View Articles

India’s policy wonks and mandarins in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry have at long last woken up from their feigned slumber to put in place a draft National Policy on Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) a few days ago. This draft with warts and all would now be scanned by a heavy 70-member think tank chaired by Union Minister for Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu. As the draft was authored by the just-retired Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia, it had all the ingredients to make the stakeholders feel frustrated. This is presumably so as the draft is replete with typical gobbledygook and cumbersome provisions ranging from mandatory data localization, compliance with foreign investment caps in e-commerce and a national regulator for e-commerce that is likely to be headed by a serving or retired babu with a perverse incentive to indulge in regulatory capture or ride his or her hobby-horse to harass the players on the field.

“US-China trade war can make Indian products competitive”— declared some newspaper headlines on 5 and 6 August 2018, reproducing verbatim the press release of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). One started wondering why the premier industry chambers in the country should just restrict itself to seeing only new opportunity opening up due to the unfolding trade war instead of expressing concern over the possible overall adverse fallout of it.

It’s all over, bar the shouting… And the shouting will continue till the curtains come down on the next round of elections.

The death of J. Jayalalithaa and M. Karunanidhi within eight months of each other has rung the curtains down on the atheistic, anti-Hindu, anti-Brahmin and anti-Hindi Dravidian chapter of Tamil Nadu politics. The beginning of this period, which underlined the state’s distinctive nature, was the watershed event of the DMK’s victory in the 1967 assembly elections, which was the second time that the then seemingly invincible Congress tasted defeat after its loss to the communists in Kerala in 1957.

India will need to build on the success of its reforms to sustain rapid growth and raise incomes for the country’s 1.3 billion people, though the economy is gaining momentum. With a growing working-age population, which constitutes about two-thirds of the total population, India needs to reinvigorate reform efforts to keep the growth and job engine running. This is critical in a country where per capita income is about $2,000, still well below that of other large emerging economies.

Several findings and reports, including those of the parliament's standing committee and NITI Aayog, have consistently found fault with the way Medical Council of India handled medical education in India. MCI was tasked with "maintenance of uniform standards of medical education", in which it had failed miserably. Barring few exceptions, the current standards of medical education are abysmal. No wonder despite having 460 medical colleges, not one features in the global top 100 ranking. With the possible replacement of MCI with the National Medical Commission (NMC) is set to change the way India conducts its medical education.

Will somebody take the podium away from Shashi Tharoor? It should have been taken away from Asauddin Owaisi long ago. It’s not too late even now. But who will do the taking? Rahul Gandhi could in the case of Tharoor. Barrister Owaisi?

BHOPAL: Ignoring criticism and in gross violation of government rules and procedures, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister continues to announce sops to win the support of the electorate in the forthcoming Vidhan Sabha elections. Just the other day he handed over thousands of letters of intent of job to young people at a programme held in his constituency. Similar programmes were held all over the state in which letters of intent were given to prospective beneficiaries.

Weekly Round-Up of Major Decisions of the Courts in India as also Legal Policy Developments

The Union government has already confessed to the Supreme Court that the personal datas of some Aadhaar card-holders had been leaked. This confession is suffice to expose the tall claims of the Modi government that Adhaar was a safe and secured instrument. Though some rights organisations and activists have claimed that Aadhaar was not in the interest of the common people and it violated the basic concept of right to privacy, the government and its mandarins have strongly denied this. Critics of the government’s decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for everything, from obtaining PAN cards to getting benefits of the welfare projects, cautioned that the move would “dilute civil liberties and dominate the citizens”.