Recent reports in local dailies suggest that there may have been bogus or excess-spend projects to swindle money at BBMP. Apparently, some works were carried out without following all procedures, and good number of such projects involved road digging or similar work along the Metro corridor (where one would assume Metro itself would have taken up such work). Anyway, nothing new there.

A perennial complaint across cities about auto rickshaws is addressable through this proposed SMS facility. This will be more effective than a few manned auto help centres near bus and train stations since its reach will cover the entire city.

 In this age of the internet and exponential growth of the web, the RTI act 2005 should have been at best, a history by now. It is amazing to read the RTI 2005 document available on the web. It creates posts like Chief Information Commissioner and what not, for providing the so called information. I admit I could not, nor was I interested in reading this kind of document.

Can non IAS/Politico citizens add value to governance?

Dozens of dapperly dressed young people gathered to attend a conference entitled, "Exploring Spaces for Young Indians in Government."

Suri, who is spending the summer assisting the office of Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Technology, is among the growing ranks of young Indians who are showing an increasing interest in exploring careers in public policy and government - areas in which Indian civil servants have had a historical monopoly.

Counter-intuitively, the majority of the attendees were young people comfortably ensconced in private sector jobs. If these two things are anything to go by, then it strongly signals a slow but steady shift in the years and decades to come, towards a younger, more inclusive and level playing field in India's governing fabric, which will ultimately bode well for its nation-building project.