Lavasa corporation limited (LCL) cannot undertake any construction activity, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has said in a report submitted to the Bombay high court. In a 74-page report submitted on Monday, MoEF has said that the construction by LCL is ‘unauthorised, in violation of the three environmental impact assessment (EIA) notifications and is also environmentally da
Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal is a man on the mission. Apart from bringing a change in the state of education, he also aims to increase enrolment of children in schools. And it seems it is already working. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2010, prepared by the NGO Pratham and published last week, shows an increase in school enrolment figures. But it also highlights
The other day I was in the office of Delhi’s lieutenant governor (LG). I was talking to an officer – one of the most honest and efficient in the current lot serving the Delhi government – about the loopholes in the administrative mechanism and the initiatives LG has taken to fix the same. The focus of the talk shifted to the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Even after five years in schools, close to half of children in class five are not even at the level expected of them after two years in school. Close to 50 percent of class five children could not read a class two level text, says annual report on the state of education in the country. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2010, prepared by the NGO Pratham, conducted surve
Why is India not able to take care of its poor like most other countries who are neither great democracies nor economic powers or the military power that we boast of? The new economic policy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation has done wonders for the moneyed class but for the vast majority of poor, now intended to be covered under
Surendra Mohan, socialist thinker and leader, was a unique repository of political history and knowledge. He was a keen observer of the gradual distortions that have seized contemporary politics. What made him unique was that he was unsparing in exposing the hypocrisy and chicanery of his old socialist colleagues when it came to the crunch. On December 16, I met him to get his
The Indian tiger`s roar wil drown out the Chinese dragon`s in 2012, if the latest forecast by the World Bank is anything to go by. The Bank predicts a higher growth for India vis-a-vis its neigbour in its economic outlook report, 2011 released on Thursday. China`s growth will lose steam in 2012, according to the Washington based international bank. “India will grow at 8.7 percent
Delhi Police is on way to giving Scotland Yard a run for its money. Or, is it? At least, the alacrity with which it made an incident of road rage in which a café manager was crushed to death by a Jet Airways pilot on Tuesday – an open and shut case, makes it appear so. The pilot’s car ran over the victim as he drove away after a heated argument following over
Recently, Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit proposed a way to get homeless children off the streets. She had been on a visit to Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar, Orissa. The institute run by Achyutananda Samanta, an entrepreneur, houses over 12,000 homeless children from the state`s 30 districts. The children cook their own food, have been taught to stitch their own uniform
India’s healthcare structure is best summed as inadequate and it eludes poorest of its citizen, says human rights activist and paediatrician Dr. Binayak Sen in an article in the Lancet journal, now jailed on the charge of sedition. “In India, we have gross inequity in health-care delivery, Sen wrote in the medical journal titled ‘Securing the right to health for
When I was at school, evenings always meant playtime, at the community park playground. Only when there was a local football orcricket tournament were we kids shooed away from the grounds. Even then the colony`s bylanes or someone`s courtyard were a tailormade substitute. But today, many children, my seven-year-old niece included, stay indoors. There is a dearth of community space, play
Many a time I have been asked whether women are allowed in mosques and whether they can pray like their male counterparts. The fact is that there is no verse in the Holy Quran that prohibits women from praying in mosques. Neither is there any authentic Hadith (anecdotes of Prophet Muhammad) on the same. In fact, there are various Hadith which prove that Islam allows women to pra
Pace of development in India is coming at a cost - to its forest and the people whose survival depends on it. These are people who live in the fringes of the society and the much-touted development has hardly touched their lives. And quite understandably they feel let down. As a result, they oppose the model of development which we celebrate. The indigenous people and the tribals are thus locke
China has proved it once more that it is always a step ahead of India. This time, the leap is in the healthcare sector. Recently, Chinese legislators were allowed to grill the ministers on issues of public hospitals’ reform and the session was made public through the Xinhua news agency. This was least expected of the communist China, which is facing problems in the healthcare not
Trudging through the treacherous, pock-marked road winding amidst the majestic Aravalli ranges, our ramshackle Tata Sumo took about three hours to reach Madri, a picturesque village in the Tribal Udaipur district of Rajasthan. Setting out from Udaipur we had travelled to this far flung region to meet Jagdish Meena, the sarpanch of Madri panchayat of Jhdol block, 50 km from the city.
