Our Bhaarat

One of the appreciable developments in the recent period is the publication of National Logistics Policy or NLP in short form. It was published / declared on 17th September 2022. A concept of Global Logistics Hub also is introduced in that policy. With this remarkable one forward step, India needs one more policy as National Manufacturing Policy (NMP). Without this policy, the logistics policy is more likely to result into transportation and distribution of imported goods into India. The transportation infrastructure should be utilized more for promoting the exports of Made in India goods. I hope that the said NMP also will be formulated and declared in near future. . Last updated on 2022.10.02. (First uploaded on 2022.10.02.) .

Generally it is said that when a majority of the population of a nation is within the range of working age of 20-65, that state is called 'demographic dividend' for that nation. During recent years, it is claimed that India is passing through that phase. But that is a misleading claim. The reason of that is as follows. Strictly speaking, the term 'demographic dividend' means that a majority of the population of a nation is within the range of working age of 20-65, a majority of them actually have a job on hand, they get the monthly earning and pay the income tax to the government. That is the full condition for that term. Nearly 2/3rd population of India is dependent on the PDS for food security support by the government. This is poor state of living by the people. The better state of living would be that the people can afford to buy the food from the open market, out of their earning, without any support by the government. This is surely not the case for India. Hardly ...

The following statement made by a top leader is seen having made the headlines recently. 'It is wrong to use someone and throw them away after the need is over.'  Let us keep the personal references aside as we are not going to discuss on the personal level matters. But with that statement, a query appears as what will be right. We see the tendency of many leaders of occupying an office in the political domain, for many successive terms. Perhaps many leaders may be expecting an opportunity of occupying an office for the life time. That may be ok for the personal interests. That may be ok for the persons working in the private sector companies or in the family owned business enterprises. But that is surely not ok for the political organizations which run our nation.   There are plenty of examples of one person or a few persons from the same family having contested the elections from the same constituency, for many successive terms. There are examples of such persons having comp...

On Sunday, 28.08.2022, the twin towers in NOIDA were demolished within 12 seconds, by adopting advanced blast technique. It was a remarkable achievement as far as adopting advanced  technique is concerned. Now there are news of the orders having been issued for demolition of a resort which was built illegally at Dapoli, in the Konkan region of Maharashtra state, by an influential political leader. In many such cases, demolition of illegal buildings seems a thoughtless action.   Logically such illegal constructions take place due to negligence of the corrupt officers of local municipal bodies. So those officers should be punished and the cost of demolition should be recovered from them. But instead of that, the expenses of demolition are ultimately pushed to the honest tax payers. That is wrong. To change that situation, some new provisions should be incorporated in the law.  Such illegal buildings should be confiscated, then legalized and after that, their ownership right...

The persons connected to the stock exchange activities know about both these indices. I am going to open a new topic for discussion related to its composition. Both these indices are composed of the securities (shares) of fifty reputed companies, from diverse business sectors. This composition is reviewed periodically, the worse performing companies are removed and other better performing companies are included in those indices. This practice helps show a better picture of the capital market. But that may not be necessarily the true picture of the whole market. The performance of thousands of other companies listed on the stock exchange is not reflected in those indices. Therefore I call both these indices as the ' Partial Indices '. To overcome this lacuna, I suggest to introduce another index, by whatever name found suitable, which will cover all companies which are listed on the stock exchange and have collected the money from the public in the past. All such companies shoul...

The controversy over this topic arises because it is generally correlated to the religious matters. But it need not be so. I suggest for introducing two separate statutes as follows, for moving one step further in that direction. (1) Family Affairs Recognition Act -- This statue should cover the matters related to registration of birth, death, marriage, divorce, child adoption, support to minor children, disowning of children (minor and adult, both), inherence of the family property, live in relationships, nomination, etc. This statute should be uniformly applicable to all persons, irrespective of the caste, religion, language, race etc. The rules related to family planning also should be uniformly applicable to all. All other existing statues on these matters should be repealed. The religious rituals should be obviously kept out the scope of this statute. (2) Religious Bodies Regulation Act -- This statue should cover the matters related to registration of the religious bodies, their ...

There are plenty of cases in India that some particular portion of a law is questioned in the Supreme Court of India. Many times it occurs after a controversy arises and somebody goes to the Court. That results into a lot of uncertainty about the validity of the matter under dispute. That turns harmful for the economic activity also, sooner or later, directly or indirectly. So it will be wise to consider doing the Restructuring of the Legislative Process, for avoiding such unwanted and undesirable time lapse in the litigation. My suggestion for that is as follows. The normal practice is of sending the bills to the President (or the Governor) for final approval, after having those passed in both the legislative Houses. I suggest that, all bills be always routed through the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, for judicial review, after having those passed in both the legislative Houses, but before sending to the President for final approval. Anyway we have a provision ...

The political crisis which occurred in Maharashtra in July 2022 is known having been linked to 10th Schedule of the Constitution. We now await the next hearing of the supreme Court of India, which is scheduled to be held on 8th August 2022. It will become clear on that day whether a Constitutional Bench will be needed/appointed for this case or not. The anti-defection law is already under criticism due to the provision of the Party Whip. It nullifies the freedom of the elected public representatives and makes them somewhat like the slaves to the party. The purpose of the law was ok to some limited extent only. But the recent happenings in Maharashtra has become a special case, as a group of some MLAs and MPs claim that they have just formed a separate group; but not left the party as such. My Observations -- It is claimed that there is no provision in the law which allows forming a separate group within a party and that the outgoing MLAs or MPs have to merge into a separate party anyho...

