The National Rural Corruption Guarantee Scheme (NRCGS) was the title of a post from Nov 2007, one of a series of posts dealing with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, starting with one in Nov 2004 on “Sir, won’t you buy this bridge and the Employment Guarantee Act?”

I don’t know who Swami Ramdev is. I have not seen him, read him, or heard him. My knowledge of who he is is limited to what I read about him in this Rediff article, “Swami Ramdev attacks the political system“, which says that he is “the iconic yoga guru with a phenomenal mass fallowing (sic).”
Evidently he is widely regarded as a spiritual guru. But however spiritual his claim to fame may be, I can’t help but wonder how can an adult who is clearly able to function normally …

According to a report in today’s Rediff on Karnataka’s new government, many of the members of the legislative assembly (or MLAs, those who make the laws of the state) are criminals. The report leads off with details of what the personal wealth of some of the MLAs are but later, almost as an afterthought, mentions that many have criminal charges pending against them:

“Will the Indian mind ever get decolonised?” is the question that R Vaidyanathan asks at the end of his column titled “The colonial conquest of India by Cambridge varsity” in DNA today. (Hat tip: Raja Shekhar Malapati.) It is about the government of India giving Cambridge University Rs 26,00,00,000 (US$ 6,500,000) to support the ‘Jawaharlal Nehru Professorship of Indian Business and Enterprise.’ That professorship is to mark the centenary of Nehru’s arrival at Cambridge.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, World Bank Disgrace, (hat tip: Prakash Advani) reports that an internal review of five WB health projects in India totaling US$ 569 million in loans shows major corruption. The report begins with
Credit Robert Zoellick for knowing how to put the best face on a profound embarrassment. On Friday, the World Bank president announced in a press release that the bank had “joined forces” with the government of India to “fight fraud and corruption” in that country’s health sector. This is happening at the …

The facts are pretty simple to state. A piece of land was sold by party A to party B for Rs 22 lakhs. The official price was Rs 7 lakhs, less than a third of the actual amount that changed hands. That means A received Rs 15 lakhs which he cannot account for. And it also means that B paid Rs 15 lakhs from sources which are also unaccounted for. Then parties A and B arrived at the land registration office to record the new title. The registration fee is …

Over two years ago, in Aug 2005, I had written that the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREG) will ultimately end up increasing the number of poor and deepening poverty — which of course was easy enough to predict since the policy is “pro-poor” and like all policies “pro-” something do, increases that something.
The NEGS is not novel. Maharashtra has had an employment guarantee scheme for decades. According to Sharad Joshi, it “has produced few permanent assets. And the EGS in Maharashtra is synonymous with corruption. Government officials concoct false …

Education in India is generally in dire straits even though some people mistakenly believe that it is excellent from the successes of some ex-IIT non-resident Indians in the US who made piles of money. It is not hard to figure out what is the root cause of the distress of the educational system in India: the near-monopoly control of the system by the government.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. But only if Caesar himself is above suspicion. What if Caesar is way way below suspicion? Shouldn’t you expect that his wife will also not be above suspicion?
Think about it.

One is forced to the generalization that at the level of the individual it is all exogenous, while at the level of the society, it is all endogenous. Take the market, for instance. To an individual, price is something that is a given and whether he or she participates in the market or not, cannot change the price. Price is determined externally and is indifferent to the efforts of the individual. It arises from almost magically from the collective interactions of the individuals in the market. Price arises out of, …

The makers of monsters and their fates are inextricably tied, both in fiction and in real life. Dr Frankenstein’s monster. Dr Faustus. Mrs Gandhi, the elder and Sant Bhindranwale. The CIA and Osama bin Laden. The CIA and the Taleban. Add your own favorite examples.
Dr MM Singh. VP Singh. The monsters created for gaining political power by legislating divisions of the country along caste and religious lines are beginning to have a life of their own.
Soon to be released, the sequel to the hit drama, “August 1947: The First Cut.” …

If this report from Tehelka about the complicity of the police in the Nithari serial killings does not outrage you, check your pulse–you may be brain dead and therefore be qualified to be an Indian political leader.

Surendra Kaushik is a professor of finance at Pace University in New York. His article Do Not Reinforce Two Indias is worth a read.

A Letter to Dr Manhoman Singh
If there is one thing that makes me see red, it is senseless discrimination in general and unfair treatment of people. But when it comes to discrimination based on a person’s religion, I abhor it with every fiber of my being. It disgusts me and I feel nothing but contempt for people who discriminate based on religion (or lack of religion, in some cases.) One of the distinguishing features of a civilized society is that it does not treat people differently based on their belief …

Try this:
1. Copy this url to your address bar: http://techbytes.co.in/experimental/bypass.php?url=http://
2. Append the url of the blocked blog. So if you, for instance, want to reach mysite.blogspot.com, you will construct the url http://techbytes.co.in/experimental/bypass.php?url=http://mysite.blogspot.com/
3. Hit Go.

The surreal does not shock.
Pakistan is buying US$5,000 million worth of military hardware, including F-16s from the US. India is subsidizing that purchase to the tune of US$25 million in cash. I am sorry about India’s niggardly gesture — it should be giving Pakistan at least US$ 100 million. After all, dhimmis have to pay jizya and at US$ 25 milllion, it works out to be a very low per capita. [Here is the relevant news item. And here is the explanation of what I mean.]
The jizya tax is traditionally …

A couple of telling anecdotes about the state of the educational system in India. A few weeks ago I was in Nagpur at my sister’s place. One evening, a friend of hers showed up. She (the friend) was struggling with her daughter’s admission to a medical college. She would have a fairly decent shot at getting admitted into this particular medical school if she got 180 marks or above. However if she did not get that, but got 160 or better, the school was demanding Rs 600,000; and, if she …

Just a few weeks ago, we learnt that the KGB poured cash into the pockets Indian communist leaders and handsomely bribed the leaders of the Congress Party which was then under the control of Indira Gandhi. This past week we learn from UN sponsored investigation that Natwar Singh and the same Congress Party led by Sonia Gandhi has been bribed rather handsomely by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain.
Is the Congress Party corrupt? It is like asking, is the Pope Catholic? Or asking, is Bill Gates rich? …

It’s not surprising but it is still news to me that the KGB attempted to steer the Indian ship of state. I grew up hearing rumors of the CIA doing all sorts of nasty things around the world, of course. The KGB, as the other spy in the real life adaptation of the Mad Spy Versus Spy, was as active I conjectured. Clearly India had enough commies crawling around for the KGB to find willing agents. So when I read (via The Acorn) the TIMESonline of the UK report …

They beat him up. According to the MidDay report of June 1, “after a thorough beating,” they handed him over to the police in Mumbai.