India today sits at the bottom of the rank of countries in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which combines a range of indicators like climate change mitigation, air pollution, waste management, sustainability of fisheries and agriculture, deforestation, and biodiversity protection. The EPI is produced by centres working under Yale and…
The airline brought national disaster. The nightclub hotel was a more localised story. But both mock the nation and its growth story in their own ways, highlighting the hidden costs of a faster growth that has beaten the “Hindu rate of growth” but has brought us a disaster that unfolds at periodic intervals to shock the nation and ridicule its…
The problem in the Indian context is not about the legal codes but about the on-ground working conditions that remain markedly at odds with what is professed from the corridors of power and from the boardrooms of owners and directors. When this market reality meets with a government that has not built capital with the workers and is further…
In Bihar, too, like has happened in earlier elections in Maharashtra and Haryana for example, the winning side will have to contend with the allegations that they romped home with an umpire whose role remains hotly contested, placing the fairness of the entire electoral process under a cloud. The allegations are more than a case of sour grapes…
The system protects many, but scandals emerge at regular intervals, sending periodic shocks that reveal to us that corruption is endemic in the Indian system and thrives in the bureaucracy. The disease is complex, given that it comes in various forms and flavours and is fuelled by patronage politics. Bribery is but one part of a larger canvas…
When companies see they can get away with violation of labour laws or erode the dignity of workers or do worse with regard to their workforce, more violations of the kind will follow. The only antidote is to put down illegality with an iron hand, to impose exemplary costs on businesses that have little regard for people and to send the message…
The Indian software and IT services giants have for long been accused of running body shops, a business fashioned out of what essentially is labour arbitrage turned into a fine art. The sector has consistently denied this, arguing that they have moved up the value chain and that they compete on quality, not price.
This is aiming for a high moral ground, but Gandhian satyagraha will demand much more from India. It will challenge India on aligning with Israel while it bleeds Gaza. And it will raise many other difficult questions that if followed through will help India stand erect and tall in a world that still bows to Gandhi.
In that, the failing health and education sectors in India are a symptom of a larger disease, of an imagined growth story and a fantasised giant economy that sees numbers but not the purpose, that has ignored those at the lower rungs of the ladder in the quest to shine in its fancy airports and bullet trains
The larger picture that emerges is of a failing administration that is rapidly sliding down a very slippery slope in the absence of robust internal and external scrutiny, blind support in the name of fighting terrorism while the real terrorists go scot-free and a refusal to accept and correct mistakes.