A New Standard for Doing Town Planning and Its Evaluation -- Daily to and from commuting over long distance is non-productive. It causes waste of time, waste of fuel, forces the people to spend more money and results in the fatigue for the people. There is a way, for avoiding this situation. Although it is not easy doing so immediately, the care can be taken while doing the planning for new towns. New Parameter and its Unit of Measurement -- The Parameter to be Measured   --     Daily Commuting The Unit of Measurement   --     person-kilometres (p.km)  Similar Unit of Measurement   --     man-hours ASP's 1st Table of Norms for Better Town Planning -- One way Distance of Commuting From Home to Place of Work The Indicative % of the People Commuting Daily From an Area Under Consideration 0 - 3 km At least 50% or more 3 - 6 km 30% Maximum 6 - 10 km 15% Maximum More than 10 km 5% Maximum The Advantages of using th...

'While modern India was built around the goal of removing the disparities in the society, the reality is that, today, only a small percentage of the population can approach the justice delivery system, when in need. Majority of the people suffer in silence, lacking awareness and necessary means.' The CJI Mr. N. V. Ramana is known to have said so while addressing the first All India District Legal Service Authorities (DLSAs) meet on Saturday, 30th July 2022. It is learnt that Prime Minister also was present during the event, who highlighted on a new theme of 'Ease of Justice'. The CJI is known have highlighted on the district judiciary, for that coming first into the contact with the people who need justice. Since the structural base matters, let us see what will be needed. My point is that the focus of the district judiciary should not remain limited to the head quarters of respective districts . It should be made to reach down to the village level. I have already sugge...

The new sculpture of the three lions emblem of India, which is now installed on the top of the parliament building was unveiled recently for the public display. After that, there were comments about the loss of the proportions with respect to the original, ancient sculpture available at Sarnath. With that, the 1st thought appeared in my mind was about the technical specification of that emblem. If it is about the printing of the image of that emblem, the government authorities can reproduce the existing images or take new photographs and print those or publish in the electronic media, like the websites. But when it comes to the physical objects like the sculptures, the specifications are needed. We have such specification, Indian Standard IS:1, for the flag of India. There is the Flag Code also. It seems that no such specification and no code exists for the three lions emblem. It might not have been felt needed until now. But once the controversy has arisen, it will be better finalizin...

The background --   The 'haircut' in the context of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) is the amount forgone by the banks or the creditors, out of total amount of outstanding debt, during the process of recovery of bad debt. It is learnt that, in at least 363 major NCLT resolution cases since 2017, banks have taken an average haircut of 80%.  ( Source -- Data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) ) The high level of such ratio is upto 95% or even more than that for a few cases and it is known that the parliamentary panel also had questioned the government for such high ratio agreed upon by the public sector banks. The government's reply was of very less liquidation value in such cases. It was argued that such ratios are a matter of commercial settlement and depend upon the residual value of the assets. So any upper limit for the haircut cannot be fixed in the law. This much is known to all economists and the concerned commentators. The points that go...

In an article titled 'Two lessons from the scandal at NSE', published in Hindustan Times dated 26.07.2022, the author Mr. Pramit Bhattacharya, a journalist from Chennai, has written as follows. 'Without a robust financial sector, it will not be possible to sustain rapid growth in the country. Hence it is important that the design of India's financial architecture be thought anew.' My observation -- One correction is needed in that statement. 'Without a robust manufacturing sector, it will not be possible to sustain rapid growth in the country. Hence it is important that the design of India's financial architecture should be thought anew, with that focus.' I have suggested for such new type of architecture in broad view. The Comparison -- (1) The potential for employment generation -- There is huge population with low skill or semi skill vocational abilities. The financial sector doesn't have that potential. It is the manufacturing sector which can g...

It is learnt that a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court, by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who sought a direction for issuance of stringent guidelines to deregister errant political parties and seize their election symbols for offering irrational freebies ahead of polls. He added that India could be soon on its way to becoming Sri Lanka if freebies were not controlled. In this connection, a bench of the Supreme Court comprising justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli and headed by the CJI N. V. Ramana, hearing the case on Tuesday, 26th July 2022, was surprised at the helplessness expressed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in controlling the serious problem of the freebies and sought to know from the Finance Commission (FC) if revenue allocation to states can take into account unnecessary expenditures on hand outs. “God save the Election Commission of India if it’s saying that we can’t do anything when the electorates are sought to be bribed through freeb...

It is known that the Indian judiciary is suffering from huge number of pending cases in the courts at various levels. The problem has worsened due to the chain of appeals in the upper level courts. Not only that, it is seen that many times, the verdicts issued by the lower level courts were reversed by the upper level courts. There are many cases wherein the verdicts issued by the High Courts were reversed by the Supreme Court. That generates many doubts about the quality of the verdicts. Apart from these observations of the ordinary citizens, many issues are seen being raised by the judges of the Supreme Court. (1) Mr. N. V. Ramana, the CJI, is known having expressed concern about the sorry state of affairs of the House (the Parliament of India). While speaking at the independence day ceremony organized by the Supreme Court Bar Association, on 15.08.2021, the CJI attributed the falling standards of parliamentary debate to the absence of intellectuals and professionals in the parliamen...

The concepts of Redevelopment and Upgradation of Our Democracy are basically for one and the same purpose. There are many symptoms that our Indian democracy has gone considerable deterioration over a period of 70 years and we need a lot of reforms. We need a serious re-think of the structural aspects rather than discussion on mere political happenings.That will help achieve the qualitative improvement. We do upgradation of the operating system of our computers and mobile phone handsets. It renders many advantages to us.  Now I raise the 1st question as follows. Why should we not do the upgradation of the operating system of the democracy ? Doing so will surely render many advantages to us.   Earlier there was ASCII in the domain of computers and internet. But the computer engineers didn't restrict themselves to the ASCII based on the emotional grounds. It is a technical standard for facilitating the input and output to and from the computer machines. Later the computer engine...