Living Tolstoy of modern Tamil literature! I came back to my office in Bangalore after nearly ten days in the countryside. As usual I met and interacted with a wide variety of people, political and social activists and writers, poets and NGO enthusiasts and others. Since, my home is in Coimbatore where the big state…
American optimism
For the Americans and the rest of the world Education’s one more duty! To impart optimism to a people! Just now, we read through a longish book review in one of the international journals. It is about the latest two new books on American history. The 20th century America and to be exact the first…
Corporate power corrodes democracy?
Yes, says Barack Obama! Corporate power corrodes Indian democracy? Yes, notice the recent events! N.R.Narayanamurthy’s Nasscom Committee on Corporate Governance! A time of great many ironies and contradictions! Yes, we seem to be living at a time of great many ironies and contradictions, to say the least. The Headlines Today TV news channel broke the…
Council for Higher Education and Research Act
What Kapil Sibal can and can’t do? Commercialisation and politicisation of higher education has taken alarming avatars! We know Kapil Sibal somewhat. We have met him once in his earlier avatar as science and technology minister. He is of course too smart a man, a clever lawyer with a reputation for making a lawyer’s case…
Right to Information ACT is kicking!
Know the new dream heroes! The ones who expose the chicken-hearted secrets of the high and mighty! Subhas Chandra Agarwal, RTI activist, no, a zealot leads the way for the no lesser mortals! Wajahat Habibullah, the Chief Information Commissioner! Shailesh Gandhi, the Central Information Commissioner! They, among themselves, the trio have obtained from the Central…
Dantewada massacre and after
Why the intelligence failed? No place for egocentric “I know-all” policies! Tribal India and the current Maoist upsurge calls for a more broad based policies and approaches. Digvijay Singh’s alternative view needs some examination Mr.Digvijay Singh, currently the General Secretary of the Congress and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh have created some stir, a…
India’s power sector: private players do a good job, prices to go up!
Private players seem to have effected a game changing development! They added almost half the total addition to power capacity. There are exciting developments in the power generating sector. It is the big role played by the private players, also called independent power producers, who totally alone produced half of the additional capacity in the…
Right to Free and Compulsory Education!
Right for free and compulsory access to minimum food! How the American experiences can help us? America, the drop-out economy! Where 3 out of 10 American students drop out of high schools as recently as 2006 Less than a third of students finish college! These and many other such startling statistics has been published in…