It will still take Delhiites some time to assess the various costs – financial and otherwise -- of Commonwealth Games 2010, even though a lot of information has been trickling into public domain. According to a study by Housing and Land Rights Network, an NGO, at least Rs 30,000 crore have already been spent on creating infrastructure for the Games. From the decision to bi
While it is nobody’s case that an incident of the kind witnessed in Kolkata’s La Martiniere Boys’ School--in which a 13-year-old student Rouvanjit Rawla was reportedly driven to suicide after the principal caned him—be repeated elsewhere, should our schools completely do away with corporal punishment as is being suggested now? Let us not confuse corporal punishme
The ongoing spat between Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party has generated reactions ranging from a sense of political inevitability to a palpable anxiety that attends a marriage on the rocks. What is clear is that the Bihar chief minister gave up some of his initial advantage, in terms of spontaneous public support at least outside his state, when
The Bharatiya Janata Party, thanks to its ideology – whether you call it Hindutva or cultural nationalism – started out as untouchable for almost all other political parties. However, in the second half of the 1990s, several factors helped it on its way to power. It diluted its ideology, it had as its leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had some secular credentials, people were fed up w
Gujarat, led by a tech-savvy chief minister, is all set to introduce online voting in municipal polls in November. State election commissioner K C Kapoor says all measures are being taken to make online voting foolproof “with no chance of anyone hacking into the system or resorting to bogus voting”, according to an Indian Express
The government has selected a panel of 20 professionals to assist the GOI departments / ministries achieve their annual targets, a report in the Mint says. As reported the choice of panelists has been left to the ministries and the panelists are to be paid Rs 10000 a day as retainership.
With Bihar assembly elections due by the year-end, chief minister Nitish Kumar is making all attempts to project himself as an able administrator. He has been visiting every nook and cranny of the state, seeking endorsement of work that his government has done in the last four and a half years. There`s nothing wrong in that, but now his top bureaucrats too seem to have joined the campaign, maki
The Bombay High Court has ruled that fashion designers are eligible for income tax exemptions meant for artists. A division bench of Justices Dhananjay Chandrachud and JP Devadhar has ruled that fashion designers are eligible for tax exemptions, much like musicians, authors, actors and sportspersons. The bench concurred with the findings of the income tax appellate tribunal which had earlier a
Mercifully, the Jats who cut off water supply to Delhi in Murad Nagar of Ghaziabad district last Sunday, have relented and agreed to talk. They are demanding reservation in central government jobs under the “other backward class” category, apparently emboldened by the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan that led to the state government enacting law to provide five percent quota for them o
Now that the union cabinet has approved changes in the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act, it will soon be easy and swift to get a divorce on the ground of “irretrievable breakdown of marriage”. Undoubtedly, this is a progressive step and would save many from taking recourse to lies, needless harassment and delay because their spouses wouldn’t eithe
Close on the heels of the tragic Bhopal gas leak verdict has come the revelation that the Centre dropped a key clause in the Nuclear Liability Bill to benefit suppliers who could have been held accountable for wilful negligence. The move reportedly came after American suppliers mounted pressure to get deleted section 17 (b) which said that suppliers could be sued for a nuclear accident resultin
“A sentence of merely two years for those responsible for the world`s worst chemical disaster is outrageous. All those responsible for this disaster, including Warren Anderson, former chairman of Union Carbide, should stand trial in India and receive punishment that reflects the devastation and pain they have caused for thousands of people....
Much is being made out of $ 470 million that the Union Carbide paid as compensation for the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 that killed at least 15,000 people and caused grievous injury to over 500,000 others. It is being pointed out that this compensation amount means a paltry sum of Rs 12,410 to each victim. But that was in 1999, when the compensation amount was decided in an out-of-court
The central government-run Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti has reportedly ordered about 570 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) across the country to install busts of Rajiv Gandhi in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the rural schools scheme by honouring the seventh prime minister of India. Named after Jawahar Lal Nehru, who died long before the Navodaya scheme was started in 1986 by
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has cited prior international commitments to justify its decision to not send a Twenty20 team to participate in this year`s Asian Games in China. Consider a scenario where the BCCI were to choose between Indian cricket team`s participation in the Olympics and a tour to New Zealand. No medals for guessing the BCCI`s choice! The larger issu
A retired army general recently claimed that India did not really win the Kargil war. Lt General (retd) Kishen Pal, who headed the 15 Corps based in Srinagar at the time, told NDTV channel that India had failed to consolidate its tactical gains and therefore had actually lost the war with Pakistan. Pal said though India gained some tactical victories and regained the territory it had lost to th
Isn’t the environment ministry competent to decide which green areas need to be conserved and where mining can be allowed? Isn’t it the environment minister’s business to decide whether any proposed economic activity can prove detrimental to the country’s environmental interests? The intervention of the prime minister’s office in the ongoing tussle between the envi
About 33 percent civil services officers, who play the key role in governance, are not happy with their jobs and have thought of even quitting, according to a survey carried out by the government. If every third senior bureaucrat has a low-level of job satisfaction, that is indeed a cause for concern. These are some of the best brains, they cleared the tough and highly competitive civil service
Can Katrina Kaif look even half as appealing if she is forced to curb her natural vivacity for a screen role that appears to demand a vastly different persona? Did director Prakash Jha choose to cast her in order to compensate for the character she plays in Rajneeti? Unfortunately, that is not what the fuss is all about in the run-up to the release of the film. It emerges that the Congr
Social justice minister Mukul Wasnik has written to prime minister Manmohan Singh regarding preferential employment policies for SCs/STs in the private sector, reviving the debate on this issue. Affirmative action is required for creation of equality of opportunity for those who have remained underprivileged for centuries. However the form of affirmative action as currently prevalent an
