India Political Blog

Maharashtra political situation - clear winners, and yet no Government

Ashish — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:14:37 +0000

This is almost like scoring a self-goal. So many days after convincingly trouncing the BJP-Shiv Sena combine in the state assembly, the Congress-NCP has not yet been able to come to an agreement on the sharing of ministries. Even though there is no direct threat to their success in the assembly, this bickering over the [...]

Another one - Family kills son-in-law, allows daughter to be abused

Ashish — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:48:08 +0000

Its horrible to read of such a case, and yet how many times do you read about such cases. Earlier, I would read about honour killings in many countries, especially in the Middle East, and wonder as to how somebody could do such a thing to a fellow human being, and especially to a close [...]

Fight against the Maoists - need a unified strategy (2)

Ashish — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:27:20 +0000

The first version of this article talked about why the Maoist problem has grown to such a large degree, and how the lack of development, and percolating of the forward movement of the Indian economy to backward and tribal areas is important. In the second part, we address how serious the issue is, and what [...]

Fight against the Maoists - need a unified strategy (1)

Ashish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:47:50 +0000

A lot of problems that India faces in terms of internal disturbances are ignored till they are almost too late to solve. So, the Punjab problem was allowed to grow without actions being taken to stop or take concrete actions to stop the problem, the same with the Kashmir problem. Now, we have seen the [...]

IAF allowed to fire back at Naxals

Ashish — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:50:20 +0000

The Naxals in India inhabit regions that are poor, isolated from the main urban areas, and in many of the states in central India, the regions are also wooded, being full of thick forests. In these regions, the people of these regions have a life that is not very developed, where the apparent money spent [...]

Air India incident - the airline takes some action

Ashish — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:56:43 +0000

This was probably the last thing that Air India needed. Air India has already been in the news because of the constant losses that have totally eroded its net worth (compared to private airlines that have suffered losses, but are still plodding through). It has been widely reported that these losses are aggravated because of [...]

Ahemdabad: Spreading the RTI message

Ashish — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:20:13 +0000

The RTI Act came into force around 4 years ago, on October 12, 2005 to be exact. RTI (Right To Information) is a key method for common citizens to learn more about how decisions are made, what are the internal workings of departments and Government funded organizations. The Government is supposed to work in mysterious [...]

Not enough courts to deal with cheque bouncing cases

Ashish — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:25:58 +0000

In India, the pendency of cases with the judicial system is a joke. When high profile cases such as terrorism cases, as well as political cases dealing with judicial review of actions by Governors or speakers can take a long time to come to a decision, what would be the case of trials where is [...]

Personal Finance - What is a down payment ?

Ashish — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:33:55 +0000

A term such as a down payment may seem obvious to many people who have experience in dealing with financial matters, but it makes a lot of difference to somebody who is getting into the matters of loans, EMI’s, etc for the first time. I know a lot of younger people who did not plan [...]

Personal finance - What is loan insurance ?

Ashish — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:16:52 +0000

What is loan insurance, and why do you need it ? Loan insurance is an insurance policy meant to cover the risks taken when a person takes a loan for which the principal amount is many times greater than your annual money inflow, and you need to have a backup plan if this source of income [...]