The recent expose of scams seemed to have made the Congress leadership more determined in cleaning up the system. ‘Cleaning up’ the system finds the second place in the Government’s to-do list for the next financial year, according to the speech read out by President Pratibha Patil in Parliament at the start of the Budget […]
The hard-line Deobandi school of Islam has the support of only around 20% of India’s 16-18 crore Muslims and most Indian Muslims prefer Sufi flavored versions, Timothy Roemer, the then Ambassador to India, told Farah Pandit before her first visit to India as Obama’s Administration’s ‘Special Representative to Muslim Communities.’ In a thorough analysis of […]
India’s slow moving bureaucracy and legal system came out as its biggest disadvantage relative to China, executives of American firms in Bangalore told a visiting Senator in 2007. The cumbersome nature of carrying out development work, including slow moving legal challenges and overall decision making, was keeping India back from developing critical infrastructure like roads, […]
US officials worried that the Union Government’s move to absorb private universities into the Government system and force its own curriculum on them is likely to dent India’s ability to churn out graduates whose training is in line with the needs of modern industries like IT, according to a 2010 cable leaked by Wikileaks. Education […]
Pakistan felt it was unfair to give India a higher status than itself at Climate Change negotiations despite having less to lose from it, according to US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson. Writing from Islamabad shortly after the Copenhagen round of Climate Change negotiations petered out, Patterson noted that the mood in Islamabad was particularly […]
US politician and Obama’s first ambassador Timothy Roemer, a keen observer of demographic trends, rather dramatically describes the changes taking place in the Indian state of Punjab due to immigration from Eastern India and Bangladesh. Based on his interaction with social and political leaders from the state, Roemer also noted that the Islamic religion — […]
US carrier Sprint Nextel filed a suit rivals against AT&T and the Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Mobile against the former’s bid to acquire the latter on that it would create a ‘duopoly.’ It has come six days after the U.S. Department of Justice today moved to block AT&T Corporation’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA which opposed it […]
Home Minister P Chidambaram’s assent to the formation of a Telangana state in December 2009 showed the Congress party as “weak and feeble.. easily bullied and intimidated by threats,” the then US ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer wrote to Washington on the next day. The Congress Party came was being portrayed as “weak and spineless, […]
MTS India said it has become the first operator in the World to launch a mobile network based on the Phase II of the CDMA EV-DO (Revision B) technology. While that may sound like a lot of gobbledygook to many consumers, what it means is that the speed on the CDMA network can now hit […]
Idea Cellular, the telecom operator part of the Aditya Birla group, has cut its 3G data rates across the country, five months after it launched such services. NOTE: Most of these plans have been withdrawn as of 23 May 2012 While the launch tariffs were in line with the tariffs charged by its main competition […]
Barely a month after Reliance Communications broke the Rs 15,000 price-barrier for a branded 3G tablet in India, Spice Mobile has mounted a strong challenge to the company with its new Spice Mi-720 tablet. Though Bharti group firm Beetel had become the second prominent brand two weeks ago to to enter this category with its […]
While it has always been known that talks between Chinese and US officials are not always cordial, the stormy nature of some of these meetings is revealed in cable written by US embassy in Beijing in October 2007. The cable described the unusually aggressive and blunt feedback from the then Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi […]
The Editors’ Guild, one of the most powerful media organizations in the country, today approached the Information and Broadcasting ministry to seek sweeping reforms in the country’s defamation laws. The guild urged the government to repeal provisions of the current defamation rules under which editors of newspapers and TV channels may be put in jail […]
Congress General secretary and son of Congress President Sonia Gandhi has made a statement in the Parliament today on the ongoing anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. Rahul Gandhi, widely seen as Congress’ Prime Ministerial candidate after the term of Manmohan Singh, thanked Anna Hazare for “articulating” the anti-corruption sentiment of the people. “The real […]
The Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar said she has received 7 to 8 proposals from the members of the house to hold discussions on the Lokpal issue. However, most of the requests, including those from senior congress leaders like Jagdambika Pal and Sandeep Dikshit are calling for a no-vote discussion, while two private members have […]
Team Anna has dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s proposal to widen the scope of the Lokpal bill, calling it a “five year plan” and impractical. Some even called it a possible delaying tactic. Most of Anna Hazare’s supporters are not impressed by Rahul Gandhi’s seeming earnestness in tying the Lokpal issue with a lot of others such […]
Five major political parties have offered their full support to the three demands raised by the Anna Hazare group yesterday, movement leader Arvind Kejriwal said. The three demands are 1) Entire bureaucracy must be within under the Lokpal’s scope, including the lowest level clerk or peon 2) There must be a citizen’s charter associated with […]
The Bhartiya Janata Party, which had expressed its great displeasure after the Congress Party ‘back-stabbed’ it with a surprising statement by Rahul Gandhi, has been persuaded not to insist on a vote on Lokpal bill tomorrow. According to Parliamentary Affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, the BJP and the government have agreed to have a simple […]
Even as minutes remain for the beginning of the debate in the Indian Parliament on Anna Hazare’s three demands for Lokpal, uncertainty remains over whether or not there will be a vote on the three specific demands. A vote-less discussion is likely to simply postpone the current conflict and agitation by a few weeks or […]
Minutes before the Parliament starts a debate on veteran Gandhian Anna Hazare’s demands on Jan Lokpal, the 74-year-old sent a clear signal that he is willing to fight on if the legislature tries to wriggle out of the situation. Speaking on the 12th day of his marathon fast, he tried to lay to rest the […]
