The pre-monsoon shower pitter-pattered against the car window as I waited at the traffic signal, eager for the light to turn green and the bottleneck to ease up. I had called up Mahasweta Devi, the legendary activist, writer and Magsaysay award winner, the previous day and she had given a green signal for an interview. Like the traffic stuck in the rain at the time, most Indians shy awa
Governance has existed in various forms since the dawn of civilisation coercing mankind to develop and implement effective mechanisms for facilitating the needs of citizens, through efficient administrative policies and practices. Governance is central to economic growth and prosperity, and to this day, sovereign nations, big and small, strive to evolve efficient governance mechanisms.
Most of India’s rural population and much of its urban population live and work in the informal sector. As the government cannot provide quality healthcare free of charge across the informal sector, and is extremely challenged in basing subsidies on effective means-testing, most people in the informal sector pay for healthcare at the point of service. Many delay or avoid healthcare due to
In 2009, she raised more than the proverbial eyebrows when she threw a punch way above her weight, jumping from the pin-striped corporate boardroom she used to move around in to the heat and tumble of politics. She fielded herself against Milind Deora of the Congress and Mohan Rawale of the Shiv Sena, the field being the South Mumbai parliamentary constituency. The well-known David taking o
The harsh reality of what actually goes into the plates of lakhs of children across the country in the name of midday meals have come out with a full, ghastly force in Chapra, in Bihar’s Saran district. While the odd death or two almost regularly in faraway villages and towns hardly ever make it to the leading news packet, this incident, with the death toll now reaching 21, and many more
Anyway you look at it, that was not a smart remark, Mr Modi, and your comparison sucked. They say smart people say and do the stupidest things. I don’t know you and have always held that I’d like to actually find out what you stand for and why people who love you do so unconditionally and are ready to defend you despite anything to the contrary. But I have searched for quotes t
It is 7th July and that last hour of the day when a red sun quietly prepares to leave for home. It’s raining cats, dogs and squirrels. Friends Santa Singh and Banta Singh are in their inaugural edition Maruti 800, which in its forced afterlife has acquired the colour of rust and traded its ignition for a mind of its own. Nobody but it knows when to start and conk out. It is on today.
This is for the first time in the history of industrial economic development that green business (blue economy), which looks at both biological and non-biological feedback system to be sustainable (cradle-to-cradle approach compatible with industrial ecology framework), seems to be doing much better than linear, ‘take, make, faink (dispose)’ economy. Over the last five years, circul
With the entry of business groups and politcians with money, the education sector has become a core of profit maximisation in the recent years, a new report released by the Voluntary Action Network of India (VANI), an NGO says. The report, titled `Status of the Voluntary Sector in India`, notes that educational institutes, registered under the Societies Registration Act or Sectio
There are two events which have occupied the attention of the nation of late. In both cases, I felt we have not focused on the real issues. Something that I feel most concerned about in the coal block scam is that the concept of checks and balances is missing. Why do we have a series of people at all as the checks of the system? The assumption is that if someone makes a mistake somebody
When LK Advani dropped a bomb in Delhi by resigning from three key forums of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on June 10 and the party went into a huddle, a key party functionary, known for his reputation as the troubleshooter, flew in from Hyderabad to meet the sulking leader. P Muralidhar Rao, recently made the national general secretary of the party, has travelled with Advani during man
The affidavit filed by the central government before the supreme court regarding autonomy of the central bureau of investigation (CBI) and the chargesheet filed by CBI in the infamous railway board recruitment scandal stand at opposite poles. The centre, in its affidavit before the supreme court, vows to take a string of measures to make CBI autonomous in this functioning by ens
Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh has been facing flak over a recent India-UAE agreement, allowing each other’s airlines to offer 36,670 seats a week, up from 13,300. Critics say this will benefit only Jet Airways because the deal comes right at a time when Abu Dhabi’s flag carrier Etihad Airways has acquired 24% equity in Naresh Goyal’s airline. In any case,
The flash floods and calamity wrought by the heavy rains in Uttarakhand have once again drawn our attention to the persistent negligence of lessons brought home by such tragedies in the past. Would we not forget about it by the time you read this magazine, when newspapers and channels will have something else to talk about; politicians will be concerned about how to win the next elections; and
The financial crisis in 2008 hit the revenues of many companies in the world. But this was no deterrent on the revenue generation of the Indian companies which were indulging in fraudulent practices. A new study finds there has been a spurt of fraud cases and a corresponding increase of revenue generation of such companies since 2009. “The average revenue of the companies involved
Over the past two months, the Indian Premier League (IPL; T20 tournament) was rocked by scandals of illegal betting, match- and spot-fixing and conflicts of interest. IPL team owners, players, umpires and cricket administrators were accused of being involved with the betting syndicates. But what went unnoticed was that these issues had been highlighted last year in a book – Bookie, Gamble
The law minister along with law officers and officials of the PMO were virtually caught red-handed in attempting to doctor the CBI status report in the coal block allocation scam. The supreme court expressed its annoyance at what the government and the CBI had done. It has now called upon the government to file an affidavit detailing the steps that the government intends to take in order to imm
Two members of Mahatma Gandhi’s inner circle, Swami Anand and Kaka Kalelkar, were both great prose stylists, great authorities on Indian culture and religions, and both smitten by the Himalayas. They made a pilgrimage of the ‘Char Dham’ together and returned to write travelogues – in each other’s mother tongues: Swami in Marathi, and Kalelkar in Gujarati. Both work
J Satyanarayana is a 1977 batch IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre, currently heading the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY), government of India. Satyanarayana is a pioneer in e-governance domain, having introduced ICT in the Andhra Pradesh government in the 1990s. The National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG), which was set up in 2003 to provide consultancy serv
The flash floods and calamity wrought by the heavy rains in Uttarakhand have once again drawn our attention to the persistent negligence towards lessons brought home by such tragedies in the past. Would we not forget about it by the time you read this magazine, when newspapers and channels will have something else to talk about; politicians will be concerned about how to win the next elections;
