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Current Issue: July 2009

POWER PULSE

PM's Innovative Step

The Manmohan Cabinet has done well to have appointed co-chairman of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies Nandan M. Nilekani as chairperson of the Unique Identification (UID) Authority of India. Nilekani is the right man in the right place at the right time The agency has been set up to provide unique identification numbers or UID numbers to all citizens for accessing various government services. The UID numbers and the database will be linked to agencies such as the Election Commission of India and the Income Tax Department which issue voters photo identity and PAN Cards respectively . In addition, it will be used for providing services under government schemes such

as the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for families living below the poverty line. It will also be used for delivering financial and other assistance to the needy.

Bold Education Move

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal's is bold move indeed to implement the report of the Yash Pal Committee. One of the aberrations of economic liberalization in India has been the mushrooming deemed universities, engineering and management colleges during the last couple of years. Most of them have been mere business entities duping the masses and dispensing very poor quality education. The menace will be combated to a great extent if the recommendations of the Committee are implemented. The committee has recommended the establishment of a National

Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) as an advisory body responsible for comprehensive and continuous reforms in higher education. Rather than acting as bodies giving licences to professional institutions, bodies such as the AICTE, the NCTE, the Medical Council of India, the Bar Council of India, the Council of Architecture, and the Pharmacy Council of India would now be looking at whether the people who wish to practise in their respective fields are fit to do so. They would be conducting regular qualifying tests for professionals in their respective fields as well.

Gods Spoiling Party?

The UPA government's grand plans after the election and the First 100 Days commitments could come to a naught if the Rain Gods are not happy. After some lucky years of good monsoon without major floods, signs this year are ominous. The delay in monsoon's arrival has hit people from Kerala to Kashmir and Mumbai to Manipur. Switching of crops and contingency plans for drinking water supply are being worked out as rain clouds are not on the horizon as we go into print. Desperate people are conducting even havans.

This could upset not only ambitious growth projections, but hit day-to-day life. Will the Megha Paani De chant be heard?

Besides economic implications - some harsh budgetary measures seem inevitable - the political ones are not difficult to discern. The defeated opposition could join the restive people outside Parliament, ending the UPA government's honeymoon.

Decaying Communists

Pinarayi Vijayan is the first Marxist to be charged with corruption with his own party in power in Kerala. Even if it is CPI (M)'s internal feud, a corruption at the centre of it, and not an ideological or political issue, is by itself a departure, party apparatchiks say.

Looks like, the CPI (M) that gave the nation the likes of EMS and A K Gopalan will not be the same again.

Peenarai, who has a running battle witb CM V S Achuthanandan, is sandwiched between an uncooperative CM and the CBI which is probing the charge of his favouring Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavlin.

The Canadian firm issued a low-key "we-have-nothing-tohide" denial, long after the scandal burst on the Kerala political scene and certainly after the CBI filed a charge sheet. Even the nature of denial is low-key, more pro-forma, probably on demand, officials who are following the case privately say.

Trinamool Jam?

The operation against the naxals in West Bengal is having a threeway fall-out and the party at the receiving end is Trinamool Congress.

For one, this suites the Centre. No longer cosy with the communists, it can ban the naxal outfits. And two, it suites the West Bengal Government too to let the Centre have its way. CM Buddhadweb Bhattacharya is happy that he does not have to bear the political cross of having to ban the CPI (Maoist).

At the same time, he can defy theparty bosses in Delhi, and get away with it citing administrative compulsions. That would also be his way to take it out on party boss, Prakash Karat. So, West Bengal government can cooperate with the Union Home Ministry even as the CPI (Marxist) protests the ban on CPI (Maoist) Now, where does the triumphal Trinamool come into this? It remained unfazed when the Maoists claimed that they had got arms and funds from Trinamool to fight the Marxist cadres and the police in Singur and Nandigram. But now the cat is out of the bag.

The cadres being beaten up in Lalgarh and other places the naxals captured belong to Trinamool. Intelligence sources say this is borne out by the fact that the so-called naxals attacking the CPI (Marxist) offices have thrown away photographs of Karl Marx, Fredrich Engels and Mao Dzedong. The naxals would never do this. This can only be the task of the Trinamool.

This has made the job easy for the West Bengal police and the central forces assisting them, to target Trinamool cadres masquerading as naxals.

The Scapegoat

The exit of B C Khanduri as Uttarakhand Chief Ministrer marks the end of an unsung experiment of the country's first CM with military background. A retired major general of the Indian Army, he had done well as a union minister in extensively building roads along the border. As Uttaraklhand CM, he did a good job as an administrator too, but lost to wily politicians who never allowed him respite. His party lost all seats in the general election, even as in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, it won all the seats. Khanduri had to be the scapegoat..

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