#indian administrative service

[kamana-mishra]

#indian administrative service

[uttarakhand-jagran]

उत्तराखंड कैडर के 6 सीनियर पीसीएस अफसर बने IAS

देहरादून: उत्तराखंड कैडर के 6 सीनियर पीसीएस अफसरों का आईएएस रेंक में प्रमोशन हो गया है।केंद्र सरकार से आदेश जारी हो गए है। भारतीय प्रशासनिक सेवा (भर्ती) नियम, 1954 के नियम 8(1) और भारतीय प्रशासनिक सेवा (पदोन्नति द्वारा नियुक्ति) विनियम, 1955 के नियम 9(1) और भारतीय प्रशासनिक के नियम 3 द्वारा प्रदत्त शक्तियों का प्रयोग सेवा (परिवीक्षा) नियमावली, 1954 के तहत, राष्ट्रपति उक्त विनियमावली के विनियम…

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#Ashish Kumar Bhatgai #Central Government #Deepti Singh #dehradun #IAS Rank #Indian Administrative Service #news #Prakash Chandra #Prashant Kumar Arya #Ravneet Cheema #Senior PCS #uttarakhand #Vinod Giri Goswami

[believeinfutur]

Basically civil service is the service where the people run the government along with the public representatives i feel that there is no service like indian administrative services that gives you a lot of opportunities to perform as i have already said it gives you a lot of opportunities to contribute to the society you work in the policy space there is whole world to learn new things success is not a milestone it keeps on changing it is a path so you progress towards successor you will have a number of milestones you can say like that

My father was in a transferable job so i have lived across the state in number of districts and particularly the district headquarters like i have done my schooling and i've spent my childhood like in jodhpur in bhikane in hilvada in jaipur and a little part of it in pasadena so the childhood period was totally spread out but the most memorable part was when i lived in gerard basically i belonged to therefore born and brought up in jaipur i have done my schooling from major after schooling from japan so it was a joint family and it was a huge family my grandfather and my father my grandfather's brother's whole lineage of family so we were a member of around 50 to 55. in a reasonably sized house so a lot of cousins and few of the cousins were white elder to me like some six to seven years older than me and some of the cousins were quite younger to me like i was five to six years older than them so it was pretty varied kind of mix and that gave me a very different kind of childhood and mostly it was like in any other middle class family but yes the vacations used to be quite different and celebrating the festivals used to be quite different particularly when you live in a joint family and so it was a kind of very close-knit colony and it was in the old part of japan city which is the heritage part of their city so if you have seen that area it is very much similar to any other old city of india so like there are no setbacks and there are wall to wall attachments of different houses and there are also certain locations where you can jump from one house to another from the roof so spending time there was very exciting and i have got lot of very fond memories like moving around and searching for very hidden areas and old heritage properties of the japan city and like particularly flying kites on makkah sakanti and enjoying holi moving out of the house these days we mostly as children people do not move much out of the house they celebrate within the house so and another thing was like sitting in a small group and buying comics on rent and reading those comics and like and we had a huge workshop at our house my grandfather used to operate a workshop and a labor of around like 15 to 20 people who used to work there so i used to work with my head like so i learned from there how to hold and handle the tools in the workshop so that gave me a kind of interest in engineering and i subsequently went to do my graduation in civil engineering tell us about your educational background in schooling and higher education so as i have told that before sixth standard i did my schooling from number of different places in the state but post-sixth standard it was mostly in maheshwari public school in japan city this was my schooling period and we were a very close knit group and around like 10 to 15 of us were preparing for engineering entrance examinations and almost all of us could land up in one college or another and regarding college education i went to iit delhi as we rightly mentioned and i did my graduation from italy in civil engineering so that was a four year period and after that i started preparing for civil services and trans examinations so what was your dream profession was it to become an is since the childhood or did it changed over a period of time cigarette to be very frank till the year when i completed my graduation i didn't have enough idea what exactly is about or what exactly civil service is about so but my father was in a government job he retired as an additional chief engineer in the public health engineering department so the maximum we knew was that is collector the collector is is basically so and we didn't have much idea about who the secretary is or who the principal secretary is or who the hd or various department is and many of these positions are being headed by nis officer and what is the role of an is in policy framing at the state level or at the central level so maximum i knew was like the district collector is an is officer but the journey started like as i've mentioned that my grandfather used to operate a kind of workshop like motor bodybuilding workshop there is a big open land at the residence in the whole of chapter city so and my father is an engineer my father's younger brother that is my chacha he is also an engineer when i did my 12th my two elder brothers were also doing their engineering so they are also civil engineers apart from that the time i spent at my home like handling the tools and looking at how the work is happening so i was more inclined towards engineering during my school days but that was my whole idea that i should get into doing engineering and because it appeared that it gives you a kind of insight of like thinking about the problems or imagining things happening and then how to build or create something or so it gave a kind of higher level of intellectual satisfaction so that one thing was clear that i'll become an engineer but subsequently when i joined iit so my father basically he then when i was in second year or something like at the end of the second year when i was entering third year so one day he told me that so you should think about civil services so as i have told that i was completely unaware that what exactly civil service is this so then he i asked what is civil services because there is a tradition in iit that most of the graduates during those days during those days the opportunities were not so good as they are now in our country so most of the graduates went to united states either for higher studies or for taking up job in the corporate sector so i asked what civil services then he said that

