Competence Cauldron

  “April is the cruellest month”, wrote TS Eliot, the celebrated poet. As if to prove the prophetic words, Covid pandemic wound itself up through the first quarter of 2020 and assumed tsunami-like fury by April smashing any hope of recovery for the already depressed global   economy and consumer confidence. The economic and emotional devastation by corona virus is still ruling the roost. In India, with sizeable sections of the population economically vulnerable, the gathering recessionary clouds portend prolonged trouble. The eagerly awaited economic reports for Q4, FY 20 were released by Modi   Government on Friday. India’s economy grew at just 3.1 per cent in the quarter. The headline number for the full FY20 came at an 11-year low of 4.2 per cent. Further, as the lockdown effect started snowballing, India’s eight core infrastructure sectors - Coal, Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Petroleum Refinery products, Fertilizer, Cement, Steel, and Electricity - which have a co...

Is India ready for Federalism? *Ravi Kumar Pillai India as an independent nation is about to complete seventy-five years of freedom from colonial rule. Thirty years is generally considered as a generational span, which is the average time taken for children born to become adults and have in turn children born to them. In that sense we have the third generation of citizens born in free India currently at the   threshold of their teens. It is indeed time to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions. What sort of future is reckoning these kids?   How have we as a nation and as the generations preceding them fared in enabling their ascendancy in terms competence, engagement and quality of life? The answers to these questions unfortunately are nothing to write home about. The low score in terms of Human Development Index (HDI) would speak for itself. India’s HDI rank as per World Economic Forum Report of 2019 is 129 out of 189 nations covered. Our rank has just gone up by on...