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For first time, Dalits of Madurai village vote in local body polls
- They could vote freely in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections but had to plead and fight for their right to exercise their franchise in local body polls.
- for the first time, the whole village, with a population of 200 belonging to 60 families with 71 votes, cast its vote at the polling station in Government Kallar Middle School, Kovilankulam, thanks to the efforts of District Collector U. Sagayam.
Education: The new Indo-U.S. alliance?
- The first Indo-U.S. Education Summit held last week showed much promise. While education can be driving force of the strategic dialogue between the two countries, this is also an opportunity for business. India's massive education sector, estimated at $25 billion, is waiting to be tapped.
- Last week, on October 13, India’s Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, concluded the first Indo-U.S. Higher Education Summit in Washington
- More than 100 million Indian youth are expected to join the work force by 2020, a number greater than the combined labour muscle of France, Britain, Italy and Spain. They represent a great potential for the world but only if they are “empowered with education and skills.” India needs to build an additional 1,000 universities and 50,000 colleges to serve the aspiring millions, to say nothing of the thousands of new qualified faculty members. A recent study conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Rutgers University and Pennsylvania State University revealed that India needed to recruit 1million faculty members by 2020 to satisfy the burgeoning domestic education demand.
- To sustain economic growth, India requires a skilled workforce of about 500 million by 2022. Since the current global economic focus is Asia, a young skilled Indian workforce can be the engine for world growth, especially when the west is faced with aging populations and recessionary trends.
- India took some good first steps at the education summit. Sibal indicated that India would initially sponsor 1,500 faculty and junior scholars from India to come to various U.S. universities and research institutions for training, and to broaden the interaction. He also wants to tap into the large numbers of Indian-Americans teachers and scholars in the U.S. who feel the tug of the mother country.
- There are plenty of hurdles to be overcome before the grand ideas can be executed. Although India permits 100% foreign direct investment in education, it does not permit the institutions to set up their own campuses and award degrees
- Foreign Education Providers Bill, which allows to establish a foreign institution in India.
- It was apparent that while U.S. representatives of universities were more interested in running quality institutions with the best faculty (read high fees-high profits) that can help them recover costs quickly, it will not serve the needs of the lower middle class Indians and small-town students who are desperate for a decent education
Right to recall a dangerous idea
- The practice of right to recall, or recall referendum, or representative recall exists in Switzerland, the US, the UK, Canada, Venezuela, among others, but there isn't enough evidence to suggest that it should be accepted as an inevitable character of democracies across the globe.
- The option of ‘recall' has already been tried out at panchayat levels in the states of Punjab (1994), Bihar (2010), Madhya Pradesh (2000), Maharashtra and Chhatisgarh (2004), but it hasn't produced any good results.
- Suggesting reforms in electoral system, the Law Commission of India, in 1999, had proposed an alternative method for elections, that could make the provision of winning the majority (50 percent plus 1) of the votes cast mandatory for the candidates. This meant that if no candidate received more than half the votes in an election conducted through FPTP, it would be followed by a second or run-off ballot slip, in which only the top two candidates of the first count would be allowed to contest.
- But his support for the introduction of Rule 49(O), for expressing displeasure over candidates, can become another area of concern.
‘CAG not exceeding its jurisdiction'
- Unlike some of his party colleagues who had criticised the government auditor for “crossing the line,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said he did not think the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) had exceed its jurisdiction in matters pertaining to reports on various scams.
- Mr. Mukherjee pointed out that a report by the CAG “is not automatically accepted by Parliament. [The] PAC examines it; they submit a report; and then if the report is accepted by Parliament, action is taken.”
