“Bureaucracy” in substance is a specialised “non elective” cadre of “Professionals” who are generally “Selected” on the basis of merit for the purpose of managing and handling the “clerical’ aspect of a “Political” Authority, which in India is a Minister. Formally Bureaucracy is the part of the Executive branch of the government but looking at its enormous job, which it has to perform and the major league of power which has been vested with it for the performance of its assigned job, it can also be termed as the “Fourth Branch” of Government. In India, the maximum management of the…
Author: Syed Ahmad
John Stuart Mill had once commented that the most appropriate tasks of a legislative body are to oversee and clarify government actions and compel the executive to provide reasonable and rationalistic justifications for its actions, which in modern day political terminology is referred as “Parliamentary Oversight”. Parliamentary oversight is one of the most essential and fundamental characteristics of a “Democracy”. Today, a large number of working democracies of this world have adopted this distinct but important aspect of “Transparent Governance”. India, too has adopted this procedural aspect of democracy, but exclusions are defence sector, to a limited extent, and most…
In the recent days, with the announcement of creation of “Telangana” as the 29th state of India, there has been a lot discussion over the pros and cons of smaller states in comparison with larger states. Similarly there has been a demand for creation of new states from many corners of India. Before going into the topic of “contention”, it would be appropriate to first discuss the historical background of the “Provincial Setup” of the Indian “Federation”. During the reign of the Britishers, India was divided into near about some 600 princely states and provinces. When India got Independence by…
Media, the fourth pillar of democracy, has to play a very important and paramount role in a democracy. We all are aware of the paramount role which the media plays in the working of a healthy democracy, but sadly this pillar of democracy has seen recently a deep degradation in the professional ethics and standards in its profession. In the chase of being the first in reporting the news, some media houses have forgot their social responsibility of reporting authentic news without any biases. This sensationalism of media and the decline in professional ethics is termed as “Yellow Journalism”. Today…
Someone had rightly said that “accountability” is the essence of Democracy. Technically In a democracy, every public institution is subject to “public scrutiny” or in other words it is accountable to the nation. Accountability can rightly be termed as sine qua non of democracy. But this accountability cutting across borders is often in confrontation with “Judicial Independence”. Advocates of Judicial Independence ardently argue that as Judiciary has got a role of an arbitrator and adjudicator it should not be subjected to any sort of scrutiny. Well in my opinion, because of its exceptional and paramount role and also for the…
Facts of the Case: There was a medical college in Indore known as the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, it was under the control of a private enterprise but later on it was taken over by the Government of State of Madhya Bharat. When the Medical College was taken over by the State Government, it brought a rule under which all students who were having domicile of the State of Madhya Bharat i.e. were “Bonafide Residents of Madhya Bharat”, were exempted from “capitation fees” and all other students who were not having domicile of Madhya Bharat were charged capitation fees…
The Government’s plan to introduce “Indian Judicial Services” for the recruitment of judges at the session level was in news recently as the law minister commented that the government is trying its best to introduce this “Judicial Service” which would be at par with the other All India Services like IPS, IAS, and IFS. First of all, this idea of an All India Judicial Service is not a new innovation, its formation has been specifically mentioned under Article 312 of the Indian Constitution and various commissions and committees have recommended its institution, but for the past 20 years it has…
“Fiat Justitia ruat caleum or Let Justice be done though the heavens fall” this one solitary verbiage explains the momentousness which has been attached with the notion of “Justice”. Delivery of Justice is not the property or the exclusive right which exists with the state, on the other hand, Justice is the Due, which every individual has as a prerogative right. John Rawl was not wrong when he claimed that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions”, since time immemorial Justice has been given an exclusive place in human social order. Even our Constitution aims at delivering Justice to…
State, the legal manifestation of a country, is composed of four things i.e. population, territory, government and sovereignty. Sovereignty which is often also termed as suzerainty is the ultimate power of the state in deciding its matters. “Sovereignty” is that feature of state, which distinguishes it from other political and non political associations. Sovereignty has got two aspects, first is the internal sovereignty, which implies that state is the highest and the most powerful association within the country and second aspect is the “external sovereignty”, which implies that a state is independent to decide its internal issues and no foreign…
In the recent years, with the advent of westernization, we have seen that there have been many instances where the populace has tried to copy the trend of west in order to get westernized and in the same line we see a new trend which is getting popular among the folk, mostly among the metro population, these days and which is often in news for something or other and that trend is the trend of living with a partner without being wedded with him or her i.e. “live in relationships”. “live in relationship” was to a extent negligible in India…
“Change is the law of nature”, anything which remains constant can’t stand the test of time and reasonableness, and it may either be a person, a group, legislation or even civilizations or for this case anything. Our entire police system is governed by the 152 years old “Police Act, 1861’ which has been “amended” but not proportionately to the need of the hour. Today the Indian Police clearly lacks accountability under its “antiquated” police act, this act had proved very instrumental for our colonial masters in sustaining and legitimizing their colonial rule over us. The British police brasses behaved and…
Education is the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another generation through various means. In our country, India, still today the level of education has not been able to achieve the expected mark even after nearly 66 years of independence. Knowledge which comes from education is that asset, of which nobody can rob you. It is the safest and the most important precious thing in one’s life. In Rural India, even today the school enrollment percentage is too low when compared with global standards, and in case even if a child is enrolled in any school, he or she…
