A child preparing for a school exam the other day thought he’d save time and energy by simply asking me some questions. And I was pleased, as anyone would be who thought that children still believed adults had all the answers. “What is Archimedes’ Principle?”, he asked, and I realised all of a sudden that my education had consisted of a series of unconnected images that
Jairam Ramesh loves to hog the headlines and play to the gallery. This he did through his tenure as the environment and forests minister admirably and frequently without making an iota of difference to the pathetic watchdog’s job that the ministry has been doing. He is at it again, this time as the rural development minister. First he introduced a poorly drafted and self-defeating Land Ac
Almost one billion people around the globe go to bed hungry every night, but it is "excess nutrition" that kills more, according to world`s largest humanitarian organisation IFRC. "At least one billion people are undernourished while a staggering 1.5 billion people are overweight, including an increasing number in low and middle income countries," World Disasters Rep
Abusaleh Shariff does not mince words. The chief economist at the New Delhibased thinktank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) does not look for euphemisms when he criticises the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for ignoring the plight of the Muslim community. Shariff served as member-secretary to the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee to prepare a repor
Union law minister Salman Khurshid announced on September 18 that the government was planning to bring in reservations for Muslims in educational institutions and government jobs. He didn’t provide details but going by his disclosure that the Andhra Pradesh model was being considered, it may be safely assumed that the plan is to provide four percent reservations for the religious minority
The government has hiked the fees for undergraduate engineering courses at IITs from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, which will apply from 2013. The hike leaves out SC, ST and OBC students and graduates from the general category who are unable to afford it or choose to study further.Those being charged can pay the amount in easy instalments after they take up job offers. While the hike is a welco
Ministers in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh`s government have grown richer by an average Rs10 crore since the 2009 general elections, says a report by an election watchdog. Among the ministers who have gained the most in the past two years, Dr S Jagathrakshakan of DMK tops the list with an increase of Rs64.5 crore - from Rs5.9 crore in 2009 to Rs70 crore 2011, according to the analysis b
The handling of convicts such as Afzal Guru, Ajmal Kasab, Arif alias Ashfaq – the ugly faces of the attack on parliament, the Mumbai attack and the attack on Red Fort respectively, –symbolise the increasing sense of loss and despair over the judicial delivery system only delivering stillborns to the citizens. The judicial delivery system has repeatedly come under the
I have written earlier about how small towns are producing big innovations, how small institutions are producing big minds and even bigger hearts. Concern for social needs, whether of small industry or the informal sector, is not found universally among all social, professional or educational segments. But those who have it are often motivated by the urge to produce innovations for the larger s
Ladies Choice is terror, wrote Jean Paul Sartre – unless what he said was ‘Freedom is terror’, in which case you are free to choose what you like while we attack the problem from another angle. “We are at the crossroads,” wrote Woody Allen, “one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us choose correctly.”
The hockey finals between India and Pakistan for the Asian Championship one day after the thrilling 2-2 semi final draw was not telecast by either country even though they have pretended for over half a century that it is their national game. India won 4-2 in the end at the shootout while a large part the country and its eleven flannelled fools looked up at the English sky and hoped to win the
India slid to the 56th place in the World Economic Forum`s (WEF) global competiveness index this year, while last year it placed 51st. Switzerland is at the top of the list while India`s neighbour and competitor China is ranked 26. “The score difference between India and China has increased six-fold between 2006 and today, the gap expanding from less than 0.1 to 0.6
Every year since 1982, the ministry of women and child development has been promoting September 1-7 as the national nutrition week. But, what the nation witnessed on September 3, 2011, in an expose by the Times Now, were the tragic deaths of 11 new born infants, less than five days old, at the Kurnool government hospital in a space of 48 hours. Some of us may recall a similar tragedy that
National commission for scheduled castes (NCSC) chairman P L Punia has always been finding himself on wrong side of the Mayawati government. There is history behind it. Punia served as a close confidante for the feisty UP chief minister as a bureaucrat. But the parting of her company was bitter. When Mayawati tried to put blame on him for the Taj corridor scandal, Pu
A day before the Cabinet took up the National Sports (Development) Bill, 2011 (“Bill”) for consideration, a reputed astrology site read: “As per the prasna chart, Sun which indicates Government, is in its own sign Leo. This signifies that the Government would like to pass the Sports Bill 2011 to bring Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) under scanner. Jupiter
The spate of scams that hit the body politic during the last few months and the startling public disclosures from the Radia tapes had already made discussions on corruption the most favourite national pastime. Now, Anna Hazare’s fast, the constitution of the Lokpal bill drafting committee and the surge of popular support have firmly focused the spotlight on the issue of corrupti
So long as a nation has a death penalty somebody will hang. But whether justice is served is the question. The eight-week stay given by the Madras high court to the three convicted killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who were scheduled to meet the hangman on September 9 underscores the flaw in a judicial system that creates so wide a gap between the crime and the punishment that
Australia`s second-largest city Melbourne has been rated the world`s best city to live in, and India`s Mumbai is one of the worst, according to a new survey. In the survey of 140 cities around the globe, India’s financial capital Mumbai was ranked 116. In 2010, Mumbai was ranked 117 while Delhi was 113. Delhi did not find a position in the Economic Intelligence Unit`s new
Capgemini provides tailored solutions to leading public sector organisations in India and the rest of the world. It supports the public sector with a skilled approach in a number of key areas of expertise, including tax, public security, healthcare, border management and local and regional government. Kishor Chitale, head of India local business services at Capgemini India, spo
What made Pranab Mukherjee, the Congress’ most politically savvy and sensitive leader, to dismiss Team Anna so disdainfully Wednesday night? What made him go back on all his and his government’s previous assurances on the Lokpal bill and also dismiss Anna’s fast as none of his or his government’s business? The answer clearly lies in the views expressed by
