Explained: What Railways restructure means

Why is it important? For GS Paper 2 (Contribution of Civil service), GS paper 4 (Morale of Civil servants) and Public Administration Paper 1 and Paper 2 Why in news? The Cabinet recently approved trimming of the Railway Board, the powerful body that governs the Indian Railways. From nine, the Board will now have only five…

Jan Soochna Portal

Recently, the government of Rajasthan had launched Jan Soochna Portal (JSP), which is in concurrence with the spirit of Right to Information Act (RTI). This virtually makes JSP a Janta Information System. JSP envisages public disclosure of data, which is the furtherance of civil society reforms initiated by the RTI, making it in synergy with good governance. Thus, JSP…

District collector vs District Magistrate vs District Judge

The position of District Collector was created by Warren Hastings in 1772. The main functions of the district collector were to supervise general administration, to collect land revenue and to maintain law and order in the district. He was the head of the revenue organization. He was responsible for registration, alteration, and partition of holdings;…

Public Administration Paper 1 & 2 (UPSC Mains 2017)

PAPER I   PAPER II  

Developments in Arunachal Pradesh: Row over Governor’s role

Watch debate here! Summary: Arunachal Pradesh is headed for a constitutional crisis, with the governor’s office accused of favouring the Congress’s rebel MLAs and the BJP in the state. According to experts, Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa’s decision to advance the winter session of the assembly by a month and issue directions to vote on a…

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,…

A compilation of state-level good practices

Good Practices Resource Book 2015, focusing on social-sector delivery. By “social sector” one often means education and health. (child protection, education, environment, financial inclusion, food security and public distribution, health, infrastructure and development, local governance, social security, water and sanitation, and women’s empowerment — have a broader “social security” canvas) One, child protection — Sampark…

Extreme justice is often injustice

While television anchors have harangued us about how juvenile crime has risen by 47 per cent, they have failed to inform us that actual juvenile crime is still less than 2 per cent of reported crime figures. Second, most of it is non-violent crime and often the result of vagrancy. Most importantly, most children in…

Issues related to Police

Following are the issues which need to be discussed in the conference (DGP Conference in Kutch): Collection and analysis of preventive intelligence: The most important and challenging task faced by the law enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies today is the collection and analysis of preventive intelligence and follow-up action, especially pertaining to terrorists and insurgents…

Misdiagnosis of the Rajya Sabha malfunction

Mohammad Tahir representing Bihar in the Constituent Assembly during the debate on the Constitution on July 28, 1947 said that “the Upper House is a creation of imperialism” and argued that independent India did not need it. To which Gopalaswami Ayyangar, replied that “the role of the Upper House is merely to delay legislation which might…