The Bikaner Development Authority Bill, 2025, passed by the Rajasthan Assembly, aims to establish a Bikaner Development Authority to regulate development activities in the Bikaner district. The bill was passed by voice vote, with the opposition Congress walking out of the House due to insufficient discussion. The bill was introduced …
IT MAY be unfashionable to say so these days, but Makarand Paranjape says it anyway: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was right. Realising perhaps that a straightforward discourse would make this a difficult book to read, the writer uses the question-answer format of a dialogue between a teacher and a student. By …
PERIODICALLY, rich and priveleged humans accuse their poor and marginalised counterparts of being responsible for all the ills of the world. The latest representative of this genre of twisted tantrums has come in the form of The Bell Curve, a book which urges an all-out attack on affirmative action and …
THE International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in September, reopened the debate over old Malthusian fears. The conference was convened in the belief that unless governments the world over take firm and coordinated action, the hungry billions will eat up global food supplies and exhaust the world's …
ABOUT 1.2 billion women live in the rural areas of the developing world and at least one-third of these are heads of households. These women bear a crushing workload -- at home and in the fields -- but their contribution to rural development is often overlooked. Environmental degradation adds to …
FOR the lone woman crusader in a far-flung rural area, the fight for justice can be horrendously daunting in the face of an incomprehensible Indian Penal Code and male-dominated panchayats. In city courts, the course of justice is often longwinded. The Bhanwari Devi case is a pointer. A potter and …
THE 2 books under review have established, dependable credentials, which is why they have the rare virtue of being eagerly awaited every year for additional insights on global developments. This year, the Human Development Report (HDR) introduces the somewhat controversial concept of human security; the World Development Report (WDR) focuses …
What are the priorities of the United Nations Population Fund? When I became executive director of UNFPA, I emphasised on 3 things. I insisted on providing information and family planning services on a very large basis, starting at the individual level. Ways have to be found to create an environment …
"WE HAVE to find ways of creating an environment in which the individual most affected (by population control measures), in this case woman, is also part of the decision-making process," Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told the press in New York, on the eve of …
AMIDST the opulence of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) annual meeting, the representative of at least one government -- a large, poor country in South Asia -- was discovered staying in a hotel room that cost over $1,000 a night. The big prize, more than anything else, was Power. The …
What have been the major sources of inspiration for your poetry? My experiences in my village. The school in which I studied was across the river from my village, and ferrying across was a normal thing, just as swimming was. Memories of the many moods of the river, the nights …
"WE ARE not interested in how to kill pests or how cowdung cakes are to be made. We know all these things. We only want entertainment and cinema songs. Let the city dwellers who do not know anything about these things learn these so that they can appreciate our problems." …
THE 7th Parliamentary committee report on the working of the department of ocean development (DOD) has found that the department "is not geared up to meet the challenges of our times" and has recommended that it should be wound up and replaced by an ocean agency under the chairpersonship of …
THE RECENT controversy over the national and global role of non-government organisations (NGOs), generated at the preparatory meeting for the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Environment and Development (ICPD) in New York is seething with portents. It seems to be one more issue over which the North and the South …
I AM happy that a large number of leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are meeting for a consultation with key development ministries. I had addressed a gathering of NGOs in December, 1991, where I had offered to withdraw the government from certain areas altogether, provided the NGOs take over the responsibility …
IN HIS now-classic Foundation science fiction series, Isaac Asimov introduced the "science" of "psychohistory" -- the mathematical modelling of social dynamics. The objective of "psychohistory" was to evolve a method of managing societal change in such a way that the probability of chaos, intrinsic to any dynamic system, is minimised. …
Indian companies need to triple the total investment for in-house research and development (R&D;) to Rs 3,000 crore by the end of the century, according to a document prepared jointly by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Union government's department of scientific and industrial …
Socialist economist Ignacy Sachs of the Centre de Recherches Sur le Bresil Contemporain ***(translation) in Paris has severely criticised current Indian development policies. Addressing scientists at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) in Delhi on November 25, he said, "The present policies seek to cater to …
Contemporary environmental consciousness and concern among professionals in the West was triggered off by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which was published in 1962. Summing up the disastrous impact of chemical pesticides on ecological cycles, she said in the book, "The chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life... …
THAT THE world's population problem is not merely a numbers game, was the view expressed by most delegates attending the Population Summit of The World's Scientific Academies, held in New Delhi from October 24-27. The summit statement's emphasis on reaching "zero population growth within the lifetime of our children", therefore, …
Officers' associations of major public sector power undertakings have warned of a crisis in the energy sector if the government's liberalisation policy in power generation and distribution is pushed through. The officers' association of the National Thermal Power Corporation, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and Central Electricity Authority have submitted a …
