Passionate About India

In my previous editorial, I had written the first of a two-part editorial on what must Modi do, now that he's in power. In that editorial, I had suggested that Modi must first focus on transforming the judiciary, improving education and healthcare services, and initiating employment generation schemes and slum-removal schemes to give people dignified existence. Continuing with that, here is the second part of my editorial on what else must Modi do: Legalizing Black Money I have suggested this in the past too; and shall suggest it again verbatim – we should legalize all the black money stashed abroad by structuring a consolidated tax payment of 10% on the black money amount. To sugarcoat the offer, even this 10% could be taken in five equal annual installments of 2%! But this has to be with two key riders! The first one is that the government must ensure that it takes persuasive and decisive action to recover the black money stashed abroad from day one. In this, the government shou...

Many of the readers, especially those away from Delhi, might wonder what is the BRT in the first place? Well... BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transport system. It’s an effort by the Delhi government to have a separate bus transport corridor in Delhi. So what it has essentially done is that a divider has been constructed in between certain existing roads, wherein half or one third of that road has been reserved only for bus movement. Subsequently, at some places the roads have been widened a little; and at others, the roads have been simply divided into two undemarcated lanes. What has actually irritated the Delhi rich (because they are the ones driving cars – since Tata’s Nano is not yet on the roads) is that now they have less of wide roads to manipulate their cars in. Of course, there is a point here. Delhi was known for its freewheeling wide roads, and suddenly, narrower roads for cars do look irritating. Thus, but obviously, the BRT has come under heavy criticism with a lot of people ev...