Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai in his address to recruits at the National Police Academy sought to enlist them in his campaign. BAGEHOT'S classic explains why and how a genre of civil servants mushroomed in India latterly as executive power, authority and prestige declined. None of them had earlier revealed a particularly strong spine. T.N. Seshan bared his traits once he was appointed Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). Others need not...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Govt’s next CAG headache: ‘Mega losses in power deal’ by Amitav Ranjan
The Comptroller and Auditor General has alleged that the union power ministry gave “undue benefit” of Rs 1.20 lakh crore — calculated over the next 25 years — to Reliance Power Ltd (RPL) in the ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) at Sasan in Madhya Pradesh and Tilaiya in Jharkhand. In its report sent to the power ministry last month, the CAG has argued that the government did so by changing coal...
More »No excess mining, Goa tells court
-The Hindu The Goa government on Tuesday filed a reply before the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court to a Public Interest Litigation petition on illegal mining, claiming that the extraction, which the petitioner questioned, was from dumps and excess mining did not take place. The affidavit was submitted on behalf of Director of Mines and Geology Arvind Loliekar in the course of the hearing on the Goa Foundation's petition, which...
More »Things, not people by Prabhat Patnaik
The basic problem with the Approach Paper, as with its predecessor, is that its theoretical paradigm is wrong. WHAT used to be said of the Bourbon kings of France applies equally to the Indian Planning Commission: “They learn nothing and they forget nothing.” The Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan gives one a sense of déjà vu. It is hardly any different from the Approach Paper to the previous Plan...
More »Cost of mining: dry lakes, barren fields across a state once green by Shalini Nair
While imposing a ban on mining in Karnataka’s Bellary district in July this year, the Supreme Court had reasoned that the massive environmental damage caused by excessive mining impinges on the constitutional right to life. In neighbouring Goa, the latest state rocked by a mining scandal, the destruction could be on an even larger scale if one compares mining figures and relates these to the areas of the large district and...
More »