The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...
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Chorus of unreason -TK Rajalakshmi
Political parties across the spectrum get into a tangle over an innocuous cartoon in a school textbook THE textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) are in the news again. This time, it is not history but political science textbooks that managed to get almost all Members of Parliament on their feet on an emotive issue and for reasons that defied logic. One day before the 60th...
More »File affidavit on PIL against petrol hike, HC directs Centre
-The Indian Express The Bombay High Court today directed Centre, Petroleum Ministry and Finance Ministry to file an affidavit by June 20 in response to a petition that claimed the recent petrol price hike was "illegal" as it lacked Parliament's approval and violated the Constitution. A bench of Justices R Y Ganoo and N M Jamdar ordered the respondents to file an affidavit explaining their stand on increasing the price of petrol. Apart...
More »The new untouchability-Harish Trivedi
As the dust begins to settle on the Ambedkar cartoon controversy, it may be useful to reflect on what it was all about. Contrary to some rhetorical grandstanding, it was not really about freedom of expression. Nor was it about how (not) to produce livelier school textbooks. Nor indeed about our sense of humour or lack thereof, or the special privileges of comic exaggeration or caricature that cartoonists have enjoyed...
More »The Constitution, Cartoons and Controversies Contextualising the Debates by Kumkum Roy
A close reading of the Political Science textbook shows that it is complex, moves beyond pat answers, and treats the Constitution as a living document. It was produced in the light of the National Curriculum Framework 2005, which in itself was a major attempt to democratise education, and reverse the National Curriculum Framework 2000 which was casteist and sexist. Kumkum Roy (kumkumr@yahoo.com) is with the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru...
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