Editorial
This is no war room
IN A MOVE that is bound to reflect rather poorly on the Centre's decision-making and implementing skills, the port of entry regulation imposed on 300 sensitive items early this month has been withdrawn in less than three weeks. Strangely, the decision ha
s come even without allowing a reasonable period of time to study the full impact of the May 2 move to monitor imports consequent to the removal of quantitative restrictions and address apprehensions within the country that excessive imports would hurt d
omestic producers.
Politics
Elections and ethics: The Jayalalitha case
THE `appointment' of Ms Jayalalitha as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu following her election as the leader of the AIADMK, which won 133 seats in the 234-member Assembly, has led to a debate on its propriety, as the returning officers of four constituen
cies had rejected her nomination papers on the ground that she has incurred disqualification under Section 8(3) of the Representation of People's Act 1951.
Need for nuanced diplomacy
THE word `crisis' in Mandarin is composed of two syllables that stand for `danger' and `opportunity'. India faces both this week as relations between China and the US plummet to a new low, sparking fears of another Cold War, because Taiwa
n's President, Mr Chen Shui-bian, is breaking journey in New York and Houston, and even cheering an all-American baseball game, en route state visits in Latin America.
Technology
Coating surfaces with the D-Gun
SAI Surface Coating Technologies is a small and medium enterprise (SME) parked in the technology entrepreneurship park promoted by the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI).
Design for disassembly -- Vital to green manufacturing
CONSIDER this: Over 90 per cent of the resources taken out of the ground globally enter the waste stream within months. India, for various reasons, has traditionally displayed a high level of native ingenuity in recycling its waste, the i
ndifference of the government and large business establishments to this critical activity notwithstanding. But this ingenuity cannot be expected to stretch indefinitely to cope with the progress, however slow, that the country is makin
g in manufacturing.
What makes anti-technology people tick?
`TECHNOLOGY' has become a foul word. You cannot have anything to do with technology unless you are prepared to make long prefatory and apologetic assurances that your technology is not anti-environment, anti-people, inappropriate or multinational. The fu
ll-page advertisement in newspapers by the Central Ministry for Human Resources Development on the occasion of the Technology Day (May 11, 2001) is a striking instance.
Transport
Caught in a jam
AMERICANS are great ones for collecting and disseminating statistical trivia. Ask them how many times a glow-worm glows in its life time, or how many pounds of nuts a squirrel stores in a year, or the number of winks with which any living species can be
credited -- you will have the answer pat in a split second. The only item of statistical trivia for which they have no answer is the number of hours they spend in computing these data of no earthly use.
