Analyses

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may or may not have succeeded on many fronts in the one year that his party has led a coalition government at the Centre. Many issues are debatable, but one that cannot be denied is the unabashed and relentless assault on those who speak for the environment. But examining the issue only through a saffron-hued prism, or one that selectively blocks out saffron light would not be correct – both are equally fallacious and self-defeating. It is important to understand...

Hectic parleys are currently on to end the impasse over the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill that is hanging fire in the Rajya Sabha. The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Second Amendment) Bill, 2014 that was introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 19, 2014 by Union Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley, has already been passed by the Lower House of Parliament, and is currently being deliberated by a Select Committee of the Upper House. Exact dates are still uncertain, and it is still early to...

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has staved off an immediate political crisis by asking for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the lottery scandal, but his worries are far from over. Barely two months after the state government had knocked at the CBI’s doors to ensure that there was a fair probe into the mysterious death of IAS officer DK Ravi, little could Siddaramiah have imagined that he would again have to seek the help of the country's top investigating agency to...

There is something surreal about the way people – from politicians to citizens – have been reacting to two incidents: the order of the National Green Tribunal penalising two real estate developers for unauthorised constructions in the city's lakes, and the frothing over of Varthur lake. The decay and obliteration of Bangalore's lakes is not news, and neither are the reactions of one and sundry. The outrage is misplaced, since it seems politicians and real estate developers are the only ones...

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who completed two years in office on Wednesday, will find the going get tougher by the day. Two elections are looming large on the horizon, and neither augurs well. The first is a prestige issue. The state government has been directed by the Supreme Court to hold elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) within August 5, something that Siddaramaiah has been stalling for a while. Being asked to hold elections, itself, is a loss of face for...

In early April came the slightly disconcerting news that the Union government was planning to dilute the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012. It may soon be illegal to employ children below 14 years of age in any type of commercial or paid work, except in family shops and ventures. It is the exception here which is the dilution in question. And, there’s more in the details. Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Bandaru Dattatreya, was reported in the media...

The issue of splitting up the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) into smaller corporations, under some pretext or the other, has cropped up on a number of occasions in recent times. Only that, this time it's more than an academic exercise – a split definitely seems quite on the cards. What is, however, ironic in the ongoing babble over the pros and cons of a possible trifurcation of the BBMP is that many have changed opinions as times have changed. In January 2013, at a seminar on...

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) always gets it left, right and centre when it comes to governance. And, if good governance were to be about participatory democracy, the BBMP would be reckoned to be an abject failure. For over 20 years, various ruling dispensations in the state had virtually ignored the Constitution (74th Amendment) Act, 1992, which devolves power to basic units of governance in cities and towns called ward committees. The result was a lack of transparency in civic...

If financial health is to be taken as the bottomline, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been lying comatose for a while, kept alive only by alternately conniving and obliging state governments irrespective of political ideologies. The BBMP is a financial disaster for many reasons, the prime among them being the tendency to live beyond its means, not mopping up enough revenue for itself, and, of course, rampant corruption at all levels of the corporation. It has only been doing...

The Karnataka Chief Minister has been insistent that the state capital has grown too big in numbers, and, is therefore unmanageable. It is this reason that Siddaramaiah has been propping up as the official explanation to split up the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Bengaluru has definitely grown, and is a big mess in itself. The BBMP is currently the largest municipal corporation in the country with an area of 712.54 sq km under it. With a population of 8,443,675 according to the 2011...