We need to educate children in schools about caste, ethnic, gender and regional diversities and have public policy interventions to make society more equal and fair Should jobs, schools, and universities promote diversity with reservations or quotas? This question has long evoked strong and passionate responses. People come to the debate with preconceived ideas and stands, and rarely change their minds. As a result, India is left with little consensus on the reasons for reservations and whether or not reservation is a useful policy. A new survey called SARI, Social Attitudes Research for India, investigated what people in cities, towns, and villages think about reservations. SARI uses a sampling frame based on mobile phone subscriptions, random digit dialling, within-household sample selection, and statistical weights to build representative samples of adults 18-65 years old. Divided by background We asked respondents whether or not they support reservation. In Delhi, about ha...
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In a rapidly changing world, the Modi government’s foreign policy will require much more imagination than the shock-and-awe tactics of the past two and a half yearsA In June this year, just after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, a senior American official spoke of the “Modi Doctrine”, giving formal recognition to the foreign policy choices adopted by India since May 2014. In his speech at the U.S. Congress, Mr. Modi outlined India’s commitment to the partnership with the U.S. as being a “new symphony in play” in order to build an international maritime partnership in Asia, to play a leading role in the South Asian neighbourhood, strategically as well as for humanitarian purposes, and to take a strong position on terrorism or cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. A few months later, Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, speaking at the launch of a book, The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy, went on to define it thus: Ind...
Goaod intentions alone are not enough to secure the public interest. For governments, the manner in which it is protected is equally vital. The Delhi High Court verdict quashing all notifications banning the manufacture and sale of 344 Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) drugs is a lesson in how not to administer a regulatory law. The ban on combination drugs that have little therapeutic value was undoubtedly done for bona fide reasons. However, the government could not convince the court that the ban was valid despite statutory bodies such as the Drug Testing Advisory Board (DTAB) and the Drugs Consultative Committee (DCC) not being involved in the process. There is little doubt that a number of combination drugs should be taken off the shelf. The government believes, as do many health activists, that some combinations are unsafe and/or promote antibiotic resistance, while others lack particular therapeutic value, justification or advantage. Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw has correctly refraine...
The auto industry is bracing for ‘short term headwinds’ due to ‘immediate disruption and uncertainty’ brought in by demonetisation, even as some carmakers posted double digit growth in domestic sales during November. Significantly, these figures reflect only the wholesale figures for the industry and not the retail sales reported by dealers. While players such as Maruti, Toyota and Volkswagen saw robust growth, automakers such as Mahindra, Ford and Honda saw their sales drop during the month. Market leader Maruti Suzuki said it sold more than 1.26 lakh units in the country last month, up 14.2 per cent from the same period last year. Domestic sales for Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) rose 10.03 per cent to 11,309 units in November. N Raja, Director & Sr. VP(Sales & Marketing) at TKM said the firm had received more than 6,200 bookings for the new Fortuner, while Innova Crysta has clocked more than 50,000 units within six months of its launch. ‘Affected walk-ins’ “However, demonetis...
is a cruel irony of a fast-growing India that there are fewer and fewer girls as a ratio of total births, as a result of complex factors that include parental preference. New data from the Civil Registration System of the Registrar General of India point to the hardening of the pattern, with a fall in sex ratio at birth from 898 girls to 1,000 boys in 2013, to 887 a year later. This depressing trend is consistent with evidence from the Census figures of 2001 and 2011. What is shocking is that the overall data mask the horror of particular districts and panchayats falling well below the national ratio, especially in the zero-to-six years assessment category. The scourge has, in some cases, prompted the Supreme Court to take note of the situation, and the National Human Rights Commission to ask for an explanation from State governments. In the understanding of the Centre, which it has conveyed to Parliament, girls stand a poor chance at survival because there is a “socio-cultural...
Humanity’s best bet at detecting aliens is a giant silver Chinese dish the size of 30 football fields — one that simultaneously showcases Beijing’s abilities to deploy cutting-edge technologies and ignore objectors’ rights as it seeks global prominence. The five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the country’s southwest, which began operations in September and cost 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) to build, is the world’s largest radio telescope. Once fully operational, FAST will be able to peer deeper into space than ever before, examining pulsars, dark matter and gravitational waves — and searching for signs of life. But it comes at the cost of forcibly displacing about 9,000 villagers who called the site in Pingtang county their home. Many were outraged at being forced to leave the valley surrounded by forested karst hills and hundreds of families are now suing the government, with some cases being heard this week. Octogenarian Han Jingfu drank pesticide day...