Civil Service Reforms: Few ‘Innovations’ By NITI Aayog, If One Can Call Them So

As civil service reforms go, the Niti Aayog’s Three Year Action Agenda: 2017-18 to 2019-2020, released recently, contains little that is new or innovative. The idea that policy making is a specialized activity and needs lateral entrant of specialists on fixed-term contracts to bring in competition into established career bureaucracy has been talked about for…

Prime Minister’s Address on Citizen Engagement portal MyGov.in

This is a first of its kind initiative, where Prime Minister interacted with citizens on governance and delivery related issue. This was modeled on Town hall kind of system, which we see abroad. Prime Minister also said “Bad politics loses to good governance“. This was also the celebration of 2 years of MyGov.in digital platform.…

Centre notifies Good Samaritan SOPs

The Centre has issued a notification ensuring that the affidavit of “Good Samaritan”, a person who voluntarily declares himself to be an eyewitness, shall be treated by the investigating officer as a final statement. Background: The notification is in response to Supreme Court directions in an October 2014 case of SaveLIFE Foundation asking the Centre…

Good country index

In the ‘Good Country’ 2015 index, Sweden has been voted as the best country in the world when it comes to serving the interests of its people and contributing to the common good of humanity. The index ranks a total of 163 countries taking 35 different UN and World Bank indices into account, including global…

Digital vans all set to take e-governance to rural areas

The Hindu Government’s new initiative: The government will roll out a new campaign under which 66 digital vans. Van will be equipped with Internet and audio-visual facilities, will go to 657 districts by March 2017 to increase awareness about various e-governance services in rural and semi-urban areas. Aim: To reach out to more than 10…

PM’s interaction through PRAGATI

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, recently chaired his 12th interaction through PRAGATI – the ICT-based, multi-modal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation. The Prime Minister reviewed the progress towards handling and resolution of grievances related to disbursement of scholarships/fellowships to students. He sought to know the reasons for the delay, and enquired about…

Public and Private sector

The debate about reforms pivoted on one central axis. What should be the role of the public and private sectors in development? This debate is not as simple as ideological purists think. And the mere rolling back of the licence-permit raj in areas of industrial production was only a small part of this debate. Admittedly,…

‘Smart’ to ‘sensitive’ policing

In 2014 Modi shifted DGP conference’s permanent venue from Delhi to Guwahati for the first time since its inception in 1965, where he spoke on S-Sensitive and Strict, M-Modern and Mobile, A-Alert and Accountable, R-Responsive and Reliable, T-Techno savvy and Trained” police. This year PM said- “sensitivity has to be vital element of policing. Police…

Municipal Bonds

What is Municipal Bonds? Municipal bonds (also known as munis) are debt vehicles issued by state and local governments to finance their operations and fund municipal projects. Debt instrument may be a perplexing term, but think of municipal bonds as loans from lenders to state and local governments. In the case of municipal bonds, many…

Splendid decade, human development in India

India’s ranking on Human Development Index (HDI) rose by a notch in 2014 — to 130 th  from 131st a year earlier. With a score of 0.609 on HDI, India stands well below the average score of 0.630 for countries in the medium human development group. But it is marginally above the South Asian countries’…