When the fledgling Indian government drafted its higher education policy after Independence, it formed two separate tiers for teaching and research: colleges and universities in one, exclusive research establishments in the other. The intention was of the noblest, to deploy our best talent exclusively to create an indigenous knowledge pool; in particular, to provide research input for the nation’s development. Sixty years down the line, the outcome has patently failed those...

The 'Food Security' Bill falls flat as its content does not match its aspirations A disconnect runs through the nomenclature, preamble, objectives and content of the National Food Security Bill, 2011. The Preamble goes beyond the Title and states that the Bill provides “for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable price….” Even on cursory reading, it is...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...

-Express News Service On Wednesday, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi lost his job for doing what two of his immediate predecessors — one of them his own party boss — could not. After 10 years, fares of passenger trains were finally increased in the rail budget that Trivedi presented, with the aim of pumping in much-needed funds into the financially ill national transport utility. Rolled out in two forms, the “fare rationalisation” models...