India’s apex minority education watchdog has been reduced to an agency with a head but no body because of hectic lobbying over appointments after incumbent members either quit or completed their terms. The National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, started five years back, is functioning at a third of its strength mandated under the law, crippling its ability to decide on key policy matters. Under pressure from sections within the...

It is presumed that the industrial development in Bihar is hampered by lack of investments. Is it because of 'unproductive' government policies or an unpredictable law and order situation? And how to increase the flow of investment in the state? In order to find out answers to all such questions and debate these issues, Business Standard Hindi recently organised a roundtable in Patna. The seminar was attended by various small...

Why do poor people in rural areas vote when they know the whole system is against them? JEAN DRÈZE talks to some voters and observes the voting process during the recent Assembly Elections in Latehar district, Jharkhand, and comes away with some pointers...  At one booth (Rankikalan, Booth No. 69) a BJP activist was trying to influence voters before they entered the booth, under the guise of helping them. Latehar...

The BJP has wrenched power in “yet another state”. The Congress is looking at long-term gains by refusing to back Shibu Soren. But the Jharkhand verdict has also opened the eyes of the two mainline parties to a disturbing realisation: their failure to “nurture” tribal leaders. “Both of us stand exposed as out-and-out upper caste parties who have failed to create, and worse, nurture tribal leadership. The mandate’s message is the...

Much like the tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas five years ago, the closing weeks of 2009 saw an ill wind sweeping across many of our democratic institutions, highlighting that beneath the veneer of the nation’s aspirations towards great power status was a crumbling institutional core. To look at the fourth estate first. The preface to the Press Council of India’s “Norms of Journalistic Conduct” has a section that...