basically civil service is the service where the people run the government along with the public representative so i was totally in a way ignorant about how the government functions when i was entering into the third year of iit so i tried to dig little deeper i discussed with my colleagues and my bachmates and as you know in iit there are a lot of people come from different states so like people from bihar and uk they had fairly good idea what exactly is so i spent some time like around five to six months in understanding what exactly this is and then my father was slightly insistent that we should try this and you can make into it so it is a very tough exam but considering my performance in the school and the first two years in the iit so the things happened like that so when i got into my final year so by then i had a fairly good idea that what exactly civil services are of the indian administrative service is so but even till then i was in a double mind that whether i should go abroad or whether i should take these exams so i don't know it was a coincidence or what exactly happened was that in the final year when we were appearing for our campus interviews so as my father is in a government was in a government job within those days so uh sale had come to pick up engineers from steel authority of india sale had come to pick up engineering graduates so sale had a good profile in those days it was a kind of very big public sector undertaking and to get a job into steel authority of india we used to consider it as a very good opportunity so i went for the interviews so sale took me so i was very happy to receive the offer so but even then there was a dilemma that abroad or to work in india so finally i decided that let us join sale so i was happy and after final year i came back to jaipur to have a vacation of another 15-20 days but then what happens is that so i turned down the proposal of going abroad i had received a proposal of a job in united states i turned down that proposal because my mind was clear that i joined sale so but after 10-15 days i received a letter from steel authority that we are sorry though we took you as an intern trainee and we offered you a of a letter but you are under 21 years so we being a public sector undertaking there are government rules that you have to be 21 plus yes if you were to join a government job so you will have to wait for another eight months so then i thought that if there is a period of another eight months let us then try for civil services so everything happened like that so i sat at home i didn't go to delhi and i started preparing for civil services and i got into ieps in my first attempt so then it appeared that you can make it then i appeared for the second attempt and then i got home that so i belong to rajasthan and i brought some data itself so this is how the journey goes but in the hindsight it is that it was a very i mean perhaps god created that kind of scenario of the circumstances that i appeared for civil services and i am really happy today that i have been able to contribute and do my best in the services and it had been an excellent choice both as a profession and it gives you a lot of opportunity to go ahead and deliver and contribute to the community so when i say school or college any particular memory that strikes your mind so school it was like we were i'll not call famous but we were notorious our group was notorious for one thing that end later on when we were in 12th standard our principal also could know about it that what we used to do it that we were preparing for joint entrance examination for iit so a group of four five students we used to create like you can call it kind of nuisance in the class and you used to make a lot of noises and other things and deliberate because the idea was that if you create some nuisance in the class then your teacher would move you check you out of the class so it used to happen and then after moving out of the class we used to prepare for jail we used to sit in the library then teacher used to say you please get out of the class you are creating a lot of noises and musicians you don't deserve to be in my class so we used to move out of the class and during those days we used to do those agarwal classes and brilliant coaching courses used to be there today there are physical coaching institutes but during those days there were correspondence coaching material which you used to receive so we used to sit outside somewhere under the tree somewhere or sometimes in the library or sometimes in the empty classroom hall or sometimes in the auditorium and we used to prepare for right so i have very fond memories memories for those particular incidents and we did it quite a lot for around six to seven months and principal our principal could uh detect that and then he called us and reprimanded him but then he allowed us then he said if you want to study then you sit at home and then study don't come to the class i'll allow you i'll not enforce the attendance upon you so that is one thing and in iits i would say like iit was more of a fun in the sense that you get out of home you have a lot of time to spend alone and all kind of students would come children would come post 12 they would join the iits so a lot of things happen it is difficult to share but a lot of pranks and you used to move out for movies and dinners and there used to be rendezvous which is a very famous festival of delhi which italy organizes every year and a lot of other colleges used to come so it was like that but yeah it was a fun time more so in the college than in school so what about your hobbies and interests you know like i am mostly into reading i am into reading to the extent like even if i travel like from home to office i would try to read a page or two while traveling so whenever i find free time and whenever i am alone i always try to read something so i'll carry a book always along with me if i am traveling out of town or if i am traveling out of home there is always one and i read both kind of stuff fiction and non-fiction in fiction it is mostly crime fiction like investigation so they are thrillers like and my favorite writers are like tom clancy and early stanley gartner who writes about the actual legal courtroom cases and then patricia upon james patterson so i am fond of reading of that category and in non-fiction category i read more about like the sustainability issues on what are on what do you have ample number of very good books what are the water challenges and what different countries are doing what is the history of water resources being developed by different countries and about the hydraulic civilizations and i read a lot about energy issues and like climate change and everything so i am into both reading of fiction and non-fiction that is my one of the biggest hobbies second is i love watching movies so both hollywood movies and indian movies i have a close group of friends so my interest lies there also we discuss when we sit and we try to discuss on other issues our memories and there are topical issues which are going on there are a lot of different kind of narratives on different issues which are going on in the country so i try to spend good time with my friends also old friends not the new friends like childhood friends and school friends and some of the college friends are also here in japan so my most of time gets spent near the spare time so when you compare your life with the colleagues who have passed out from iit and have settled abroad and you as an is officer what major difference do you see the initial years were sometimes little difficult in terms of because there are n number of things when you get into is the initial seven to eight years are little difficult in terms of the facilities you get or the support system which you can provide to your family so but in the long run i feel that there is no service like indian administrative services it gives you a lot of opportunities to perform as i have already said it gives you a lot of opportunities to contribute to the society you work in the policy space but on the other side like a lot of my iit colleagues are settled in united states so they are in academics they are into deep industrial research a lot of iit batchmates own their own companies they are like big business typhoons some of them they are in billions of dollars many basements are in india also they are in other civil services like they are in public surveys or revenue service or foreign services they own their own business here also so one thing is there that most of them are doing reasonably well in whichever field they are whether they be in academics or business or government services and most of them are by far have been contributing quite a lot but now at this juncture like after 25 or 27 years of doing your graduation though we passed out in 89 largely almost all of them are well satisfied with the profession they selected but you always see like the grass is greener on the other side always so when you compare like so if you interact with people in like who are settled in united states and who are handling big businesses so you always feel that they have got more freedom to perform to work to deliver to multiply their effects efforts they are more visible in their own field of or the area but for us it sometimes becomes difficult and the kind of ecosystem in which we as civil servant work so this is a different kind of area it is a different kind of arena where you have to put in your effort and perform so sometimes there is a feeling but at the end of the day what counts is that whether you are satisfied or not so there are different points of satisfaction for us for them there are different points of satisfaction but when you sit along with them and then discuss they will say that certainly being an is a big thing and you are a better place so but that notion mostly comes from the point of view of having more so called power so but that power is basically how you yourself feel i have never felt myself to be powerful in terms of my creating facilities for myself or gaining more perks for myself but i yes certainly feel more powerful in terms of leveraging my skills in delivering more and more so i think it is same and in any field if you are putting in your effort and if you are continuously upgrading or your skills and if you have not stopped your learning curve to grow you can always add in more and more to different sectors so who was your inspiration in your early childhood i would not say exactly that there was any one person who was a kind of inspiration but what as i have mentioned that what i have been inspired basically in my initial days of schooling or when i was a child was that like the bent of engineering mind which i always appreciated the logic driven analysis and creating things and visualizing things like the structure so like if we have to solve any problem so i was always more interested like into deep thinking so that kind of culture which i had in my home and my surroundings so that was a big inspiration i saw people actually working with their hands and creating things like how to fix up the automobiles or how to construct a body on the chassis of the automobile i so that always inspired me so that was one thing and then second when i went into iit so and after getting into iit some subjects like hydraulics right so which is my passion also water is my passion so like studying hydraulics and soil engineering and dam construction and so how the engineers put in their lot of effort and how the thinking goes into it and finally how the creation which you can see physically you can see it getting created or you can see it into operation or you're part of the whole process so that always inspired me and not any person as such and certainly my parents had a deep impact on me and subsequently when you grow in life like that it is close family then certainly it is life kids and sometimes young people also inspire you quite a lot so it is a getting inspired is a process i feel like so you read a lot many of things i i get inspired by reading quite a bit particularly the non-fiction like how the researchers have been working and how big projects the big irrigation projects were conceived and how they have come up and to be on the lighter side like someone thought that man can land on moon human can land on moon so it finally happened so these feats of humankind they inspire me quite a lot and they have been pushing me always there okay try to learn something new try to read something new and try to gain more than move knowledge as far as possible so what all challenges did you face while preparing for your upsc examination okay so as i said that i have to i did my graduation from delhi but i prepared for civil services from jaipur so i stayed jaipur is my home i stayed my at my home and then prepared so that was a whole process of because i appeared for two attempts in first i got indian police service i mean second i got internet services so whole two years i was at my home only and we were a group of four five students like one was my i.t bachelorette rather my he was my roommate then they were in due course we came in touch with other students from pakistan university and other colleges of the state who were staying in japan so the major challenge during those days was to particularly to gather or capture the reading material in general strategies that was very difficult because it was a time when even the times of india newspaper was not printed here in jaipur it used to come from delhi so it used to come like say by late evening or the next day edition like late edition would come to japan so no english newspapers were available during those days and talking about like in 93 94 and then very few magazines were available because like economic and political weekly i used to read ep so it was not available in japan so either you had to get it from some other student in the university or the college in the chapter or you had to get it collected from delhi asking some of your batchmate so having reading material the study material it was a big challenge optional material because i had physics and mathematics is my two options so that was not big of an issue but the regular material which you require the daily updates and the policy space and the politics and economics in the business world and the new announcements being made by the government the new schemes which were launched by the central government like so that was a big challenge and i missed out some marks in general studies because of this particular reason otherwise i think everything was all right while going in for preparation there was full family support parental support was there otherwise nothing much was needed these days getting hold of study material has become very easy everything is available online on internet books you can call in for soft copies or soft copies of the magazines and the newspapers things have become very easy and that is why it has become more competitive so what was the reaction of your parents when you told them okay now i have been selected as an officer first ips and then is my father was really ecstatic that i could finally make it and though he was very sure from day one that i'll get through and my mother was like she was she was very happy and she almost had tears in her eyes that i could make it end but more exciting was when i got rajasthan carter when i got home because it is not only based on merit the kind of different parameters on basis of which you are allotted the kardash so when i got home then i think everyone at home was very happy so now where did you started your carrier journey from so my first posting was subdivisional magistrate broward but we have to do two year training also so after completing the foundation course from la alba du shastri academy in masuri my field training was in ugapu district for around nine to ten months and then my first posting was in davar so it is a subdivision of ajmer district not very far away from jaipur and i have worked there for two years and being an hdmi sdo that is the subdivisional magistrate and subdivision officer it gives you a lot of insight into how exactly the government systems work and how the government schemes are delivered in the field and so i used to tour quite a lot and used to have discussion with the grassroots public representatives and the grassroots field functionalities of government administration particularly the revenue administration so it gives you very good insight and i had a reasonably stable tenure there that was my grounding area so how was your early days as an officer and what all changes did you feel in life post becoming an officer the initial days when you get into the government system so there is a very peculiar kind of structure under which the government system functions so initially you find yourself nowhere like how the files are being moved and how the proposals are being made and how you request for the budgets and how the grants are allocated to the particular office where you are working and then how you spend the money under different schemes how you select the beneficiaries so this is something entirely new for a person like who completed his education went to the college who completed the college and then now you are thrown into this big world of government administration where you have to work along with large number of stakeholders and particularly you have to deal first with the beneficiary himself or herself then with the public representatives then there are different line departments we have to deal with the drinking water department we have to deal with the electricity department with medical health department the education department fisheries agriculture so there are large number of departments so in the manner in which the whole government system works the different organizations are different arms of the government works in the field so the first biggest challenge was to get the neck of the functions of different line departments but in due course you learn and after learning then actual test comes that now how you put your efforts into it and how you are able to perform better so that you are finally able to deliver the goods to the society or to the beneficiaries or you can make a dent in a different organizational setup of the government like how you can improve the schools like by ensuring good teaching or providing good infrastructure like drinking water electricity correlates to these tools or like the nutrition issues in the icds and immunization in the health department so but two years is quite sufficient a period you spend three four months in learning things because that is your first assignment then you learn and then you start delivering and after that when you become either i i became huge elaboration after that so now you are handling a district motor subdivision so that is a point where you have to interact with the panchayat representatives the elected representatives you prepare a district level plan and then you implement it and you discuss and debate and engage with different stakeholders and then you become district collector then you rise up in the above in the administrative hierarchy you become secretary so whatever you learn whatever for your experiences so they all help you in not devising the policies or changing the policies modifying them to evaluate the policies so i think the manner in which the service is being structured is reasonably good but you find a lot of constraints you have to change yourself also you have to learn new things you have to learn new skills you have to learn negotiating you have to learn convincing people about the right things because on the face of it in the short term sometimes people would feel that this is not the right decision being taken by the collector or the subdivisional officer but you have to convince that them that why in the long run this is the better thing to do for the development of the area or why this is the right thing to select the beneficiaries in such a such manner and why in certain cases that we are not able to perform or deliver why because government is also constrained by both capacity and the capacity in terms of the hr which is available between the human resources which are available with you with the institutions along with which you work and constraint as regard to the funds of budget which is available so you have to do best within these working within these constraints so you have to convince these things also so lot of like it is not only about managing the budget or it is not only about spending money it is more about convincing people selecting the right beneficiaries so that you are at the end of the day you are able to get the best outcome of in whatever constraints you are being asked to work what you are working with but you learning new things about all these things so what all departments have you handled in your course of care okay like apart from working as district collector like i worked district collector as district collector in five districts but when you talk about departments i would like to mention if you like i have worked in the water resources department i have worked in energy department chaired a corporation i was chairman of rajasthan renewable energy corporation then i worked in social justice department and i have spent a lot of time in the mines and minerals department i have worked in the revenue department that you landed in the department i had few students in the finance department too both at the level of the hod and i have worked in the secretary of finance department also so what's that one thing you love about your profession the most indian registered service like it gives you lot of opportunities my point is that everything depends ultimately that how do you want to utilize those opportunities to perform and deliver and it is not at all a cakewalk like you come to your office you sit in your chamber you dispose the files which come to you that anyone can do so if you are into that mode of working and functioning then you'll be doing the routine work but is gives you the opportunity to actually go beyond the mandate understand the issues the real problems they it gives you opportunity to like devise your own solution sometimes maybe not in terms of the schemes which you can devise in the initial community of service like in the initial 10 15 years but how you can redesign the implementation of this key how you start monitoring these things differently how you engage with people you can actually go into the field and sit along with the beneficiary the villagers or the people living in the urban areas if it involves urban issues and you can really make it make an impact you can bring in lot of change in implementation of these themes and another thing at the later stage in the service like currently i am at the policy level having spent around 25 years in indian administrative services so now you can really make change in the policy thinking of the government but for that the utmost thing is that yourself should be more skilled never stop learning because now there is whole world to learn new things a lot of different things and innovations keep on happening like every day in different states in the private sector like if you talk about like health and different states are doing a lot of good work in the health sector in the government sector lot of new things are happening in the private sector in the health sector in terms of health care or health services same is with education same is in the infrastructure sector same as in the water delivery sector or in the sanitation issues a lot of innovations are happening in the iit sector government is also using information technology like to completely re-engineer its business processes so you have to be completely aware what all is happening around and ies gives you good opportunity it gives you a lot of chances it gives you a lot of score to actually dig deep get into these innovations or new things which are happening invite them and try to get them somewhere in the government processes for better delivery and better outcomes i don't think any other service provided you provide you with such kind of opportunity so that is the best thing and you interact with like varied kind of people you interact with accommodations you interact with industry experts you interact with public representatives at the highest level you interact with a lot of different organs of civil society like you interact with ngos you interact with voluntary agencies which are working safe or like sometimes for the people 10 and 15 years and who have got have been highly instrumental in bringing a lot of changes in number of public policies which have been finally announced by the government flow that we center at the state so it is it is a like it is a big canvas there is a lot of scope in this service so that is the best aspect you never get bored so there is a time you are in the energy department there is a time you are in the mines department then you are in the social justice department you are in the education department and when you get into a new department like i always take it as a challenge and i try to learn about the sector to the best possible extent and so that learning process itself is very exciting i find it really exciting so who is your mentor see again like what inspires you so my answer lies there only what inspires me so my mentor and what i personally feel is that you are very lucky if you find some person as your mentor but these days information knowledge and wisdom is so lucratively available like it is available everywhere you have got a lot of literature a lot of information on the internet and the web all colleges and universities have their own websites about what is the latest research going on then there are a lot of industry organizations a lot of industry research is going on then there are a lot of organizations who are into public policy research so i consider like this whole gamut of information which is available as my mentor so and then a lot of experts are there say for example you are in the revenue department so then you will find some maybe some officer or maybe some public representatives some minister in some state who spent a lot of time in that particular sector and brought in a lot of changes like in terms of the land reforms in that state so for that particular aspect that person may become your mentor so sometimes you you read a good research paper some good case study in some particular sector that particular literature would become your mentor sometimes but my point is that ultimately now you know what you are doing like you are on the right track or not if you are open to discussion you are open to information and knowledge which is coming to you if you respond to that knowledge like if you asked me number of questions in last half an hour so for certain things you'll be my mentor so i'll pick up one or two points so it is more like that these days because everyone every person has some kind of limitations i have a lot of limitations you have not had medication but i have certain points which are my forte like i am strong in these particular points you must be strong maybe in terms of knowledge or taking decisions considering the situation or circumstances in which you are put into sometimes your juniors or subordinates becomes your mentor like how he or she handles that particular line or the situation so they are the person to look up to so it goes more like that these days so keeping my family apart family is always close-knit family members always inspire you more to do something more and achieve more so it is but i am inspired the most by steve jobs

