Seven meetings and a stalemate. What now for the Lokpal Bill? It’s War Out There Seven meetings on, government and civil society reps drafting the Lokpal bill are split on four key issues Ambit * Civil society: PM and Supreme and High Court judges should be brought under Lokpal’s purview * Government: This is constitutionally untenable; PM should get immunity or should be investigated with adequate safeguards Scope * Civil society: MPs can...
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NREGS and the fast disappearing artisan by Nirmala Sitharaman
A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...
More »Panel to study law to protect scribes
-The Hindu Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday said there was a broad consensus in the Cabinet on a law to protect journalists, but an enabling provision needed to be included in it to address complaints against the media as well. Mr. Chavan refused to answer questions related to the probe into crime journalist J. Dey's killing on Saturday last. He said there was a lot of progress and a...
More »‘PMO turned blind eye to repeated warnings' by Sujay Mehdudia
“Government can no longer convince people its hands are clean” A former Union Revenue Secretary, E.A.S. Sarma, has accused the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) of turning a “blind eye” to his repeated warnings about “alleged irregularities” committed in auditing capital costs and allowing price and other concessions to the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in the KG basin and Cairn India in Rajasthan. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan...
More »That seventies feeling by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
The government is returning to a 1970s mentality. This mentality used a presumptive distrust of citizens as an excuse for enhancing state power. It sought accountability, not through intelligently designed transparency norms, but greater discretionary power in state officials. And finally, it sought to curb citizens’ freedoms, not by directly assaulting them, but by embedding them in a structure of regulation that deters free expression. This mentality connects three recent sets...
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