People, Politics and Government

A working group of Planning Commission of India has suggested that mother be declared as the first guardian of a child, in place of father. Through legal implementation of this suggestion, in all educational and other legal documents, mother shall the entered as the guardian of the child. So far, this so-called privileged position is enjoyed by father for being the principal bread-earner of the family. Will such a provision help mothers in any way? I have been raising issue of veils on...

Day to day happenings in India force me to opine that Indians are moving in a reverse gear as compared to major societies of the world. In this connection, two basic facts come to my mind – education and politics, both damaging the whole nation in ways nothing else can redeem. Education A Govt. Run Primary SchoolA few days back an elitist spiritual guru of India, named Ravi Shankar, said that all government-run educational institutions should be closed as these produce Naxalites, while...

Indian farmers produce a huge quantity of sugar cane in their agricultural fields which get divided principally in two ways of utilization – large scale sugar mills at area level, and tiny scale crushers at village level. Sugar mills produce white crystalline sugar and rum from the molasses. The crushers produce whole sugar cakes, called raw sugar or gud (in Hindi), usually of 5 or 10 kg each. The crystalline sugar produced by sugar mills is what we call table sugar used by a major population...

SP Chief has made his son as the Chief Minister of the state who is the youngest Chief Minister of the state so far, and has no ministerial or administrative experience. So, nothing much can expected from the new government. Mulayam Singh has been famous for using corrupt practices and high handedness in politics. Therefore, corruption and problems of law and order must remain the same if not increase. On the first day of taking over charge, the new Chief minister announced three important...

Recently concluded state assembly election results in the state of Uttar Pradesh are astonishing for two reasons – Return of Samajwadi Party to power with almost an absolute majority while a coalition government was expected, People’s short memory of how the Yadav family as the proprietor of the Samajwadi Party looted the state through corrupt practices in general, and particularly, the youths in recruitments to state employment. No Option before Voters In-spite of the disappointment people...

Government’s working is not only limited to opposing innovations for getting mass support, in many cases, even public welfare is put to stake for pleasing sections of public, sentimentally. Thus, sentiments of a section are given priority over logic or the public welfare. A case of an official action on behalf of the government in India has come to my notice that is largely hurting the public interests in the process of safeguarding religious sentiments of some sections of the public. Thus,...

On the third day of my protest fast unto death in my village against inadequate and hazardous electricity availability in the area, there used to be a gathering of 100s of people from many villages of neighborhood. The protest fast was duly notified to the police and other administrative officials like District Magistrate, Senior Superintendent of Police, local police station, etc. and all choose not to take notice of. Even a single constable was not posted on the site to keep a watch. The...

I am having problems of frequent failures for hours of Internet connectivity through my service provider BSNL for the last six months or so. For this, I have been complaining to officials of BSNL at various levels from the local telephone exchange in-charge to General Manager of the district, BSNL headquarters, etc with no tangible results. BSNL being a government undertaking, there everybody’s job remains secured even without working. This has made most of the officials highly irresponsible...

th February in the westernmost part of the state of Uttar Pradesh. With strictness from Election Commission, campaigning had been more or less peaceful with some candidates distributing money to get supporters for persuading voters on caste lines. A candidate of the present ruling party in the state began his campaign months ahead of others and distributed money very liberally for attracting attention of voters. But by all indications, some persons getting money is not going to affect the...

India had been under foreign rules, in whole or part, for about 1,600 years after the rule of Gupta dynasty until 1947 when she got independence from British Empire. I should have been a reason for Indians being happy, but even in these six decades of independence, all right thinking Indians feel that they have moved from one messy situation of foreign rule to another of a false democracy. Most of the Indians are puzzled what has gone wrong with India while most of the nations that got...

Last night, I had been to a locality close to Delhi and newly developed as a huge residential complex by a government agency through 100s of builders and individuals. The level of urbanization is really gigantic spread in a very large area deserving to be a city in itself, though it is a part of Ghaziabad. The capital invested in this development could have developed whole of the state of Uttar Pradesh in which the place lies. The Purpose, Black Money and Vested interests Stated purpose of...

Genesis of Democracy In the first idealist city state of Acropolis, now known as Athens, seeds of democracy were sown by Democritus, a leading philosopher of those times. The city state population was small and there were not much of economic and lifestyle disparities among the generally learned and thoughtful people. The idea of Democritus was to establish an institution of organizing people and providing common services to them based on consensus or a majority view. There was thought of...

Public leadership is taking care of public interests and it is most often possible by ignoring personal interests. This amounts to making sacrifices - a difficult task, rarely done by a few. In recent history of India, Mahatma Gandhi did it and inspired many others to follow him. Another spectrum of leadership flourishing in India is of exploiters of public economically and psychologically. Economic exploitation is easily detected and voice raised against it. But curbing it has become...

Uttar Pradesh is one of the most thickly populated states of India where official corruption, inefficiency, exploitation and mismanagement are in fully booming. For information to all, I must tell here that the state government has recruited 35,000 police constables recently and 40,000 more are being recruited. Comparatively, state-run primary schools have regular teachers rarely and whatever small number is there, they are going to retire in another 5 years. But there are no recruitments...

In India, marriages of boys and girls are arranged within their respective castes. This was meant for keeping purity of good dynasties from getting corrupt through marriages with bad dynasties, many of whom from all over the world came here and settled, making India an open field for both good and bad races surviving together. Situation in many other countries was also the same, but the good and bad races got mixed up through inter-racial marriages, making it difficult to identify a person’s...