steve jobs said ideas in his mind and he kept on struggling he created a lot of new products and he was very clear about his own ideas and design which his product should have and what all he should incorporate into his equipments or instruments whatever he devised so he is one of the person who and his basic the most inspiring personality trait is that he never let things go he always tried to achieve whatever he thought about it so that's it what is your definition of success and what is the role of smart work hard work and luck according to you to achieve success see regarding work first i will talk about

there is a student who is studying for like 10 hours in a day and there is a student who is studying only 4 hours in a day but if the student number one is not having proper guidance he's not into studying right things whatever his in our objective is to pass a particular exam or to clear some any entrance examination so if not properly guided if not into the right things to achieve the objectives so that is not going to deliver you much good at the end of the day so it is always about smart work prioritizing your work life because i can give you n number for example and there is always an argument so it is something like that if you talk about the financial markets so if there is an investor who invests smartly so his even four or five minutes of exercise delving deep into the issue and then making the right decision and like weighing his or her risks and rewards and then investing money can make millions within five minutes but there is another guy who is into a different kind of profession even spending not only five minutes but even spending five months would not deliver into such kind of if we talk about wealth would not be able to garner such amount of power so it is always what you are doing what where your skills lie how you prioritize your tasks for whatever you are doing how much time you are able to devote into that particular aspect that is the whole game that is my understanding so always work smart hard work would come subsequently sometimes we keep on doing a lot of fun lot of hard work but we are not able to achieve the objectives like that so it is about work i always believe in being more smart in right because like even in the government system like if i want to work 15 hours a day out of 24 hours so even 15 hours would be too short a period for me to do everything but ultimately then i have to prioritize that these are the five or ten most important things where i should be focusing more and these are other 10 15 things i can leave it to my team or to my subordinates to them where my actually my thinking has to go where my time has to go it is always about that that is my understanding about how to prioritize work and how to work a smart one number two regarding success so what i feel is that success is not a milestone it keeps from changing it is a path so you progress towards successor you will have a number of milestones you can say like that so like when you are in 10th standard so your success is that if i score 90 plus percentage in my board exams i am a successful person so if you are in 12th if i get into like iit or medical college or if i am able to then might be my ca or if i'm able to subsequently do my mba or master's post graduation so that is success for me getting into ies so okay you have gotten into is finally so that is that counts as a success for me so the definition of success the criteria keeps on changing so it is always what you are aspiring to achieve so success is not a single milestone it is a path and on that i would say that success also has like two different categories what you consider success in your personal life and in your work life so in your personal life success is ultimately that how happy you are how satisfied you are so that is the most primary thing which one has to think if at the end of the day doing n number of things having best of the positions being known as the most popular person or if you are famous on media or if you are famous otherwise like famous as a good officer but if you are a powerful person but if at the end of the day if you are not satisfied and if you are not happy then it is not a successful life so if you are happy if you are satisfied if you are able to fulfill your responsibilities towards the family towards your extended family or towards the community that is what i call success in personal life and when you move out of personal life in the work life ultimately what impact you have been able to make in this society into the community that is your success so even if you are very intelligent if you are hard working if you are working 15 16 hours in a day you are in your office you are trying to dispose of things you are like even if you are sitting at the most powerful positions where you can make actually make things happen but if you are not able to impact create impact into your organization or into the society say for example like if i am like currently heading the textbook like i'm chairman textbook so if i am not able to actually understand the issues i may be disposing like 20 cases every day sitting in the bench hearing to the counselors the advocates and then finally disposing the matter if i am not able to understand the issues and give the relief to the needy so then it is not a success maybe in terms of numbers so it is fine that i have been able to perform but ultimately the whole ecosystem for which i am working like i have to dispose the tax related matters i have to understand that whether the tax demands or the penalties being imposed have been unnecessarily raised or created whether there was any kind of fault of the dealer or the industry so that is the actual impact and if i am only disposing five cases but if i am able to do two justice with the earth that is the impact i am creating so it works that way in all the departments in the government system so if like i am in the i was chairman renewable energy cooperation so if i am i we came out with a good policy which was very well taken by the investor community and a lot of investment has also come into the state and another big chunk is in the process so if i am able to create a kind of ecosystem which has created impact into the business community and ultimately to the whole renewable sector as such like combating the global carbon emissions or increasing the volume of the injection of green energy into the grid so that is the impact which i have made so that is the true definition of success according to me and you like another point is that you should at the personal level also you should be growing every day like ultimately you have to keep on learning you have to keep on going gaining new skills and then utilizing those skills both for your like personal success and making more impact wherever you are working so success so you is you were able to get hold of time machine which phase of your life would you like to roll back i think for most of us it would be the early childhood so because you have fond memories sometimes you had tough time also but perhaps the human brain is developed like that as far as childhood is concerned you remember a lot of good things which you did or sort of good time which you had so you would always want to relive those times with your old friends and because you didn't have much understanding about like how people are judging as a child we do anything so then we are told that no it is not the right thing you should not be doing it it is not good so once you have done it then you are told about it so that is the beauty of childhood you never cared that the world is being judgmental about you your mind was free and whatever you wanted to do you did that so that freedom certainly i would like to relive again so what are your major achievement as an officer as i have said that water is my passion and worked as secretary water resources in the state government during that period we designed lot of water resources of electric schemes there were irrigation screens and there were linking schemes also and we came out with the concept of like integrated water resources management we were working with an international donor agency so we came out with a concept of like sustainable management of water resources that was something new which we added into water resources management so that i consider as my achievement in the sense that i was i tried and i was able to give a different kind of direction to water resources management in this state initially it used to be engineers driven so we get a gave it a different kind of concept like more based on social sciences like we should be concerned about actually the two stakeholders like we tried to enforce a participatory irrigation management concept in some of our canal litigation projects in the state and we received award in our narmada education project i received the national award that he did then another period was like working in the renewable energy sector so we came out with a policy which was well appreciated across the country and like many states have copied a lot of parts of that policy into their own state policy for promotion of renewable energy and i think the investment which has been committed into the state for renewable energy generation projects like those are two one lakh road rupees so we created a good ground for it and all the big all the big companies all the victims you name them and they are in rajasthan now either they are implementing their projects or they are into the process of conceiving the projects in the state of pakistan i consider that as major achievements and third certainly was the mining sector i have worked in mining sector for around four years and so again we focused on prospecting of new mineral deposits and the new mineral deposits in different categories which we prospected during that period so today like an investment of more than 20 thousand is sitting on those mineral deposits it has brought in a lot of investment has given direct indirect employment to large number of people of the state and it is giving a boost to the state economy so these are three different sectors then there are few other things here so what are your roles and responsibility as chairman rajisthan tax board so in tax board basically an appellate authority where we listen to the orders passed by like deputy commissioner who here's the assessment orders passed by the assistance authority in the various tax departments like so mostly we are dealing with the cases of the sales tax act the vat regime the exercise related issues then stamp and registration act related cases be here so these are the cases where the demands which have been created on the business houses or the dealers if they are not satisfied with the kind of penalties imposed or the tax liabilities which have been created by the assessing authorities of these various line departments they come to us and the main idea is that to examine those cases to listen to both the sides the state and the business side and then pass on the final decision so our idea is like because lot of litigation and disputes get created merely because of the interpretation of the provisions of the law and particularly in the sales tax that that now though gst has replaced the bad act so and we have the cases related to attack the value added tax regime so under the vat regime there are a lot of litigation which is which are related to like the classification of the commodities and whether they should fall into the five percent category of they should fall into the 18.5 or 15 rate of tax so what we basically i have got five members also i am the chairman of the group so we try to understand the issues and wherever required relief if it is needed to be given to the business dealers it has to go to them and if the demand has been rightfully created then we uphold the version of the state also but the basic idea is the whole tax administration system ultimately it works on trust and if there was one of id on part of the businessman and only because of the from the point of the wrongful interpretation or wrongful wording of some of the notifications the demand has been created then we certainly then try to offset those demands so you have worked in various capacity including principal secretary chairman secretary commissioner collector and district manager which one was your all-time favorite and why working in field is interesting from a different perspective that you engage with a lot of people who engage with different line departments you engage directly with the citizens both the in the rural areas and in the urban areas and you get to know about why sometimes the government schemes fail in the field so you learn about that is your first-hand experience and you get an opportunity to implement these schemes better that is interesting in a different manner but certainly what becomes more interesting later on is when you work at the policy lab so as i have mentioned that i have really loved in working in the water resources sector in the energy sector in the mines and mineral sector which are the like when you talk about water sector so water sector is again in all encompassing sector water as a right is very important for livelihood for drinking purposes for your residential or domestic use water is very essential even for the industry so it is very important for the economy as such also it is very important for agriculture energy again energy also has varying kind of impacts in different sectors of the economy and the society so and so these are the sectors where if you are able to bring in any kind of positive change then these sectors have got huge impact social economic impacts so so that was these three sectors like water energy and mines i found them to be very exciting and we have been able to do a lot of good things also into it because working at a policy level then you are able to make a larger impact working in the field like as district collector or ceo dilla punisher you are able to create an impact only in a small geographical area but that gives you a very good learning experience so what was the most challenging task of your academy one category i would define is like when you have to work under constraints it becomes very difficult like i was a district district which is about the district brothers pakistan it was hit by acute feminine when i was just a collector there and now the problem is that the water resources are water sources are very limited there agricultural growth like there is very small area of land of whole of the district which is culturable order shortage was very acute the problem then becomes is now where from where to source them like we used to practice from maharashtra and there was time when we prepared for the train like from as far as from behalf so working under constraints become very difficult particularly when these sources are not available with you so it happens that like even if you've not got a lot of budget even if moment has given you a lot of funds to make arrangements it becomes next to impossible sometimes to make those arrangements and even if you go ahead with making those arrangements then it requires a lot of time and by then lot of damage could have happened in the area where you are working so this becomes very challenging and it's certainly like but same is like with disaster management but ultimately with good teamwork and having good negotiating skills you are able to surpass those obstacles and finally deliver this is this category one category two is like what i personally feel is that sometimes it becomes difficult to convince for it conveys your higher-ups for things which you feel that there are the right things to be done it may be like for taking some kind of decision in implementing something or how things should happen how we should be going ahead with doing certain things like in the common setup sometimes it becomes very difficult to convince so

