Author: swaniti

Start up – Stand Up India

The Start up India, Stand up India campaign was announced by Prime Minister Modi on 15thAugust, 2015. He called on each of the 1.25 lakh bank branches in India, to support at least one dalit or tribal, and at least one women entrepreneur, touting it as a new dimension to the startup culture. According to […]

Crimes Against Bihar’s Vulnerable Communities Soar

Date of Release: October 22nd, 2015 Published in: India Spend An inadequate police force is struggling to cope with a rising crime graph against Bihar’s vulnerable communities. Bihar has seen a 20-fold increase in crime against children–from 115 in 2005 to 2255 in 2014–over the past 10 years, according to data released by National Crime Records Bureau. […]

What Skill India Must Do To Succeed In Its Mission

Date of Release: August 8th, 2015 Published in: HuffingtonPost As the government continues to focus on skills and launches hallmark programs like the Skill India initiative, it is imperative to examine the impact of such a program. There are over 20 Central ministries/ departments involved in the implementation of more than 70 schemes for various skill development […]

Disinvestments – What’s a realistic target?

Disinvestments – What’s a realistic target? Disinvestments is a process through which the Government promotes people’s ownership in Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) thereby ensuring better governance and efficiency in the state run organizations. The receipts from disinvestments also act as an important revenue for the Government to gap its fiscal deficit. While there is […]

Women Parliamentarians have more responsibility today

In 1967, when India’s 4th Lok Sabha was elected to Parliament, there were 33 women MPs. In 2014, the 16th Lok Sabha has elected 66 women MPs – 62 in the 2014 elections, and 4 more through bye-elections. In 1967 for every 1 woman MP there were 1 crore female citizens. In 2014, that ratio had grown to 1 woman MP for […]

How clean is India since the launch of the sanitation missions?

Since the launch of the Nirmal Bharat mission, 1.7 crore individual households toilets have been built – this means that only 15% of the required number of toilets have been built till July 2015. The state with maximum number of toilets built since April 2012 is West Bengal, accounting for more than 14 percent of […]

Does more skilling lead to more jobs?

Skill India was launched on 15th July with the objective of providing skill training to about 400 million people by the year 2022. As per the latest Annual Employment & Unemployment Survey, 6.8% of people have received vocational training among which 4% were informally trained and 2.8% were formally trained. Research shows states that have […]

Air Pollution: The Silent Killer We Need To Talk About More Often

Date of Release: April 20th, 2015 Published in: DNA In terms of health costs, indoor air pollution accounts for twice as many lives lost in India than outdoor pollution. The issue of environmental conservation has gained in public importance because of the significant administrative measures (Air Quality Index) and judicial decisions (NGT rulings on diesel cars […]

More Money Means More Responsibility

Date of Release: March 31st, 2015 Published in: The Pioneer To make the most of their new financial freedom, State Governments need to improve their planning, allocation and utilization of funds, writes Apoorv Tiwari It has been almost a month since the Union Budget was presented, and much water has passed under the political bridge since then. The […]

Railway Budget 15-16: Though still far from a symphony, budget strikes the right notes

By Surbhi Maheshwari An often proudly stated fact is that the Indian Railway network carries more number of passengers every year compared to any other nation in the world. However, there is another aspect to railways which is often overlooked and that is freight.More than two-thirds of Indian Railway’s revenues come from freight business. The […]