AKHAND-JYOTI

In pre-colonial times, goods manufactured in India were not only exported to every nook and corner of the world, but also loved and much appreciated for their durability, quality, and excellence of workmanship. However, with the end of the colonial rule, the manufacturing industry of India faced heightened challenge form imported goods, since by that time, Indian consumers found the imported goods cheaper compared to goods manufactured by Indian workers. Consequently, Indian manufacturers faced unemployment, and the country’s ‘Balance of Trade’ was permanently disoriented. With time, the much cheaper Chinese goods made inroads and further caused destruction of Indian manufacturers. Thus, there emerged an ill-famous practice, i.e., ‘Made in India’ stickers were pasted on the imported goods, which were sold to Indian consumers. Successive governments did less than expected to revitalize the goods manufacturing in the country. However, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has shown cou...

In India, we have a powerful transparency tool. It is called the Right To Information (RTI) Act. The Government of India has made it compulsory for all government offices and enterprises to implement the RTI act. With the passage of time, all government transactions, businesses and operations have fallen under the scanner of the public view. The general public can now raise queries and inquire about what’s going on in a particular government office at a particular time regarding a particular task. The power of this information is amazing. In a short span of time, a lot of RTI activists have established themselves as active participants working to put responsibilities back on the shoulders of the government servants for completing the referred tasks as soon as possible. The RTI act has revolutionized the government-public interaction. At the international level, India is now considered as a progressive nation-state that values transparency in the public works. The RTI act has also l...

Arvind Kejriwal has just established a political party. This is  really  a good sign and I congratulate him for this; I also regret for being late in congratulating him. With the establishment of his political party, although the name of this party remains undisclosed, he has been making political allegations against every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the ruling party in India, or is related to this party in some way or the other. This fundamental task of identifying the corrupt persons, officials, and ministers is seen as the first and primary task of his political party. This, Arvind Kejriwal and his team think, could be an election-winning issue and help in gaining power in a state or at centre. Well the abovementioned actions do tell us all that Arvind’s political party is determined to identify the corrupt people, bring them in front of investigating agencies, and see that they get punished for whatever wrong they have done. However, when we look at all this from a bigg...

Just a week ago, the central government had increased the prices of petrol in the country. The decision brought immense pressure on the state governments as to do something in order to give some relief to the citizens. The best thing that a state can do something about the price of petrol is to decrease the tax on the same. In this way, due to lesser tax, the price of petrol will automatically in a particular state. Showing the willingness to give relief to its citizens from the increased prices of petrol, the Delhi Government, led by Sheila Dixit, has taken am welcome step by decreasing the value added tax (VAT) on petrol. This will decrease the price of petrol in Delhi. Therefore, at every filling, the petrol users will have to less than what they used to pay after the prices were increased by the central government. Sheila Dixit However, at the same time, the Dixit government has increased the VAT on the compressed natural gas (CNG). Due to this, the prices of CNG h...

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) have reached the finals of the fifth edition of the DLF-IPL. Their journeys to the finals have been amazing as both the teams have seen ups and downs during the league matches. However, they really stepped up their games once they reached the qualifier round and defeated the opposition comprehensively. KKR has reached the finals of the DLF-IPL for the first time. Thus, it of course is a great opportunity for this team to prove all the popular predictions wrong and defeat CSK, the two time champion of the DLF-IPL series. However, CSK are the favorites and have the advantage of playing the finals at their home ground. Due to the performances of the major players in both the teams, it is really hard to predict the winner right away. However, the winning of the final will certainly depend on the performance of the players who have not performed to their expected levels. In addition, the condition of the pitch will as...