you will feel pain sometimes but ultimately with continuous like negotiation and getting after the things and putting your point across and you have to give presentations and seek time and then you have to move your files timeline again and give more justification so that becomes a challenge sometimes but otherwise i have been able to do whatever i thought about any any heart touching incidents from your career life any professional heart touching incidents i very well remember an accident when i was again like a gardener so i went to a village which is very close to pakistan so i was just asking that are you getting all the benefits under different schemes like are you getting the further for your cattle or is the water tanker coming to your village or are the proper medicine supplies are there or medical teams coming or not or like

food grains are reaching or not so i was sitting and discussing then ultimately one prime one very old person he ends up saying that he like why things have become so much difficult these days like what he was trying to say was that despite so much development and so much money being spent by the government why our lives have become harder so i reinquired from him that baba why you are saying like that then he said before 30 35 years life was not so difficult that led me to think quite a lot that why it is like that that this particular old person is saying that like 30 35 years ago they used to live more comfortably as compared to now and this is the situation when the number of schemes would have become multi-fold if there were 10 during those years then they must be 100. government is spending as against 10 rupees now government is spending thousand rupees government is focusing quite a lot on these left out areas like the border districts and the other tribal areas of hilly regions then even then why such kind of perception is there so but there were reasons for that in this particular incident what i made about finally was that there are certain things which are directly connected to the livelihood of the villagers

and in these kind of natural calamities as i mentioned that like whatever amount of money you spend in life in drinking water is like increasing agriculture production but if agriculture production you cannot increase in the desert area you cannot find source new drinking water sources you cannot take new tube wells and you will get water for drinking purposes for that particular area so there are always certain things on which livelihood is dependent and it is very difficult whatever amount of money you spend to come out with reasonably good solutions so a lot of rethinking needs to go into it like finding local solutions to those problems so like for drinking water problem in that particular village the solution is not to think about like big drinking water supply streams we need to think local and find out solution sustainable solutions then and there so how the community can be involved how their ownership can be developed then only such kind of problems can be resolved like certainly but a lot of the schools have come up a lot of roads have come up a lot of other local government offices have come up like several centers and animal adventist and icba centers and student civil supply centers but there would always be few things which are directly related to livelihood and reasonable and respectable life but very difficult to handle even with good amount of money so for that community solutions have to be found so i think that gave me a different kind of insight how to what to focus more being so what advice would you like to give to new officers the only advice is that like the whole world has changed in particularly in past like 15 20 years the days of registration because most of the aspirants who join civil services particularly ies they come from the bend of mind that now we have become magistrates and we'll pass the orders and things would happen and whatever we would like would happen and be having a big team number of district level officers and we can do anything whatever we want but now gone are the days of the magistrates that is what i say always and the whole world scenario has changed because now you will be interacting with as i mentioned before with the industry experts with accommodations you will be finding a lot of it interventions which are happening you will be facing the problems which are very tough and difficult to handle you will be expected to find solutions for them the whole thing of like the media has become very active lot of decisions has been taken by the government to for the government systems functions and decision making to be transparent people will be watching you so now the nature of civil services have entirely changed so you have to be prepared for that and you have to keep on upskilling yourself you will have to learn new things implement new things you would be expected to know about what is happening in the outer world in the private sector how markets are handling the problems so that whole thing has changed and my advice is that right from the day one one should start improving his or her own learning carbon few fields can be selected where one wants to gain expertise in due course in the service period

what all our do's and don't you would suggest for students who are just preparing for upsc first don'ts never be in ambivalence like okay i am into some kind of job and preparing for civil services okay i'll prepare for civil services and for this another exam too so ambivalence would kill your prospects number one if you are appearing for civil services if you are preparing for it then you should be totally focused and concentrated and this should be the only thing which you should be doing otherwise it becomes very difficult because it requires a lot of perseverance a lot of focus your determination your conviction then only you will be able to make it through that is the one thing which i always say never be in ambitious your mind should be categorically clear that what you are wanting to achieve and aim and regarding boost the perseverance at the end of the day pays like you have to do hard work there is no success without hard work here and you have to work smart also so if you think that luck may prevail it is never going to happen that will prevail only if you do hard and smart work number two don't like study in isolation don't prepare in isolation you should be having a group of at least three people do one plus two because then you get digress you will not be knowing that what all is happening around them so you should study in a group group not in the sense that you sit in one room and then study together you should remain in touch that's what the other person is doing how is preparing what is the additional material which he has got hold off is he or she is already in touch with another person who has cleared civil services and who is already into the service so you have to remain in touch so you don't have to sit in a closed room and prepare on your own because so like what i used to do was that every day we four or five of us we used to leave for half an hour or 45 minutes and used to discuss what all we did in the whole day during the whole day like so i studied this and then someone else would say that i studied this from there and so it revises you also so when you study on your own and when you discuss so the detention level is higher when you discuss with some another person so that is very important i mean you should study in a small group you should remain in touch and another point is like preparing for like general studies like other than your options you have to keep continuous track of what is happening in public discourse what are the latest narratives going on what are the latest challenges going on what are the latest issues because that gives you very good insight ultimately those questions would be appearing those issues would be appearing in one form or another maybe in the written paper or in the essay paper or during the interviews because they are in general memory of the public so like maybe so keep on reading newspapers keep on reading magazines if required watch some good channels on internet not only tv so it will keep you abreast with the latest thing which is which are going on and it will keep you prepared because there are certain things for which you cannot prepare in one go like sitting for more hours in less than number of days you cannot prepare like if you have to know about the what is the foreign current foreign policy or government of india what is the current industrial policy of government of india what are the agriculture sector reforms which are taking place like then it becomes very difficult to grasp the meat of the issues in like in a period of three weeks or one month so for certain things you have to be very consistent

i am not a fan sitter so i have got my own views on issues i am not a fan sitter try to think about things frame my opinion and act accordingly so one line is that i am not a fan sitter so thank you very much for your precious time and it was lovely doing conversation with you and especially the advices that you have shared on our show thank you very much for your time

