-ThePrint.in In various state govts, the office of district magistrate has been reduced to a glorified post office that receives instructions from various govt departments. Not so long ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ridiculed India’s civil servants in Parliament when he questioned whether the government should be run by ‘babus’, a euphemism for bureaucrats. It is ironic to see the PM now, addressing the very same ‘babus’, the district magistrates of...
More »SEARCH RESULT
India learns a bitter lesson for disregarding crucial warnings and recommendations on Covid-19
In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few. Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...
More »Fiscal transparency jacks up ‘expenditure’ numbers in the Union Budget 2021-22
In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...
More »There is no doubt that Indian higher education requires reforms -Tanuja Kothiyal and Arindam Banerjee
-The Indian Express Legal action against Scihub and Libgen frames problem of control and governance of knowledge in a globalised world. The recent litigations against Scihub and Libgen by Elsevier, Wiley and ACS bring us to a moment of many realisations about control and governance of knowledge in academia. In the latter half of the 20th century, globalisation led to the imperative of applying “global” standards to higher education. As global standards...
More »Kesavananda Bharati — the petitioner who saved democracy, but lost his case in Supreme Court -Krishnadas Rajagopal
-The Hindu The historic Fundamental Rights case prevented the nation from slipping into a totalitarian regime Kesavananda Bharati Swamiji, the sole unwitting petitioner in the historic Fundamental Rights case which prevented the nation from slipping into a totalitarian regime, died on Sunday. He was 80. Though the judgment is a landmark, the Swamiji did not win any relief in the case. The amendments in the Kerala land reforms law which he had challenged...
More »