Patang on the blog by the same name disagrees. And in view of the recent hullaballoo about food prices and how more people eat more food, take a look at what he has to say:
Is money a store of value? Let me ask you - is a lakh of rupees a lot of money? Can [...]
Archive for the 'Government' Category
The free market shall fix everything
Published by May 6th, 2008 in Capitalism, Development, Economy, Energy, Geopolitics and Government. 0 CommentsGM mosquitoes and ‘their’ policy making
Published by May 2nd, 2008 in Development, Economy, Environment, Government, Health, India, Policy and Poverty. 0 CommentsPrasanth at ‘The Daily Pheesh’ expresses skepticism (informed) at the eradication of diseases through GM (genetically modified) mosquitoes.
GM mosquitoes may be useful or harmful but one cannot deny that their introduction is nothing but a stopgap response to mistakes that were committed much earlier—failures in planning and managing cities, failures in taking health care to rural areas and [...]
Are those vaccines safe?
Published by April 25th, 2008 in Activism, Government and Health. 0 Comments Jo talks to Dr.Hari, a social activist who has been campaigning against the Polio vaccination programme in Kerala, about what’s wrong with vaccines:
What the government has told about polio vaccination is that it has helped to eliminate polio from our society. They also present a lot of statistics to prove this. So are you saying [...]
The children of one India
Published by April 10th, 2008 in Education, Government and Society. 0 CommentsAnouradha, of projectwhy, opines ‘the children of India - oops I should say the children of one India - have been let down by each and every one’:
One would be justified in thinking it was a joke of some kind but sadly no! The pictures actually showed children giving their Board examinations with their feet [...]
Per capita expenditure on education, healthcare and a thousand other statistics that look respectable, by international standards, on the surface: but do they tell us the whole story on how much or how little the government is doing for all of the 1.1 billion people in the country? Abhishek checks the per capita deception in [...]
What, after all, is the evidence in favor of public schools?
Published by April 9th, 2008 in Business, Education, Government and Human Rights. 0 CommentsYet, the evidence is very much there. After all, China far outperforms India on educational indicators such as enrolment and efficiency, despite having a largely public primary system. Clearly, you don’t need a private system to achieve high quality and provide universal access to education.
Closer to home, Abi at Nanopolitan shows how publicly funded Kendriya [...]
Where are the good public schools?
Published by April 9th, 2008 in Business, Caste, Education, Government, Human Rights, India, Infrastructure and Regulation. 0 CommentsIn response to Gurucharan Das’ oft-repeated, sweeping characterization of public schools in the country as ‘a mess’, Abi points to the Kendriya Vidyalayas as one example of government-run schools that do better than private schools:
One of the things that infuriate me about Gurcharan Das and his ilk is the fact that they dismiss oh-so-casually all [...]
Kashmir Singh
Published by April 6th, 2008 in Government, Human Rights, India and Justice. 0 CommentsThe Catapult questions the failure of the Indian government in taking care of patriots:
Shortly after his release from a Pakistani jail after nearly three decades of solitary confinement Kashmir Singh has admitted that he was a spy who was captured on the line of duty. And what did the Indian government do for him all [...]
‘Of Laws and Lawmakers’
Published by April 6th, 2008 in Government, Justice, Prejudice, Society and Women. 0 CommentsThe Government of India woke up to the fact that the Development of Women and Children is important enough to be granted a Ministry of its own, only in 2006. Before that this onerous responsibility was carried out by a Department , which did not exist before 1985. No better source than the horse’s mouth. [...]
6th CPC: Private sector v/s public sector
Published by March 30th, 2008 in Development, Economy, Government and India. 0 CommentsGlowfriend is doing a series of posts on the Sixth Central Pay Commission Report. This post deals with public v/s private sector jobs.
The biggest advantage offered by a Government job is the job security attached to it and the assured retirement benefits. Commission has attempted to make the retirement benefits more attractive. It has [...]
Now, the bill
Published by March 27th, 2008 in Economy, Government, Politics and Poverty. 0 CommentsGaurav Shukla emphasizing the need to link salaries to performance, calculates the bill:
The pay hike will bring about massive strain on the exchequer. With the implementation of the fifth pay commission’s recommendations, the central government’s wage bill shot up by nearly 99 per cent. The present recommendations, when implemented, are expected to cause an additional [...]
Ajay Shah thinks the new pay commission report has made only ‘tiny progress’ in increasing the inequality in wage levels between junior and senior government workers:
How do I know so clearly that at junior levels, salaries in government are 2x to 3x too high? Some time after I left the Ministry of Finance, one day, [...]
The Shaming of Scarlett Keeling
Published by March 26th, 2008 in Feminism, Government, Human Rights, Justice, Media, Patriarchy, Women, public space and sexuality. 17 CommentsIf the killing was brutal, the reactions that followed haven’t been kind either- Sharanya condemns those who are condemning the victim:
In other words, the condemning of the murdered girl, her family, her friends, their lifestyles and their choices is a typical misogynist response – the wicked woman gets her dues. And this time, there are [...]
Gautam has interesting views on democracy and the state of our nation;
Witnessing a momentous period in the rise of our nation, I would like to know what result we should expect from all that seems to happening in our country.As Henry Thoreau said, “our government needs to represent more of what the country is [...]