#ias #iasaspirants #ias officer #indian administrative service

[n7india]

Bihar News : वरिष्ठ IAS अधिकारी प्रत्यय अमृत बने गृह विभाग के नए अपर मुख्य सचिव

Patna: वरिष्ठ भारतीय प्रशासनिक सेवा के अधिकारी प्रत्यय अमृत को बिहार के गृह विभाग का अपर मुख्य सचिव बनाया गया है। सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग ने इसकी अधिसूचना जारी कर दी है। विभाग द्वारा जारी अधिसूचना के मुताबिक, भारत निर्वाचन आयोग के निर्देश के बाद 1991 बैच के आईएएस अधिकारी प्रत्यय अमृत को अपर मुख्य सचिव, गृह विभाग के पद पर पदस्थापित किया गया है। प्रत्यय अमृत बिहार के मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश कुमार के…

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#made the Additional Chief Secretary of Home Department of Bihar #Senior Indian Administrative Service officer Pratyaya Amrit

[apacnewsnetwork0]

20 IAS officers transferred in major Tamil Nadu bureaucratic reshuffle

Chennai: In a major administrative reshuffle in Tamil Nadu, M K Stalin led state government the Tamil Nadu government transferred and posted 20 IAS officers on Saturday.

Government has also created new posts on a temporary basis for a period of one year.

2005 batch IAS officer Darez Ahamed who is Commissioner of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, has been transferred and posted as Secretary to Government, Special Program Implementation Department (SPID) vice Gagandeep Singh Bedi, an IAS offocer of 1993 batch, holding additional charges.

He shall also hold the post of Commissioner of Social Security Scheme, Office of the Commissioner of Revenue Administration in full additional charge vice N Venkatachalam, a government order issued by chief secretary Shiv Das Meena said.

1990 batch senior IAS officer C Umashankar is transferred and posted as additional CS director Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute. He was serving as additional chief secretary, commissioner of disciplinary proceedings Chennai.

S Malarvizhi, an IAS officer of 2009 batch and Chairperson of Science City, has been transferred and posted as Additional Secretary to Government, Water Resources department vice R Kannan, 2010 batch IAS officer.

The government created a temporary post of Additional Chief Secretary/Director, Entrepreneurship development and Innovation institute in the Chief Secretary grade for a period of one year with effect from the date of appointment or till the need for it ceases, a Government Order said.

“Further, Sanction is accorded for the creation of temporary posts of Secretary to Government, Special Program Implementation department; Commissioner of Land Reforms and Special Secretary to Government, Home, Prohibition and Excise department in the Super Time Scale of IAS for a period of one year with effect from the date of appointment or till the need for them cease, whichever is earlier, ” it added.

Click here : https://apacnewsnetwork.com/2023/07/20-ias-officers-transferred-in-major-tamil-nadu-bureaucratic-reshuffle/

#indian administrative service in tamil #20 ias officers transferred in tamilnadu today #ias transfer in tamil nadu today 2023 #ias reshuffle tamil nadu #ias transfer tamil nadu #ias transfer tamil nadu 2023 #20 IAS officers

[surekha-bhosale]

Career in Indian Administrative Service

https://www.hrishiblogbuddhi.com/trending-careers/civil-services/ias-indian-administrative-service/

The full form of IAS officer is Indian Administrative Service, which is one of the most state-level the famous civil services in India. Indian Imperial Services was the name given to the IAS before independence. It was afterward renamed Indian Administrative Services. IAS officers are members of the district, state, and central secretariats. They hold crucial roles in the Indian government's administrative system. Candidates for IAS must pass the civil services test with a top score of 100 and declare IAS as their first choice.

#Administrative Service #IAS #civil services #Indian

[rootinformation]

British administration in India

British administration in India

British administration in India The British administration in India began in seed in 1600 AD with the establishment of the East India Company. By 1755, the East India Company had well established its existence as a trading institution. After the Plassey war of 1757 AD, the foundation of British power in India was laid. The period from 1773 to 1858 was what we call the ‘period of double rule’.…

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#British administration in India #British Crown ruled #British Parliament #central administration #Constitutional Development #Development of other institutions #Development order of public service #East India Company #governance systems and legislative #independent democratic institutions #Indian administrative structure #Parliament and Parliamentary #period of double rule #Plassey war of 1757 AD #Revenue and legal system #state-level administrations

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #10

March 15-22 2024

The EPA announced new emission standards with the goal of having more than half of new cars and light trucks sold in the US be low/zero emission by 2032. One of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, it'll eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the next 30 years. It's part of President Biden's goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 on the road to eliminating them totally by 2050.

President Biden canceled nearly 6 Billion dollars in student loan debt. 78,000 borrowers who work in public sector jobs, teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters etc will have their debt totally forgiven. An additional 380,000 public service workers will be informed that they qualify to have their loans forgiven over the next 2 years. The Biden Administration has now forgiven $143.6 Billion in student loan debt for 4 million Americans since the Supreme Court struck down the original student loan forgiveness plan last year.

Under Pressure from the administration and Democrats in Congress Drugmaker AstraZeneca caps the price of its inhalers at $35. AstraZeneca joins rival Boehringer Ingelheim in capping the price of inhalers at $35, the price the Biden Admin capped the price of insulin for seniors. The move comes as the Federal Trade Commission challenges AstraZeneca’s patents, and Senator Bernie Sanders in his role as Democratic chair of the Senate Health Committee investigates drug pricing.

The Department of Justice sued Apple for being an illegal monopoly in smartphones. The DoJ is joined by 16 state attorneys general. The DoJ accuses Apple of illegally stifling competition with how its apps work and seeking to undermining technologies that compete with its own apps.

The EPA passed a rule banning the final type of asbestos still used in the United States. The banning of chrysotile asbestos (known as white asbestos) marks the first time since 1989 the EPA taken action on asbestos, when it passed a partial ban. 40,000 deaths a year in the US are linked to asbestos

President Biden announced $8.5 billion to help build advanced computer chips in America. Currently America only manufactures 10% of the world's chips and none of the most advanced next generation of chips. The deal with Intel will open 4 factories across 4 states (Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon) and create 30,000 new jobs. The Administration hopes that by 2030 America will make 20% of the world's leading-edge chips.

President Biden signed an Executive Order prioritizing research into women's health. The order will direct $200 million into women's health across the government including comprehensive studies of menopause health by the Department of Defense and new outreach by the Indian Health Service to better meet the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native Women. This comes on top of $100 million secured by First Lady Jill Biden from ARPA-H.

Democratic Senators Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, and Jacky Rosen (all up for re-election) along with Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced the "Shrinkflation Prevention Act" The Bill seeks to stop the practice of companies charging the same amount for products that have been subtly shrunk so consumers pay more for less.

The Department of Transportation will invest $45 million in projects that improve Bicyclist and Pedestrian Connectivity and Safety

The EPA will spend $77 Million to put 180 electric school buses onto the streets of New York City This is part of New York's goal to transition its whole school bus fleet to electric by 2035.

The Senate confirmed President Biden's nomination of Nicole Berner to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Berner has served as the general counsel for America's largest union, SEIU, since 2017 and worked in their legal department since 2006. On behalf of SEIU she's worked on cases supporting the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and against the Defense of Marriage act and was part of the Fight for 15. Before working at SEIU she was a staff attorney at Planned Parenthood. Berner's name was listed by the liberal group Demand Justice as someone they'd like to see on the Supreme Court. Berner becomes one of just 5 LGBT federal appeals court judges, 3 appointed by Biden. The Senate also confirmed Edward Kiel and Eumi Lee to be district judges in New Jersey and Northern California respectively, bring the number of federal judges appointed by Biden to 188.

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #Democrats #politics #US politics #climate change #climate crisis #student loans #debt forgiveness #shrinkflation #women's health #drug prices

[fatehbaz]

Scientific knowledge and technology played a significant role in the expansion of colonial rule in India and the consequent incorporation of the Indian sub-continent into the [commercialized, imperial] world-system [...]. The colonization of nature, territory and people in British India led to a mutually constitutive interplay [...].

By the time the East India Company managed to establish a foothold in Bengal in 1757, [...] [a]fter the acquisition of the formal rights to collect revenues in the states of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the issue of obtaining accurate information about the extent of the produce, the population and other social statistics assumed significance. The detailed scientific surveys [...] were possible due to the large number of amateur scientists employed by the Company. Over time, these surveys played a major role in the transformation of a trading company into a colonial state [...] and the incorporation of India into the modern world-system. [...]

