Eyes wide shut

EYES WIDE SHUT : Environmental Governance in India, ISSUES, CONCERNS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Environmental governance is one of the emerging challenges facing the contemporary world. It is the means by which society determines and acts on goals and priorities related to the management of natural resources. Efficient environment governance at all levels is significant for finding solutions to challenges such as pollution, waste management, climate change, ozone layer […]

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Eyes Wide Shut : A Kafkaesque trial in our times

IN March 2013, a concerned group of ex-bureaucrats, including some former cabinet secretaries, met then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to advocate for urgent amendment to the incongruous provision (Section 13 1 d iii) in the Prevention of Corruption Act. The amendments providing some clarity to the corruption law were ultimately carried out five years later […]

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Eyes Wide Shut : Unwelcome Change

STRANGE are the ways of the government at times. For instance, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the government of Madras Presidency created two posts of LBC (Linlithgow Bull Clerk) and LBA (Linlithgow Bull Assistant) merely to please the incoming Viceroy; and the two posts were abolished only in the 1970s on the recommendations […]

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Eyes Wide Shut : A unique initiative

I have spent almost four decades in government. But in my knowledge, never before has a campaign to introduce and spread ethics in public service been attempted by any department, or ministry, or public enterprise or even by a state government. Therefore, what started on July 27 in the Rail Museum was a unique experiment […]

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Eyes wide shut : Ethics of governance

A new chapter was recently added to the old debate on the relationship between the political executive and the senior bureaucracy when the Chief Secretary of National Territory of Delhi accused a couple of legislators of the ruling party of assaulting him in the presence of the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister. Notwithstanding […]

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Lateral entry needs a new perspective

by PRABHAT KUMAR WHAT started as a proposed idea has now emerged in a concrete form with the Department Of Personnel and Training issuing an advertisement for induction of ten persons from outside the government to man joint secretary level posts in the Union government. I had then welcomed the ideas of opening windows to […]

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Falling back on generalities

SWOOSH! Another civil service day has just passed like an ephemeral shower of April. Nothing seems to have changed a bit in government. Lawrence Peter of Peter Principle fame once said that bureaucracy defends status quo long past when quo has lost its status. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made another catchy speech, as has become […]

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Recognise the small entrepreneur

IT is widely believed, and not without substance, that the recent large scale replacement of currency has caused avoidable distress to the small business man, micro and small entrepreneur and trader. The social and the mainstream media have been providing ample empirical evidence of the impact of the breakdown of cash transactions. It is also […]

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Demonetisation: The jury is still out

WHEN we are confronted with the evidence in any matter, for example a personal or a political issue, the cognitive process in our brain is immediately activated. But surprisingly, the neural circuits in the brain that are normally involved in reasoning or logic do not participate in this process. In fact, when the brain arrives […]

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Puzzling silence

I N the foreword to the White Paper on the ‘State of Law and Order in Delhi’ that was released to the media recently, the Managing Trustee of the NGO Praja says, ‘There is a crisis brewing in Delhi, a crisis that this city is becoming unlivable for the common men and women’. And, ‘this […]