India | Write Stuff

Railway Budget 2009-10 or a Boxing match

By Ritika at 5 July, 2009, 11:51 pm

If you have never seen a boxing ring match between a former champion and a challenger, you can view the recent video of the Railway Budget 2009-10 of India being presented in the Parliament. The former champion was our ever entertaining Lalu Prasad Yadav, erstwhile Railway Minister, and the challenger, our ‘didi’, Mamata Banerjee, the current Railway Minister. I can’t tell you who won which round and the whole match, as I don’t think we have seen the end of it. The match will definitely go on.

Tackling India’s own Taliban

By Ritika at 26 June, 2009, 9:18 am

I can’t help but draw parallels between Pakistan’s crusade against Taliban in Swat valley and Indian government’s crusade against Maoist in Lalgarh. As Pakistan army fights the Taliban to uproot their hold over the Swat valley, India too is fighting its own Taliban, the Maoists in Lalgarh and currently carrying out an operation to regain the land usurped by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the hinterlands of the West Bengal.

Did Anyone say - Weak PM?

By Ritika at 24 June, 2009, 8:27 pm

The last elections were mainly fought by BJP by projecting BJP Prime Ministerial candidate L.K. Advani as a strong leader unlike Manmohan Singh, the Congress Prime Ministerial candidate, who was often criticized for being a weak leader by the opposition BJP, the media and by many of his own party men. Though Manmohan Singh stood his ground on the nuclear treaty issue which forced Left to withdraw support, he was still regarded as a man who worked under the aegis of Sonia Gandhi and who did not have the courage to stand his own guard.

Monetary Economy: An imperfect model III – Socialism

By Akhilesh at 31 May, 2009, 3:03 am

Socialism though thought by many intellectuals to be an alternative to Capitalism and a more equitable form of governing an economy is not very different from Capitalism. According to me, in this case also we follow the fundamental of scarcity and ownership. The only difference lies that the ownership of resources is controlled by the [...]

Ways to deal with the child labour menace in India

By Ritika at 29 May, 2009, 12:22 am

Recently, I read an article in ‘The Economist’ regarding child labour in Bangladesh. That set me thinking that we don’t fare much better in India. We have often seen rampant child labour practices in textile, small scale industries, gems and jewellery etc and mostly in domestic help sector. Though we have child labour laws prohibiting [...]