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Considered the founder of British geography, James Rennell arrived in India in 1760 barely three years after the decisive battle of Plassey. Rennell’s cartographic skills caught the attention of the governor of Bengal presidency, who was ‘anxious to inaugurate some system for correcting and revising the geography of Bengal’ [...]. Rennell’s mapping out in great detail the area under the Company was indispensable for the rationalization of the extraction of surplus, administrative strategies and techniques of control. [...] In 1777 he left for England, and two years later he published the Bengal Atlas that led to his election to the Royal Society. [...] With reference to the ‘science wars’, [...] Rennell’s work was also incorporated in the key text[s] of the time, C. Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) [...] [and] the work of [...] Humboldt and Carl Ritter. Rennell’s surveys contributed to the organized [...] surveys [across wider regions of India] that followed after the defeat of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in 1799. [...] [Mysore's] sustained resistance to British power had a major impact on the general consciousness in Britain. [...]

Thomas de Quincey extolled the virtues of the ‘British bulldog’ against [...] the tyrannical ‘Bengal tiger’ [...]. The scientific knowledge that emerged as a consequence of the surveys of Mysore contributed [...] to the consolidation of administrative power [...]. The key figures associated with the surveys [included] Colin Mackenzie [...]. Mackenzie’s ethnographic notes contributed to imperial perceptions of the [...] [people of South Asia] and the grid of anthropological knowledge through which administrative power was deployed. [...]

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Nature, culture and colonial power were inextricably implicated in the production of scientific knowledge and of colonial society. [...] The establishment the Public Works Department in 1854 provided fresh impetus for the deployment of science and technology in grappling with problems precipitated by colonial rule. Declining revenues for the Company focused attention on gigantic irrigation and other public works projects. [...]

The irrigation projects were expanded to include the railways (1849), the telegraph (1852), and the postal system (1850). Together, they represented the largest state-sponsored enterprise undertaken anywhere at that time. Lord Dalhousie, under whose tenure these projects were inaugurated, declared the railways, the telegraph and the postal system as the ‘three great engines of social improvement’.

His predecessor William Bentinck had already termed the railways ‘the great engine of moral improvement’ in a country ‘cursed from one end to the other by the vice, the ignorance, [...] the barbarous and cruel customs that have been the growth of ages under every description of Asian misrule’ [...]. Later observers were to wax ever more eloquent on the role of the railways in the modernization of India. For W. A. Rogers of the Indian Civil Service, railways ‘are opening the eyes of the people … they teach them that speed attained is time, and therefore money, saved or made’ (Adas1989: 226). The importance of a network of railways, connecting the cotton plantations of the Deccan region to the ports became significant especially during the 'cotton famine' of 1846 [...].

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Almost immediately after Dalhousie left India, secure in the belief that the double engines of moral improvement and legitimacy were at work, the rebellion of 1857 put an end to such expectations. The rebellion was partly triggered in response to the wide-ranging transformations [...] triggered off by the introduction of [these] new [colonial infrastructures] [...].

In the end, the rebellion was violently suppressed by the very technologies that had precipitated it in the first place. [...]

---

All text above by: Zaheer Baber. "Colonizing nature: scientific knowledge, colonial power and the incorporation of India into the modern world-system". British Journal of Sociology 52(1), pages 37-58. April 2001. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

#ecology #abolition #multispecies #landscape #geography #temporal #temporality #colonial #imperial #tidalectics #indigenous #archipelagic thinking #intimacies of four continents #plantations

[plutusiasdelhi]

MALARIA VACCINE

The Government of India has set a target to eliminate malaria in India by 2027.

It has developed a National Framework for Malaria Elimination (2016-2030) and a National Strategic Plan for Malaria Elimination for five years.

India shifted its focus from malaria control to elimination.

A roadmap was established to eliminate malaria in 571 out of India’s total 678 districts by 2022. 

The Malaria Elimination Research Alliance-India (MERA-India) was formed under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The subject of "Malaria Vaccine" is covered in this article's coverage of "Daily Current Affairs". The Science and Technology segment of the UPSC CSE test has applicability for this topic. Rishabh has researched and written the article. Additionally, our faculty has reviewed this article. Click the “Malaria Vaccine” link to see the story's original version.

Plutus IAS has received praise for its continued success in offering top-notch and reasonably priced IAS coaching in Karol Bagh Delhi. Our students' everlasting gratitude proves our dedication to developing the next generation of Indian bureaucrats and administrators.

The importance of everyday current affairs cannot be overstated if you wish to succeed in competitive tests like Civil Services. On its website, Plutus IAS includes a separate section for current affairs.

#ias coaching in delhi #upscaspirants #upsccoaching #best ias coaching in delhi #civil services examination #ias #upsc exam preparation #education #iascoaching #plutus ias #malaria vaccine

[beardedmrbean]

The Biden administration is removing William Penn from Philadelphia.

New plans by the National Park Service to renovate Old City’s Welcome Park include removing the centerpiece statue of William Penn permanently and redesigning the park to highlight Native American history — a move that has angered Pennsylvania’s Republican leadership.

The plan is a major shift, considering that the park was built on the site of Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, that transported him from England. Penn actually landed first in 1682 near the intersection of the Delaware River and Chester Creek in Chester.

Welcome Park is part of Independence National Historical Park and was completed in 1982 on designs by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Penn’s arrival.

The wide-open park across from the former site of City Tavern aims to tell the story of Penn’s vision for the city. Although a lesser-known area of Independence Park, it provides visitors with an overview of the city layout and history of Penn’s landing. The Penn statue includes a farewell ode to Philadelphia, imparting “what love, what care, what service, what travail have there been to bring thee forth.”

Now, the National Park Service wants to rehabilitate the park in time for the 250th birthday celebration of America in 2026. The park on Second Street between Chestnut and Walnut Streets has fallen into disrepair with rows of broken granite floor.

Representatives for the National Park Service could not be reached for comment Monday. They are seeking public comment on the proposal, according to their website.

Plans announced Friday call for “an expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia” in consultation with Indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

Designs would keep some parts of the current park, including the original Philadelphia street grid, but the “Penn statue and Slate Roof House model will be removed and not reinstalled,” according to the plans.

Republican outcry

“The decision by President Biden and his administration to try and cancel William Penn out of whole cloth is another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of woke-ism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history,” Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) said in a statement.

Cutler said the treaty signed by Penn with Native Americans was historical and with “mutual respect shown between Penn and Native tribes.”

“This issue is also deeply personal to me,” Cutler said. “The first Cutlers came to Pennsylvania in 1685 on the ship Rebekah, not long after Penn’s arrival in 1682. They came to Pennsylvania because they were Quakers who shared Penn’s view of religious tolerance and peace.”

Cutler said removing the statue creates an “absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history.” He said he plans to introduce a resolution honoring William Penn and “encouraging” the National Park Service to halt the plan.

Pennsylvania State Sen. Scott Martin (R., Berks) and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on social media called the plan “absolutely disgraceful.”

Native Americans

Welcome Park, though not necessarily the statue of Penn, has also been the site of some resentment among Native Americans. The plot had been given to the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations from the Iroquois Confederacy) in January 1755 by John Penn, William Penn’s grandson. In the 1700s, Native American groups often visited Philadelphia for diplomatic and trade meetings. They sometimes numbered in the hundreds and visited so frequently that John Penn asked the Provincial Council of Philadelphia to consider setting aside a piece of land for these gatherings. The delegations often refused to negotiate treaties until they could stand on their own ground and build a council fire.

A 2020 Inquirer article chronicled a trip by six women from the Iroquois Confederacy in upstate New York to reconnect with the patch of tribal land on the site of Welcome Park.

“I anticipated a park in a natural pristine state. Like any other park, it would have trees, grass, water,” said Louise McDonald (Native name Wa’kerakátste), a Mohawk Bear Clan Mother from Akwesasne, N.Y. “I was frozen for a minute because I felt it had been choked and that it wasn’t a true representation of the original intentions of the space. It just seemed to be purposely buried with a cover-up narrative. There certainly seems to be a feeling of erasure intended to remove any spirit that would imply that we were once there.”

Penn in Philly

William Penn’s likenesses will still remain in Philly. The statue of Penn atop City Hall is a landmark, visible from many parts of the city.

And there is another Penn statue at Penn Treaty Park off North Delaware Avenue at the corner of East Columbia Avenue and Beach Street. Legend says Penn and a local Lenape clan made a peace agreement under an elm tree. The original “treaty elm” has long been replaced, but the park contains an obelisk and plaque memorializing the agreement, as well as a statue of Penn.

The discussion of the Penn statue’s removal is not the first time in recent years that Philadelphia has seen a struggle over statues.

The statue of Frank L. Rizzo, the late mayor and police commissioner, was ordered removed from in front of the Municipal Services Building in 2020 by then-Mayor Jim Kenney amid sweeping protests after the murder of George Floyd. Also in recent years, people have petitioned to have the Christopher Columbus statue in Marconi Plaza removed, though it still remains. _______________________________________

Time to start finding problematic people the folks on the left like and tearing monuments to them down, maybe Fredrick Douglas was sexist, we already know MLK was a Zionist that should count against him for some people, know who else was a Zionist

Wonder where the "Ruth Sent Us" group is now.......

Maybe we find something bad Harriet Tubman did and start to disqualify her, she may have been mean to native Americans or something.

Given enough time they're going to find something wrong with everyone that has a statue eventually.

Start with every single statue and bust of karl marx

#anonymous

[mitchipedia]

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything.

The program was a weird combination of email, databases, and workflow that allowed companies to stand up custom applications and deploy them to relevant groups of workers inside Notes.

Also:

… It provided not just your email, but an internal telephone directory, contact database, booking system for time off, company handbook, and more, all accessible via a single application and a single set of credentials, long before single sign-on became a thing.

