Our villages have kept pace with towns and cities in most aspects. But it wasn’t always so. Nivedita Louis is happy to recall her childhood and those idyllic days. M.K. Gandhi said – “India’s soul is in her villages”. The small piece of land where these days we find more mobile towers than trees isn’t what Gandhi might have foreseen. No one is a stranger in a village. Simple crimes as a fag in a discreet street corner could land us in a soup. Forget watching a movie, bunking college. You might step on the naked foot of your neighbour…
Author: oiop
The complex set of wind and weather factors which drive our monsoons, were known to the ancient world, says Akul Tripathi, giving examples from literature and culture. And despite the advent of technology and our attempt at accurately predicting it, the vagaries of monsoons remain as consistent as in days gone by, he marvels. “When, O Wanderer at will, you see her in the lap of the mountain as if in that of a lover, her shawl the Ganga slipping off, you will not fail to recognise Alaka” Thus speaks Kalidasa in his immortal lyrical love poem Meghdoot – the…
India is part of many international trade agreements, and continues to negotiate with other agencies and countries. Shalini Bhutani gives us a sense of what these trade agreements are. TTo trade means to buy and sell goods and services. Indians are free to do that within the country, subject to the national laws made on this subject under the Constitution of India. Article 301 of the Constitution of India states: Trade, Commerce and Intercourse throughout the territory of India shall be free. (This freedom is restricted by the conditions imposed by Articles 302-305.) But what rules apply when India has…
India has a dismal education record, with one of the lowest education inequality indices. It’s time we addressed this more adequately. The Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry, we are told, is on the verge of declaring a new education policy; this will come 30 years after the second Education Policy of 1986. The committee to frame the policy has submitted its report in May. T.R.S. Subramanian was the chairperson of the five-member committee entrusted with the responsibility of integrating feedback collected by the HRD Ministry through grassroots and national-level consultations on multiple themes. Families obsess about education in India and…
The year 2016 has been declAared by the United Nations Environment Programme as the year to cut down on illegal wildlife trade. Dr. M.A. Haque gives us shocking figures of this illegal trade, and the reasons for it. Since the middle of the 19th century, environmental degradation became rampant due to industrialisation and discovery of new processes and materials. The year 1962 proved a milestone when Rachel Carson published the book Silent Spring. The book resulted in one after another chemicals being banned. Incidentally, ten years later, in June 1972, world leaders from 113 nations gathered in Stockholm to discuss…
The tenth standard board exams are a seminal landmark for any Indian student. A young student, Gauri Kedia, fresh from her board rigours, describes the journey for us. Humour, it appears, is an important ingredient of the board prep! The before… I should really study more…. I mean, I put in more work for my mock exams. It’s 3:23 pm now, so I’ll start at 3:30 pm on the dot. It’s easier to calculate the number of hours I study that way. Two seconds later, it’s 3:38 pm. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to start at 4 pm then.…
The original ‘Mr. Universe’ (1912–2016) Manohar Aich, the first Indian to have bagged the Mr. Universe title in independent India in 1952, passed away at the ripe old age of 104 on 6 June 2016, in his Kolkata residence. In 2015, he was given the Banga Bibhushan Award by the West Bengal government. He was the second Indian (after Monotosh Roy in 1951) to win any Mr. Universe title and the first Indian to win the title post-Independence. He did so in the 1952 NABBA Universe Championships. At 4 feet 10 inches (1.50 m) tall, he was given the name…
People affected by severe drought need long term help. Just the advent of rains will not ease their woes, as they have to re-build their nil stocks of food and fodder. It’s the government’s duty to provide them substantial interim relief. NThere is a widespread feeling that justice has not been done to the people affected by serious drought conditions in many parts of the country. This was also supported by verdicts of the Supreme Court in mid-May, which while giving directions for improved relief, also pointed out the glaring inadequacy of the relief work taken up so far. There…
Is a Federal Front in India, an idea whose time has come? India may have a federal structure, but a strong Centre can and has bulldozed the state governments, says Prof. Avinash Kolhe. Hence, the growing clamour for a Federal Front may not just be a flash in the pan, he reasons. By now the heat and dust of the assembly elections in five states has settled, and respective players have gone back to their drawing boards to devise strategies for the future. Ideally, this should have been the beginning of a new chapter. But before that, let us quickly…
A true feminist (1962 to 2016) “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist”. – Oscar Wilde Dr. Trupti Shah, a feminist and environmentalist lived her life to the fullest. A leading human rights and environmental activist, founder of Sahiyar, a women’s rights organisation in Vadodara, Gujarat, dedicated to feminism and secular humanism, passed away on 26 May 2016 after a valiant battle against lung cancer at the young age of 54. Her untimely death has caused an irreparable loss to a wide range of social movements working towards social justice, distributive justice and gender…