Archive for September, 2009

  • National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is primarily a programme aimed at creating public assets that would be useful for the society at large. When NREGA was created, it relaxed this principle by allowing projects in private lands of selected marginalised communities including SCs and STs. The Minister for Rural Development is now trying to extend this by permitting works in private lands owned by small and marginal farmers who are not SCs and STs. This proposal has been welcomed by some like Mihir Shah and has been sharply criticised by Aruna Roy and Jean Drèze among others. I believe...

    Asset creation in private lands using NREGA: Problems & opportunities

    Posted on September 24, 2009 | No Comments
    National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is primarily a programme aimed at creating public assets that would be useful for the society at large. When NREGA was created, it relaxed this principle by allowing projects in private lands of selected marginalised communities including SCs and STs. The Minister for Rural Development is now trying to extend this by permitting works in private lands owned by small and marginal farmers who are not SCs and STs. This proposal has been welcomed by some like Mihir Shah and has been sharply criticised by Aruna Roy and Jean Drèze among others. I believe...

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  • With one's career at stake, we tend to do what is safe, rather than pursue what we feel is the right thing to do. Friendships helped me push these boundaries into doing the kind of research I really wanted to do.

    Friendships and “research methods”

    Posted on September 17, 2009 | No Comments
    With one's career at stake, we tend to do what is safe, rather than pursue what we feel is the right thing to do. Friendships helped me push these boundaries into doing the kind of research I really wanted to do.

    Continue Reading...

  • The explosion of digital information about all aspects of our lives, the places we live in, etc. will radically transform the way we write history in the future. Read on.

    History in the future

    Posted on September 14, 2009 | No Comments
    The explosion of digital information about all aspects of our lives, the places we live in, etc. will radically transform the way we write history in the future. Read on.

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  • The Minister for Rural Development, Mr C P Joshi has announced that he will revamp NREGA with some major changes, and the new scheme of things has been informally labelled “NREGA-2”. News reports have indicated that the new scheme will be unveiled on the birthday of Rajiv Gandhi. As of now the Ministry has not made available for public discussion the set of changes that will be made, but some ideas have been making their way to the media periodically. This article synthesizes these ideas, and provides links to articles debating the so-called NREGA-2.

    What is NREGA-2?

    Posted on September 11, 2009 | No Comments
    The Minister for Rural Development, Mr C P Joshi has announced that he will revamp NREGA with some major changes, and the new scheme of things has been informally labelled “NREGA-2”. News reports have indicated that the new scheme will be unveiled on the birthday of Rajiv Gandhi. As of now the Ministry has not made available for public discussion the set of changes that will be made, but some ideas have been making their way to the media periodically. This article synthesizes these ideas, and provides links to articles debating the so-called NREGA-2.

    Continue Reading...

  • Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my papers. After a lot of trial and error I settled on Refworks that I was really happy with. Unfortunately it is a paid software with a stiff fee that I may not be able to afford once I leave the university. Thankfully, a friend told...

    Zotero: The best citation tool around, and it’s free

    Posted on September 7, 2009 | 1 Comment
    Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my papers. After a lot of trial and error I settled on Refworks that I was really happy with. Unfortunately it is a paid software with a stiff fee that I may not be able to afford once I leave the university. Thankfully, a friend told...

    Continue Reading...

  • Madras is one of those conservative cities that likes to keep its boys and girls at a safe distance. To take an example, parents clamour to get their children enrolled in colleges that are rather strict about this, and colleges have responded to this with enthusiasm. One famous college made a rule that girls will sit at the front of the college bus and boys behind and there will be a firewall of teachers in between. To counter this attraction other colleges have come up with separate roads and staircases inside the campus for boys and girls. In this context...

    Salsa in Madras: Social dance in a conservative city

    Posted on September 3, 2009 | No Comments
    Madras is one of those conservative cities that likes to keep its boys and girls at a safe distance. To take an example, parents clamour to get their children enrolled in colleges that are rather strict about this, and colleges have responded to this with enthusiasm. One famous college made a rule that girls will sit at the front of the college bus and boys behind and there will be a firewall of teachers in between. To counter this attraction other colleges have come up with separate roads and staircases inside the campus for boys and girls. In this context...

    Continue Reading...

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