An eminent academician and administrator, Dr SS Mantha has been at the forefront of bringing in radical changes at the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). In an interaction with Pragya Gupta, he tells how India can improve its gross enrolment ratio and the crucial role technology plays in helping the AICTE tackle corruption and lack of transparency. Excerpts:
Much is being made out of Rohit Kumar Yadav`s ascent to presidentship of St Stephen`s College Union - Students Union Society, as it is described within the community. Much should be. For those tuning in late, Mr Yadav is the son of a gardner in the College - the first time since 1881 that a Group D (described as `Class IV` by the Times of India this morning) pa
A Padma Shri award-winning theatre director, actress and impresario, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry is also a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee. Her recent directorial work was License – The Untitled Saga. She has also directed Ariel Dorfman’s Nachiketa Liberetto with the Opera Circus in London. Since 1990, Mansingh Chowdhry has been teaching at the Department of Indian Theatre in Panjab Univ
The board of control for cricket in India (BCCI) has come a long way from being a governing body of all cricket in India to analysing the inner minds of the cricketers – psychoanalysing them for every other failure or success. The board officials seem to have done and known it all. After the debacle against England in the ongoing series, the BCCI has come out with its own
The back-to-back visits by the US secretaries of state and defence have set the ball rolling for prime minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming trip to Washington. The meetings with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have also set the tone for the government’s engagement with the United States. On a swathe of issues from intellectual property rights (IPR) to defence, the Modi government has made i
There’s so much denial around Narendra Modi in the media that we should be glad his opponents concede he exists in flesh and blood! It’s been nearly 13 years since Modi took political executive office. Not for a day in these years, till about six months ago, could the so-called national media associate anything good with him. Modi was the devil incarnate, a rabid righ
From an item girl to her new avatar as a politician, Rakhi Sawant has courted many controversies. In an interview with Governance Now, she speaks about a recent heated exchange with Maharashtra home minister RR Patil, her agenda as a politician and why she joined the Republican Party of India. What prompted you to join politics? Sometimes you are destined
The Narendra Modi government has set an ambitious target of `58,425 crore for disinvestment in 2014-15. Disinvestment secretary Ravi Mathur, who has the responsibility to earn the largest chunk of revenue for the government, is, however, confident of meeting the target. In an interview with Jasleen Kaur, the 1979-batch Rajasthan cadre officer explains why How soon can the
Two reports in 42 days in two newspapers belonging to the same group haven’t helped the civil aviation ministry dismantle the billboards that are obstructing Air India’s Boeing 777 long-haul flights take off from Mumbai airport without huge losses. On June 26 the Hindustan Times put out a bizarre story – of Air India losing Rs 100 crore annually on its flights t
It is yet to be fully appreciated that the key difference with the past has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s willingness to act rather than just petition, request or react. At Fortaleza, India agreed to the New Development Bank being located in Shanghai, recognizing the largely symbolic nature of that decision -- to secure an Indian head to shape the rules that really m
TCA Anant, secretary, ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI), explains how data is produced and processed in India, and the role technology plays in it. Excerpts from an interview with Shivangi Narayan: Data collection in India has mostly been a paper-pen process. How much technology is in use now? In general we have been automating small and
In 2009, when the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) extended its services to Noida city, it brought relief for many people. A respite from the never-ending traffic jams, hours of waiting at bus stops or arguing with autorickshaw drivers, who did not have permit to enter the city and thought it was their right to charge exorbitantly. A clean, punctual and efficien
How do you react to the decision by the GEAC to approve field trial of GM crops, particularly since the matter is still pending at the supreme court? The GEAC comes across as a rubber stamp for the industry as it claims to have approved 60 of the 70 pending applications. This comes at a time when the issue around the safety of open air field trials is debated in the supr
The second political revolution – that of the Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP – in the history of democratic India seems to have fizzled out. The party has finally announced that it would not contest the assembly elections in Haryana, Maharasahtra, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand – all due in the next few months, with Haryana going to polls sometime in September-October. To pu
Staggering rates of poverty and high inequality threaten the gains in human development in South Asia. To protect these gains and ensure that all people benefit from the region’s growth, UNDP’s annual Human Development Report, released today in Tokyo, shows that the combination of social protection floors, universal basic services, full employment and programmes that specifically ad
Mornings for me are almost always rushed – the half-an-hour waking up session with the daughter, packing her lunch box, filling the water bottle and helping her get ready before rushing out to make it in time for the school bus. Today was even more rushed. Husband and I had to be in time for her assembly. We made it in record time – beating even her school bus to the school
Several big investment projects got stuck in the decision-making lull in the last two years of the UPA administration. The situation got grimmer after 2G and coal scam revelations. This, in effect, led to formation of a project monitoring group (PMG) under the cabinet secretariat to expedite project implementation, followed by the electronic cabinet committee on investment (eCCI). In an interac
Being an unabashed admirer of Dilip Kumar, it is quite difficult for me to cast a critical eye at his work. Though limited in my understanding of cinema, Dilip Kumar remains the ultimate superstar; his dialogue delivery and mannerism still hold me in trance. My training as a journalist dissuades me to get overawed by any personality, particularly with those in power. But this training failed wh
A sense of déjà vu hit hard while reading a news report on Infosys being sued in the US. Infosys is an equal opportunity employer: that was the ‘strong’ defence offered by the Indian multinational giant, taken to a US district court for allegedly discriminating against US citizens who did not know Hindi. The former employees have alleged they were
The ongoing crisis in Iraq posed the first serious external test for the NDA government. New Delhi’s handling of the rescue and evacuation effort has been commendable. Yet the government needs to look beyond the immediate crisis. In particular, it should reconsider some fundamental assumptions that have long underpinned India’s response to instability in West Asia. Such an exercise
