When a slew of questions on fuel price hike by the government was raised at a Cabinet briefing earlier this week, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad chided reporters, telling them to ask "better" questions when the economy was "booming"."The Indian economy is booming, and you do not have any questions on that," he asked. "You seem to be concerned only with fuel price hike." The economy grew at 7.9 per cent in the March quarter of 2015-16 and the government achieved the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent of gross domestic product in FY16, although private investment remained sluggish and doubts loom over the quality of data.

Good times, bad questions

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The killing of Congolese citizen Masonda Kitanda Olivier in Delhi last month - followed by random attacks on African nationals in the capital - exposed, like nothing else, the inconvenient truth of the racism embedded in the social outlook of most ordinary Indians. The death of the 23-year-old Congolese is a sinister but extreme example; Africans who come to study and work in India complain of discrimination and slights on an almost daily basis. Some 30,000 Africans study in Indian universities around the country, yet they remain the eternal outsiders. Nor is this attitude restricted to the ordinary citizenry; the Aam Aadmi Party's then law minister Somnath Bharti's reprehensible leadership of a midnight raid on African women last year and the Goa chief minister's recent statement that Nigerians were a "problem" demonstrate that the attitude cuts across the political class too. The death of Masonda Olivier proved especially embarrassing because it occurred just months after a massively

Race to the bottom

As the AgustaWestland helicopter bribery case occupies the headlines, the question of how the defence procurement system should react to such accusations has become even more pressing. Under the defence minister in the previous, United Progressive Alliance, government, a particular method was used: the blacklisting of any company accused of bribery. Perhaps the motivation for this was understandable, given the political sensitivity of defence bribery accusations. However, it rapidly became clear that it is a blunt tool - and, furthermore, one which if used at length will seriously compromise India's national security. Consider the case of India's newest range of submarines, being produced under what is called Project 75. The decision was taken to expand India's aging fleet of 13 diesel-electric submarines, many of which are long past their decommissioning dates, and which pose a threat to lives and security. Project 75 was supposed to deliver six submarines - the design would be from t

Re-examine blacklisting

Food safety authority's puzzling regulations

Dangerous bottled water

No sooner had Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah finished his meal at the home of one Girija Prasad Bind in Jogiyapur village of Varanasi - the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - than his detractors made their reactions known. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav dismissed Shah's visit to a Dalit home as a charade and said that Samajwadi Party leaders didn't indulge in "such drama". Bahujan Samaj Party President and former chief minister Mayawati, too, slammed Shah, terming his visit "no less than a nautanki (drama)".

Shah's visit causes a flutter

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is pointing at what it calls the Congress hypocrisy about its claims of protecting the interests of minorities. The BJP has either nominated or re-nominated two Muslim leaders - Minorities Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and party spokesperson M J Akbar - as its Rajya Sabha (RS) candidates from Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, respectively. There is no Muslim on the Congress' list of RS candidates. BJP leaders were quick to add that both Akbar and Naqvi had been nominated on "merit". The BJP also said that its candidates had served the party for decades, while parties such as the Congress, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had fielded lawyers: The RJD has fielded Ram Jethmalani from Bihar, the Congress is backing Vivek Tankha from Madhya Pradesh and the INLD is supporting lawyer R K Anand in Haryana. The BJP is being accused of supporting businessmen. Its legislators are likely to support media baron Subhash Chandra in Hary

Nomination games

In the column, "Ivy League in Gurgaon" (May 31), Anjuli Bhargava has rightly raised a red flag about the propensity of "education providers" - perhaps the biggest money-makers after self-proclaimed gurus - to make tall, unsubstantiated claims about their facilities and faculty.The advertiser in question has likely surpassed others in its sheer audacity making claims that are nothing short of ridiculous. Admittedly, the particular group of institutes has done a great job of creating infrastructure, especially in Noida, and its alumni have also found decent placements. But it seems it got carried away by its success while designing the particular advertisement.There should be a mechanism in place to check the veracity of such claims. False claims in the education sector, if proved, amounts to criminality.The big question: Who will carry out the verification and certification? University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education, state-supported outfits or a new, indepe

Letters: Need for a mechanism

Apropos the editorial, "Dangerous bottled water" the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.Nothing can justify the FSSAI's mindless reaction to the detection of potassium bromate in several samples of bread by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). It sought to ban the use of the chemical as an additive in bread and other bakery products, but defended its earlier move to permit limited amounts of the same in packaged drinking water. How can it adopt double standards and take such a selective stand on the matter?One wonders why the CSE had to carry out the FSSAI's job. Is the latter responsible only for fixing quality standards for food products? Shouldn't it also carry out frequent random checks to ensure that food safety standards are adhered to by their producers throughout the country? What about making FSSAI officials accountable?The FSSAI should learn from its dubious past and not take ill-conceived and/or hasty

Letters: FSSAI, mend your ways

With reference to the editorial, "Dangerous bottled water" (June 1), the affinity to bottled water is fading, as environmental and health concerns about it are taking centre stage. Besides, using 1.6 litres of water to package one litre of water that tastes no better than tap water, and generating huge post-consumer trash seem unwise. Pepsico had admitted last year that its Aquafina brand of mineral water contains nothing but tap water.Sikkim became the first Indian state to ban packaged bottled water in government departments and events; Bihar followed suit.It would be a huge betrayal of people's trust if bottled water were found to contain toxic chemicals even as processed food is under the scanner.For the regulator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to be inconsistent on the presence of potentially hazardous potassium bromate in bakery products and bottled water is tantamount to playing with the lives of people.The World Health Organization is right in recommending that bo

Letters: A toxic matter

The provisional estimates of national income for the year 2015-16, and the quarterly estimates of gross domestic product or GDP for the fourth quarter of that year - from January to March - were released on Tuesday by the Central Statistics Office of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation. The whole year's statistic for economic growth is at 7.6 per cent, the same as was estimated in the advance numbers released in February. However, the headline-grabbing number is the estimate for GDP growth at constant 2011-12 prices for the final quarter of 2015-16, which is 7.9 per cent. Almost eight per cent growth cements India's position as the fastest-growing large economy in the world. Notably, estimates for GDP growth in the previous three quarters have been revised slightly downward, so anything less than 7.9 per cent in the third quarter would have meant that India would have fallen short of the advance estimates of GDP growth for the full year, issued in February. Seen o

Signs of recovery

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, this man from the interiors of Aligarh is scripting the path to a better financial system

Letters: A whiff of fresh air

Govt has tried its best to push critical Bills - including the most important, Goods and Services Tax Bill - but has not succeeded due to the obstructionist attitude of the Congress

Letters: Don't criticise the NDA

Of the 235 PSUs operational at present, about 25 per cent suffered a loss of Rs 27,360 crore in 2014-15

Letters: Eradicate inherent ills

The CPI-M was relegated to the third position behind the Congress in the Assembly polls

Retrospective effect

Derek O'Brien said the Opposition parties approached the people of the state with a "double negative": stop development and defeat Mamata

Double whammy

When Misa Bharti went to file her nomination to the Rajya Sabha, she forgot to carry a pen with her

The 'right' pen for Misa

Why are cricket broadcasts of "national importance"?

Not cricket

Principles that should underlie FRBM redesign

Fiscal prudence

If you haven't bought a helmet yet, don't ride around in a two-wheeler in Odisha

Helmet please

Kalavati Bandurkar became the face of farm widows in Vidarbha after Gandhi visited her in 2008 and narrated her plight in Parliament

Kalavati is back

Parrikar's comments come at a time when Goa is getting ready for elections next year

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