Nowadays, it is common for most if not all of these functions to be delivered via separate web-based applications, each requiring a different login so you need to have dozens of different credentials, and each one sporting a different user interface. So I guess you could regard the web browser as an app runtime that is the ultimate successor to Notes?

Also:

Eventually, IBM, which had acquired Lotus in 1995, announced in 2012 that it would be discontinuing the Lotus brand altogether, before offloading Notes to Indian software outfit HCL Technologies in 2018.

The platform still survives, with HCL releasing Domino 14.0 last year, which, as The Register commented at the time, speaks to the “stickiness” of the custom workflows built on the platform.

Also:

But Notes is nowhere near holding the record for the oldest piece of software still being used. The US Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), which takes care of contracts for the Department of Defense (DoD), is said to have a program called Mechanization of Contract Administration Services (MOCAS), which was introduced in 1958, making it nearly twice as old.

[bestiarium]

Walking Sam [modern cryptid/urban legend]

A slender, pitch-black figure appears to troubled teenagers and kids and convinces them to kill themselves: it sounds like a great premise for a horror movie. The story of ‘Walking Sam’ is often claimed to be an ancient Native American myth but I believe it is actually a modern, 21st century urban legend.

Around 2015, a drastic sudden increase in suicides was reported in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, USA. An internet creepypasta quickly emerged and spread on social media sites, speaking of ‘Walking Sam’: a mysterious spirit who appears to young people as an abnormally thin and tall figure and drives them to suicide. This enigmatic creature is usually portrayed without a face and with the hanged corpses of his victims dangling from his spread arms. Sometimes these corpses are replaced with the glowing souls of the victims instead, implying that the monster collects souls for some sinister purpose. ‘Walking Sam’ is almost always depicted wearing a dapper top hat. In some versions, he is a black skeleton rather than a skinny humanoid figure.

Also called ‘the Tall Man’ or ‘the Tall Man Spirit’, this creature is supposedly an ancient Native American legend, which drove me to read up on local mythology and religious stories. I found no such link, except for one statement by John Yellow Bird Steele – president of the Oglala tribe of Native Americans – that there is indeed a belief among the Oglala people about a suicide spirit. The character of ‘Walking Sam’, however, seems to be created by the internet (in fact, I believe this urban legend was influenced by Slenderman, a vaguely similar character from modern urban legends/creepypastas).

While the story of Walking Sam may be more sensational, research from SAMSHA (the American Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) points to a decidedly less magical cause: depression, mental conditions and a lack of accessible mental health services are to blame along with the discrimination and racism that many Oglala people still have to deal with.

As a closing statement: if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts please contact your country’s suicide hotline. Magical suicide spirits are not real but your struggles are, you are valid and deserve help.  

Sources: Bosma, J., 2015, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Struggles with Suicides Among its Young, The New York Times, USA. Marty, M. E., 2015, Sioux Suicides, University of Chicago Divinity School. Pember, M. A., 2010, Native Americans Combat the Suicide Spirit, Diverse. (image source: Liz Anna Mae on Twitter)

#urban legends #cryptids #spirits #mythical creatures #bestiary #mythology

[mariacallous]

In 2017, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair cofounded the fact-checking website AltNews in India. Almost immediately, the pair were targeted with persistent and vicious attacks from the far-right news website OpIndia. Many of the attacks claimed that Zubair was a Rohingya Muslim who illegally migrated to India and that his cousin was a rapist. In several headlines, the site described Zubair as an “Islamist” spreading fake news.

This wasn’t far off from OpIndia’s other coverage: In addition to routinely attacking journalists and news sites critical of the government, OpIndia spreads conspiracies and, at times, outright disinformation, particularly about the country’s minority Muslim population. Founded in 2014, OpIndia is regularly name-checked by leading lawmakers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the site admits it is funded in part by ads run by the BJP. As hundreds of millions of Indians vote in elections across the country, critics fear that OpIndia’s election-related disinformation and overt support of the Modi government could further undermine trust in the democratic process. Already, the website has echoed Modi’s widely criticized description of the Muslim vote as “vote jihad.”

Yet despite this, US tech companies, which have rules against hate speech and disinformation, continue to platform OpIndia and, in some cases, allow it to continue to make money through advertising. OpIndia has a robust presence on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Additionally, a new report, shared exclusively with WIRED, has found that Google’s ad platform is being used to partially fund OpIndia’s operation.

“In an increasingly polarized space, they create a vicious narrative against you,” Sinha tells WIRED. “All of this is narrative building. Their job is to defame anyone who's critical of the government, and that's what they do.”

Despite repeated efforts by activists to defund the site—and the fact that publications that have partnered with a Google-supported election fact-checking initiative, Shakti, have fact-checked OpIndia’s articles and found it routinely publishes fake news—OpIndia continues to operate thanks in part to ads that Google’s ad exchange platform places next to its content. In 2019, Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network, which accredits publications as trustworthy arbiters of information, rejected OpIndia’s application.

“Google’s own publisher policies prohibit the monetization of content that incites hatred, incitement of racism, promoting discrimination of an individual or group,” says Sarah Kay Wiley, director of policy and partnerships at Check My Ads, a nonprofit digital advertising watchdog organization and author of the new report. “Google also says that they don't monetize or work with publishers that make claims that are false and could significantly undermine trust in an election or democratic process.”

Ad exchanges allow publishers to sell ad space and advertisers to buy it through an entirely automated process that happens in the split seconds before a website loads. Ad sellers and buyers set limits for price and spending, with Google taking a cut of all transactions. Because of the automated nature of the process, advertisers likely don’t realize that their products are showing up next to hateful and misleading content.

Other ad exchanges such as Magnite have discontinued working with OpIndia. If Google were to stop working with OpIndia, says Wiley, that “would definitely have a material impact.”

On Facebook, OpIndia runs pages in English and Hindi, with 310,000 followers and 431,000 followers in each language, respectively. Both pages list their administrator as Aadhyaasi Media and Content Services Private Limited, which owns OpIndia.

On its Hindi page, OpIndia has shared stories promoting the “love jihad” conspiracy theory, which asserts that Muslim men are trying to marry, seduce, or kidnap Hindus in order to force them to convert and create a demographic shift in Hindu-majority India, and has promoted false claims, including that a new inheritance law would reallocate wealth from Hindus to Muslims. Meta spokesperson Erin McPike did not comment on whether this content violated Meta’s policies, nor on whether Meta takes into account the violations of the Hindi page when assessing the English page.

These narratives then get picked up and spread on other platforms, like X and Telegram, says Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “In some of these places there’s even more explicit calls for violence against Muslims or for the removal of Muslims,” he says. The site has international appeal as well: WIRED was able to find OpIndia articles shared in non-Indian, right-wing channels on Telegram, including a pro-Kremlin channel with over 1.3 million subscribers and numerous conspiracy channels with hundreds of thousands of followers.

The site is also highly active on the social media platform X with the official OpIndia account, which has 688,000 subscribers. OpIndia appears to pay for X Premium, giving it a blue checkmark, but did not respond to whether it subscribes to the service. WIRED has identified at least half a dozen OpIndia writers, columnists, and editors, including editor in chief Nupur Sharma, who has more than 680,000 followers, who appear to be subscribed to X Premium.

Sharma did not respond to a question about OpIndia monetizing its content via X Premium, and the company itself also failed to respond.

“It’s a hyper-partisan, right-wing outlet that set themselves up by saying that mainstream news media in India have a liberal bias, very similar to what American right-wing outlets say about professional journalism in America,” says Kalyani Chadha, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University who published an in-depth report in 2020 on India’s right-wing media ecosystem that included OpIndia. “They bill themselves as a news outlet, but there's not a lot of original reporting. A lot of it is commentary and opinion.”

In addition to Sinha and Zubair, OpIndia has regularly targeted journalists and outlets it sees as “far left.” In one piece, the site’s staff listed the Indian journalists and publications supposedly associated with billionaire George Soros, who has long been the target of conspiracies from the global far right. In another, they attacked veteran journalist Ravish Kumar, falsely accusing him of harboring sympathies for the perpetrators of a 2019 rape case. OpIndia has also spent years attacking Raqib Hameed Naik, an Indian journalist and the founder of India Hate Lab, which documents instances of hate speech and conspiracies that target India’s minority communities. This, he says, was made all the harder by government officials sharing the articles.

“The goal is to amplify this disinformation, and you have BJP leaders sharing this, so people think it’s authentic,” says Naik. “In the long term, this kind of builds the case against a critic, a journalist, that this person is bad, because there is reporting against them.”

When WIRED contacted OpIndia for comment, Sharma responded to our emailed questions by posting her responses on X.

When asked about hate speech and disinformation on her site, Sharma wrote: “Our critics are mostly Islamists, Jihadis, Terrorists, Leftists and their sympathizers—like yourself. We don't particularly care about any of them.” She then added that “Islamophobia does not exist” and pointed to an OpIndia article that outlines her position. Sharma added that it was “none of your concern” when asked if OpIndia was funded by the BJP. Sharma’s post also tagged one of the authors of this story, who then faced a torrent of abuse from Sharma’s followers.

For years, activists and researchers have tried to highlight the problematic content published by OpIndia. A 2020 campaign from UK-based advocacy group Stop Funding Hate led to a number of advertisers removing their ads from the site. Google, however, says the content published on the site does not appear to breach its own rules.

"All sites in our network, including Opindia, must adhere to our publisher policies, which explicitly prohibit ads from appearing alongside content promoting hate speech, violence, or demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust or participation in an election,” Google spokesperson Michael Aciman says. “Publishers are also subject to regular reviews, and we actively block or remove ads from any violating content."

Despite this, users can find ads for Temu or the Palm Beach Post next to many OpIndia articles promoting conspiracies and Islamophobia, placed with the help of ad-exchange platforms like Google’s Ad Manager, which is the market leader.

