-The Times of India India's GDP growth rate may have dropped in the past few years but that has had little impact on the bottomlines of the country's leading political parties. The coffers of the main parties have been swelling, with the richest amongst them, the ruling Congress, having made a cool Rs 1,662 crore in the last five years till 2011-12 and the BJP in second place with Rs 852...
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Politics and Pedagogy The NCERT Texts and Cartoons by Valerian Rodrigues
School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems...
More »Flagships ADRift -Jayati Ghosh
The ICDS' plight is symptomatic of the problems plaguing the Union government's flagship schemes for the poor all over the country. INDIA may be the only country in the world where we describe the ensuring of the basic socio-economic rights of the people in terms of “flagship schemes” that are seen as the benevolent contribution of governments. One problem with this approach is that the delivery of basic services is...
More »Anil Bairwal, National Convenor of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) interviewed by rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa
A recent report put out by the Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch revealed that 47 per cent of the newly-elected Uttar Pradesh assembly has candidates with criminal cases pending against them. Barring Manipur, none of the other four states that went to polls is free of a tainted MLA. In Uttar Pradesh, the number of criminal MLAs has gone up from 37 per cent in 2007 to 47...
More »A House of crorepatis in Goa
-The Hindu In Goa, victorious MLAs fielded by every major party are facing criminal cases, whereas 37 (93 per cent) of the 40 newly elected members of the Assembly are ‘crorepatis,' compared to 55 per cent in the 2007 elections. Goa once again has only one (3 per cent) woman MLA. The analysis released on Saturday by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch is based on the information supplied by...
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