Politics

Battle for Bihar: Development vs caste in electoral calculus

- by India Writes Network

The northern state of Bihar in India has always been synonymous with caste-based crime. However, Bihar’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of Janta Dal (U) has managed to change this image and is steadily taking the state towards an inclusive growth.

A resource-rich state with a vote bank of 66.82 million, Kumar has managed to put up an issue based election agenda here. But leaders of rival political parties have managed to pull back the caste politics ahead of the development plank ahead of the crucial assembly elections.

Read More

Why Modi needs to silence ‘Hindutva’ brigade

- by N Sathiya Moorthy

It’s sad that meat-ban and other original agenda-points of the ‘Hindutva brigade’ should be allowed to derail the good work seemingly being done, or continued to be promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It provides fodder for criticism of the Prime Minister in the social media circuit from the ridiculous to a very serious level, which surpasses corruption charges and jokes against the Manmohan Singh government through all those long months leading to Elections-2014.

Read More

Chasing Urban Dream: India identifies 98 smart cities

- by India Writes Network

India’s smart cities mission has moved a step forward with the government announcing the list of 98 ‘Smart Cities’ that will be developed to enhance the quality of urban life in India. With the Indian economy growing over the past couple of decades, a host of problems associated with unplanned urbanization have cropped up.

Indian cities have started becoming unlivable, according to many urban development reports, and are facing plenty of challenges from housing to infrastructure, sanitation, employment and public transport. To help address these issues, the government has shortlisted 98 cities across the country as part of its Smart Cities project.

The Centre has decided to provide funding of Rs 48,000 crore to selected cities to improve infrastructure and public service delivery with the help of technology and e-governance.

Smart City has also become a major plank of India’s foreign policy thrust, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking support of developed countries in his quest to transform the country’s urban infrastructure. The United States, France, Germany, China and Japan are some of India’s key external partners in this smart cities project. Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu stressed that these smart cities will be equipped with robust IT connectivity and digitization and core infrastructure such as water supply, electricity supply, sanitation, public transport, solid waste management and affordable housing. “We are not just aiming at making our urban landscape fanciful and flashy but the prime objective is to enhance quality of urban life,” said Mr Naidu.

Read More

Battle for Bihar hots up: PM Modi promises Rs 1.25 lakh special package

- by India Writes Network

Moving on expected lines, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a special package of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for the state of Bihar, which goes to polls later this year. While the schedule hasn’t been announced yet, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaid, said the elections would be held before November 29, when the tenure of the present assembly expires.

Read More

Amid deluge of Sushma-Sonia vitriol, monsoon session of Parliament a wash-out

- by India Writes Network

It’s a complete wash-out, a criminal waste of the taxpayers’ money. The monsoon session of the Indian Parliament that ends on August 13saw a deluge of vitriol, with the BJP-led NDA government locked into an unending sparring match with the opposition Congress that tried to corner the ruling party on charges of corruption and impropriety involving its senior leaders and ministers. Trading barbs that degenerated into embittered personal attacks took a vicious turn on August 12 as two stalwart women leaders in the Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi of Congress party and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj launched invectives against each other.

The Parliament was expected to pass the long-pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, which was touted as a game-changer in reforming the taxation system in the country. The GST has been discussed over the past decade, with no government able to pass it successfully in Parliament till date. The Congress party demanded the resignation of Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia for their controversial role in facilitating the visa for the ailing wife of the well-networked cricket impresario Lalit Modi.

Read More

Bharat Ratna, who shines India’s path to knowledge power

- by India Writes Network

BHARAT has lost a Ratna, but the light from this jewel will guide us towards A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s dream-destination: India as a knowledge superpower, in the first rank of nations. Our scientist-President – and one who was genuinely loved and admired across the masses – never measured success by material possessions. For him, the counterpoint to poverty was the wealth of knowledge, in both its scientific and spiritual manifestations. As a hero of our defence programme, he shifted horizons; and as a seer of the spirit, he sought to liberate doctrine from the narrow confines of partisan tension to the transcendental space of harmony.

Every great life is a prism, and we bathe in those rays that find their way to us. His profound idealism was secure because it rested on a foundation of realism. Every child of deprivation is a realist. Poverty does not encourage illusions. Poverty is a terrible inheritance; a child can be defeated even before he or she has begun to dream. But Kalamji refused to be defeated by circumstances. As a boy, he had to support his studies by earning money as a newspaper vendor; today, page after page of the same newspapers are filled with his obituary notices. He said that he would not be presumptuous enough to say that his life could be a role model for anybody; but if some poor child living in an obscure and underprivileged social setting found some solace in the way his destiny had been shaped, it could perhaps help such children liberate themselves from the bondage of illusory backwardness and helplessness. He is my marg darshak, as well as that of every such child.

Read More