Why is Modern India Vegetarian?
Published by March 24th, 2008 in Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, Economy, Food, Government, Policy, Poverty and Religion. 0 Comments41.9% of adults belonging to the ST and 38.4 % belonging to SCs have Chronic Energy Deficiency, while the pooled average of the nation is 34.8 %. Further, 62.7 % of the children born to Scheduled Caste parents are under-weight, 57.6 % are stunted, while among the other castes it the numbers are 53.1 % [...]
‘Saala ek machhar aadmi ko hijra bana deta hai’
Published by March 23rd, 2008 in Art, Books, Democracy, Feminism, Government, Human Rights, Literature, Patriarchy, Personal, Politics, Religion, Secularism, South Asia and public space. 2 CommentsThat line from a Nana Patekar film, says, Aman Kumar, captures his ‘rage and frustration’ over the Taslima Nasreen episode:
So has mine! Sadly, I no longer consider India a secular country after watching and analyzing the political developments in last 15-20 years. Right from Shah Bano case to Babri demolition, and from Gujrat massacre to [...]
Naxalism and conventional politics
Published by March 18th, 2008 in Adivasi, Dalit, Democracy, Development, Government, Human Rights, Justice, Policy, Politics and Poverty. 0 CommentsGautam Sen says he doesn’t support Naxalism but he doesn’t seem to believe in the efficacy of ‘conventional politics’ either:
Despite these differences, my answer to my brother’s imprisonment is not the advocacy of violence. It is a waning and tenuous hope that perhaps the system does work, as Pai thinks it does. Perhaps my brother [...]
In democracy, there is hope
Published by March 11th, 2008 in Community, Culture, Democracy, Development, Economy, Government, History, India, North East, Personal and Politics. 1 CommentRelating four stories of people he spoke to, Mishti believes there is hope for the country, if the NDA Government comes back to power.
For the sake of the aam aadmi, for the sake of the immigrant workers in Mumbai, for the sake of our highways, for the sake of our pride as Indians, for [...]
Is bad governance in our Constitution?
Published by March 10th, 2008 in Government, India, Politics and Spotlight Series. 4 Comments[ This is Essay # 25 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]
Is bad governance in our Constitution?
———
Shruti Rajagopalan
I enjoy following politics and, even more so, observing politicians. Watching the frontrunners through the debates for the primaries and general mud slinging in the US Presidential Elections or the Cypriots pick a leader from [...]
‘It’s The Tourists Who Are At Fault’
Published by March 6th, 2008 in Government, Media, Society, Women, sexual harrassment and sexuality. 0 CommentsPen Pricks write about an editorial of Gomantak Times, a Goan daily, regarding the alleged rape of a foreigner in Goa at the beginning of the year.
Sanjay, are you in your senses? Do you realise what you are writing here? You are absolving the State of its most important responsibility? Foreigners attend these rave parties [...]
Budget 2008
Published by March 1st, 2008 in Business, Democracy, Development, Economy, Education, Government, Health, India, Policy, Politics and Regulation. 0 CommentsJagdish Madan in a pre-budget summing up of the economic and political situation in the country, looks at some crucial issues:
…rural employment plan, which guarantees 100 days of work for one person in every poor household, was the priority of the government. The plan was the government’s attempt to address some of the countryside’s biggest [...]
Whither Prosperity?
Published by February 26th, 2008 in Democracy, Development, Economy, Education, Geopolitics, Globalisation, Government, India, Indiaspora, Policy, Poverty and South Asia. 1 CommentUnable to defend himself from a Singaporean hotelier’s comments, Swaroop seeks out answers at Churumuri. Illustrating with real examples, he rakes up enormous dirt on a gamut of issues.
Education. Immigration. Public Safety. Harassment. Rowdyism and brawn. Health services. Bribery. Brain drain.
He concludes his comparison of India to Singapore (unthinkable by size, but still) with an interesting analogy to claims [...]
Delhi’s BRTS controversy
Published by February 23rd, 2008 in Development, Government and India. 5 CommentsDelhi’s Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) has come under fire.
Mitali points out a problem
But the real beauty of the provider-consumer relationship lies in the Bus Rapid Transit system. Here, bus stops placed in the middle lanes of the road allow people to alight and have to cross other traffic to get to the sides [...]
More on the Gulabi gang
Published by February 23rd, 2008 in Activism, Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, Democracy, Feminism, Government, Justice and Patriarchy. 2 CommentsBecky B devotes some (much needed?) attention to the gang:
What is so amazing to me is the anomaly that the leader figure represents. Not only that one woman could be so unabiding to the expected norm, but also that she can mobilise hundreds of women to fight for her causes. As I said in my [...]
Follow the Chinese path?
Published by February 18th, 2008 in Books, Culture, Development, Economy, Government, India and Policy. 3 CommentsIn a well-argued post, Fellow Blogbhartian Bhupinder reviews Sagarika Ghose’s “Farming the Colonial Dream” and questions the premise of doing away with agriculture in India and walking the Chinese path.
She ignores what is practically an urban nightmare in China. Overwhelming migration from rural areas, a reversal of the 1960s forced migration, has led to increasing [...]
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