Facebook, meanwhile, says Wiley, is more of a “walled garden.” Once a publisher meets the company’s criteria for monetization, including having more than 1,000 followers, it can earn money from ads that run on the page.

While researchers that spoke to WIRED were unable to tell exactly how much the site has made from Google Ads and Facebook monetization, they said it’s likely that OpIndia is not solely reliant on the ad exchange for its revenue. It appears that, as with many news outlets in India, part of that funding comes in the form of more traditional advertising from a major client: the government.

“A large section of India's mainstream press depends on the government ads for their survival,” says Prashanth Bhat, professor of media studies at the University of Houston. “That revenue is critical for the mainstream media survival in a hypercompetitive media environment like in India. We have about 400 round-the-clock television news channels in India in different languages, and we have over 10,000 registered newspapers. For them to survive, they definitely need government patronage.”

Sharma confirmed that OpIndia is reliant in part on ads from the government. “Literally every media house gets advertising from various political parties,” said Sharma. “In fact, a part of your salary could also be funded by such parties and/or their sympathizers. Do get down from your high horse.”

The BJP has, however, also sought to help OpIndia in other ways. In 2019, the BJP reached out to Meta directly, asking the company to allow OpIndia to monetize on Facebook. Meta spokesperson McPike told WIRED that OpIndia’s English page is still able to monetize but that monetization on its Hindi page is currently not allowed “due to violations of our policies.”

“In order to monetize on Facebook, Pages must comply with our community standards, our partner monetization policies, and our content monetization policies,” McPike says.

Google did not respond to questions from WIRED about whether it had ever received a similar request from the Indian government. Google’s Aciman says, “As we do with all publishers, we’ve taken prior page-level enforcement action on this site when we’ve found policy violations. We will of course continue to enforce our policies on violating content across our publisher network.”

X did not respond to questions about whether OpIndia and its staff are able to monetize through X Premium or whether the company has ever received requests from the government to restore content from OpIndia or its staff. The company has complied with several takedown requests from the Indian government to ban accounts or tweets critical of the government.

But Wiley says that without transparency on the part of tech companies as to how they’re deciding which organizations are able to earn money through ads—and how much—outlets like OpIndia will continue to fall through the cracks.

“The business model of the internet at the end of the day is advertising, and what we're seeing over and over again is, that business model is broken,” she says. “Advertisers don't know where their money is going. And the biggest issue is that a lot of that is being funneled to mis- and disinformation online.”

[flagwars]

Flag Wars Round 1: Prelims

Welcome to the first round of the Flag Wars! I received so many submissions, and I tried to include almost all of them in the competition. The first round is the preliminaries, where there will be 16 brackets each with 8 or 9 flags. The two most voted flags in each bracket will go on to the next round. Sadly, so many amazing flags will be voted out in the first round. This competition is about which flag has the best design rather than meaning, so please vote for the flag that you think looks the best rather than voting on how meaningful the flag is to you.

Here are the brackets for Round 1:

Round 1:

Group A:

Bracket 1:

Pansexual

Norway

Belarus

Albania

Canada

Lesbian

South Korea

New Zealand

Bracket 2:

Newfoundland

Argentina

Pakistan

Omnisexual

Brittany, France

Indiana

Barbados

Northern Italy

Bracket 3:

Achterhoek, Netherlands

Scotland

Fuente de Oro, Colombia

LGBT Pride

Orlando, Florida

Bhutan

North American Vexillological Association

Washington D.C.

Bracket 4:

Wiphala

Friesland

Abrosexual

Kalmykia, Russia

L'Manberg (Dream SMP)

Latvian Russians

Mozambique

United Kingdom

Group B:

Bracket 5:

New Mexico

Nonbinary

Original Pride

Jamaica

Sweden

Isle of Man

The People's Flag of Milwaukee

Denver, Colorado

Bracket 6:

Maryland

Ruhnu, Estonia

Māori

Assyrian

Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia

Estelada (Catalonian Independence)

Intersex

Aroace

Bracket 7:

South Carolina

Cascadia (Doug Flag)

Yi People

Switzerland

California

Bavaria, Germany

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Pehuenche People

Bracket 8:

Wales

Germany

Qing Dynasty

Arizona

Tokyo

Liechtenstein

MLM

St. Louis, Missouri

Group C:

Bracket 9:

Cuba

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Vatican City

Kiribati

Demigirl

Bohuslän, Sweden

Greenland

European Union

Bracket 10:

Iran

Ikurriña/Basque

Greece

Japan

Progress Pride

United Nations

Kyrgyzstan

Aromantic

American Indian Movement

Bracket 11:

Ryukyu Kingdom

Quebec

Australian Aboriginal

Sapphic

Slovakia

International Federation of Vexillological Associations

Mexico

Nepal

Bracket 12:

Bear

Taiwan

Asexual

Pacific Community

Alaska

Turkmeneli, Iraq

Oz (The Wizard of Oz)

Zheleznogorsk, Russia

Group D:

Bracket 13:

Trans

Chicago, Illinois

Concón, Chile

Morocco

Rejected EU

Okinawa

Racing Flag

Hong Kong

Bracket 14:

Ohio

Black flag of Puerto Rico

Hawaii

Antarctica True South Proposal

Brazil

United States

A-spec

Estonia

Bracket 15:

Laser Kiwi

Seychelles

Sealand

Uzbekistan

Colorado

Kazakhstan

Ukraine

Macau

Wakanda

Bracket 16:

Orca Face (People’s Flag of Seattle)

Philippines

Portland, Oregon

Unlabeled

Salem, Oregon

Mississippi

Bisexual

Turkey

South Africa

#polls #poll #vexillology #flags #flag wars #tournament #brackets

[phenakistoskope]

Last week, I bought a copy of Frontline because I'd been quite enamoured with Aijaz Ahmad's work over the past few months. Ahmad had been an editorial consultant with Frontline for years, contributing over eighty articles to the publication, articles that I will track down one day, by hook or by crook, but that's not the point.

My copy of Frontline is dated April 5th 2024, and it begins with an article written by Satish Deshpande, whose economic and sociological scholarship I am unfamiliar with, but whose occasional contribution to The Economic and Political Weekly I am familiar with, especially the essay Caste and Castelessness: Towards a Biography of the ‘General Category’, which has been useful to my understanding of caste.

The essay in Frontline is called A Leap Year for Indian Democracy? and it walks me through the ravages of the BJP's tenure at the helm of the Indian parliament, its part in the disintegration of the democratic institutions of the state, including the courts, bureaucracy, law enforcement, and public universities. It muses about the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition, the INDIA bloc, and professes support for anything but the NDA.

What struck me about the essay was, first, the assertion that the Emergency called by the Indira Gandhi led Congress government in 1975-1976, "seems almost innocent" compared to the atrocities of the BJP lead government. While I would agree that the political foundations that underwrote the Emergency were certainly different from the political underpinnings of the current hindutva regime, the ascription of innocence, even in passing, to a brutal regime is a distortion of history, it seems flippant at best and deeply disturbing at worst.

Second, the essay ends with a personal anecdote where Deshpande recounts his part in the elections of 1977, that is, the year the Indira Gandhi led Congress was ousted from the centre. He calls it an "inspirational anecdote", where Deshpande and twenty or thirty of his compatriots campaigned for the Janata Party, and Deshpande himself was assigned to campaign for Atal Bihari Vajpayee, of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, despite despite the author's political leanings "going strongly against the Jana Sangh".

Somehow, Deshpande manages to disclose that he played a small, insignificant part in the rise of the hindutva regime of our times, and in the same breath, denounce it profusely. I'm not going to denounce Deshpande based on this essay, but I do wonder whether Frontline itself limits political enunciation in a certain ways, I know Vijay Prashad has also contributed to Frontline in the past, and that The Hindu Group acquired Frontline, some time after 1994 (Frontline began publication in 1984, The Hindu Group was established in 1994, I'm making educated guesses).

But perhaps the limits of what a publication can say are determined by the advertising that pays for its publication. Now, The Hindu Group clearly has a diverse portfolio of advertisers under its belt, but I am going to consider only the advertisements printed in the particular issue of Frontline on my desk.

There are three adverts in this copy of Frontline, one inside the front cover, and two more on either side of the back cover. I shall elide the place of book reviews, book, film, and art recommendation as advertisements to expedite the analysis. The advertisements are as follows:

Inside the front cover is an advertisement for Rau's IAS Study Circle, a private tuition service which prepares students and civilians for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and Indian Administrative Services (IAS) exams; private tuition for public posts. The fees for the courses and rehearsal tests range from ₹8,000 to ₹175,000.

Inside the back cover is an advertisement for Gujarat Maritime University, another private institution, which teaches many courses relating to the maritime industry, but none of them concerned with actually operating sea-faring vessels.

The back cover is an advertisement for Galgotias University, established under the Uttar Pradesh Private Universities Act no. 12 of 2019, and offers a wide range of courses, and, to quote the advertisement — "In keeping with the grand vision of our Hon'ble PM Shri Narendra Modi Ji for making India a Vishwaguru, and staying committed to the dream of our Hon'ble UP CM Shri Yogi Adityanath Ji for making our state a truly Global Knowledge Superpower" (emphasis in original)

I haven't had a chance to read all the essays and articles in this issue of Frontline, that will be accomplished over the next week, nor have I any past issues to compare advertising patterns with. However, I am quite certain that political positions are limited within Frontline's pages, mainly by advertising, but, this does not imply that the limits cannot be transcended in calling for a complete restructuring of India's political economy.

#phenakistoskope.txt #this has been an effortpost