railings and taxis will be painted in the "colour of the sky". Why? Because, according to the state urban development minister Farhan Hakim, the motto of the government is `the sky is the limit`. Romantic ideals aside, doesn`t the move smack of limitless arrogance
