/Tag: governance

THE HONEST LEFTIST


The Telegraph

In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani Palkhivala, the Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, attacked ‘left-leaning intellectuals’ and ‘human rights groups’, who in his view ‘plead the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites on innocent men, women and children.’ ‘Why are the human rights groups silent?’, asked the Home [...]

KASHMIR PAST AND PRESENT


Hindustan Times

Sorting out some papers, I came across an old essay in an obscure periodical on a topic of contemporary relevance. Published in December 1973 in the Sarvodaya journal Bhoodan-Yagya, it was written (in Hindi) by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the pioneer of the Chipko Andolan and, arguably, of modern Indian environmentalism itself. I have known Bhatt for [...]

THE GLOBALIZING GERONTOCRACY


Hindustan Times

In the sixty years since Independence, there have been three periods in which India has faced serious challenges in the sphere of foreign policy. In the late 1940s, we were being asked to take sides in the Cold War, then about to get hot. Then, in the early 1970s, the crisis in East Pakistan forced us [...]

RENEWING THE POLICE


The Telegraph

On a sunny Sunday this past September, a friend and I were walking in central London, headed towards the south bank of the Thames. We were enjoying the scenery and the weather, when, at a road running along St. James’s Park, we came across thousands of men, women, and children on bicycles. So far as the [...]

DEGREES OF DEGRADATION


The Telegraph

In recent years, there has been a sharp decline in standards of political debate in India. In and out of Parliament, issues concerning the public good are rarely discussed logically or dispassionately. The arguments more often reflect ideological prejudice or personal hostility rather than rational thought. The degradation has been palpable for some time now; but [...]

ADIVASIS


NAXALITES

On 13th December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly of India. This proclaimed that the soon-to-be-free nation would be an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’. Its Constitution would guarantee citizens ‘justice, social, economic and political; equality of status; of opportunity, and before the law; freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association [...]

PUBLIC OFFICE


PRIVATE GAIN

‘Public service’ is now a less-than-clean word, associated in the middle-class mind with corruption and nepotism. It was not always so. One of my abiding childhood memories is of opening the door on a winter evening to Bhawani Singh, a peon who worked in the Forest Research Institute. A Garhwali from the Pindari ghati, it was [...]

PLURALISM IN THE INDIAN UNIVERSITY


Economic and Political Weekly

Earlier this year, the National Archives mounted an exhibition on the founding of the first modern universities in India. A Kolkata newspaper gave its report on this exhibition the headline: ‘The Other Revolution of 1857’. This was apt, for the founding of these universities was indeed a revolution, and indeed also the ‘other’ to the better [...]

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RESERVATION


The Telegraph

The announcement that reservation for OBCs is to be extended to IITs and IIMs has provoked much debate in the press. Critics say the move will undermine the functioning of these institutions by devaluing the principle of merit. Cynics add that the announcement was a consequence of the HRD Minister’s wish to outstage and embarrass the [...]

A DIVIDED CITY


The Telegraph

The city I live in has two names, these captured in the title of the first chapter of Janaki Nair’s fine recent book on the city’s history: Bengaluru/Bangalore. As Nair explains, the first name refers to the older part of the city, which has had a more-or-less continuous existence since the 16th century; the second to [...]