A Single Capital City is Inadequate for a State
In the ancient and medieval ages, as well as till the Nineteenth century, the kings and the wars they waged needed a single, central, fortified and self-contained capital city, wherein, again the royal palace in it was the single most important building to be protected. Since then, every new country that re-organised itself, set up the capital city, considering it as essential as a head to a human body. The word ‘capita’ means head. But things have changed now. We have new knowledge and new technological and electronic practices tha…
A Letter to All Political Parties in Telangana in View of Forthcoming Municipal Elections
15th July, 2019 Sir, There are going to be elections in the state of Telangana for the municipalities and corporations very soon and they will be followed by elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation also under a new Act. Naturally, all parties would be nominating their candidates to be councillors and corporators. We wish you success in your party’s efforts, notwithstanding the fact that we are not sure that political parties should be involved in local self-governing communities. Now, on behalf of a number of civil society or…
Voting By All as One Nation and in One Poll
Lessons from the just concluded general elections point to the need for urgent electoral reforms if we are to make our political democracy more efficient. By Dr.Rao VBJ Chelikani After the 2019 general elections, we have rightly learnt many lessons. In order to make our political democracy more efficient, we need urgent reforms, for which there appears to be an unusual consensus. Therefore, we appeal to the Mr. Prime Minister to get into action so as to constitute a corporation to maintain nationwide Electoral Rolls and the option to vote ele…
Some Proposals for Reforming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Act & its Rules & Regulations in 2019
Objective 1: Firstly, the new municipal Act should reflect further devolution of functions, functionaries and funds to the urban local self-governing bodies, as envisaged in the 74 th Constitutional Amendment, which is not completed. Secondly, it is to provide more venues for increased direct participation of the urban citizen in the governance. Objective II: Only 40% of the urban population participates in the election of their local representatives for various reasons, which cannot be adjudged as a deficit in their democratic spirit. Hence,…
Some Proposals : Reform Land Administration and re-distribution of Revenue Department functions in the Districts
The Objective: Firstly, a new Act should de-concentrate the power of decision-making and execution of various functions from the Revenue department and the district collector by handing them over to the concerned departments present in the district. Secondly, it should reflect further devolution of functions, functionaries and funds to the local self-governing bodies, as envisaged in the 73 rd Constitutional Amendment. Measures : While acknowledging the historic contribution made by the Revenue Department for administrative unification of …
Administration in the District
More than the re-organisation of states, it is important to re-organise the 700 existing districts and multiply them by four times for the purposes of administrative viability, their specific development needs, as well as for self-governance. It is the British who formed the districts as administrative units in all the territories under their direct rule. Their formation was mostly based on their historical situations and military, revenue and administrative viability. After independence too, in the interests of consolidating national integrit…
A Citizen`s Letter to His President
Shri Ram Nath Kovind 18 th March 2019 Hon’ble President of India New Delhi Sir, Sub: The responsibility of preparing the nationwide Electoral Rolls, and the option of electronic voting. I am one of those citizens in the country, who is pained to see that our political representatives, while constantly criticising each other are not able to devote enough attention to the imperatives of economic growth. I also regret that the Constitution has not provided any op…
Our National Election Commission
By Dr.Rao VBJ. Chelikani It is time that the Election Commission of India becomes pro-active to promote better democratic practices on the part of our political class. It is probably one of the very few valiant institutions about which an average voter is not very cynical and whose objectivity, he does not doubt much. It has been, so far, able to protect the citizens’ statutory right to vote freely and fairly. With the introduction of the electronic voting machines with the possibility to visually verify one’s vote, its efficiency has increas…
Religions and Culture in India
With the emergence of an independent and awakened India, its culture is becoming more humanist, pacific, universal and inclusive, bereft of political or religious ideologies. By Dr. Rao VBJ Chelikani It would be interesting to understand a phenomenon that occurred very often in history in different parts of the world. We can produce a formula out of it: the higher the sophistication of a culture or civilisation of a nation, the lower would be its capacity to defend itself. Why did the mighty civilisations, so easily, succumb to physically das…
Why a Resident Welfare Association?
By Rao VBJ Chelikani Urban civil society organisations including RWAs have emerged as important players in governance and development of cities functioning as a fourth tier of grassroot self-governing micro-urban communities. Howeverm we have a peculiar situation where parallel mechanisms formed by the state apparatus exist to deliver functions that these micro-communities are carrying out. Including a list of functions that can be devolved to these bodies in the 7th Schedule of the Constitution could be considered as a solution to this weak…
Swachha Bharat Mission and RWAs
Dr. Rao VBJ. Chelikani We all remember that on 2nd of October, 2014, on Gandhiji’s birthday, both the President of our Republic and the Prime Minister, have launched the ‘Swachh Bharat Mission.’ We have started the most historic and biggest-ever nationwide campaign for making India clean and hygienic. It is shameful that India has been very much behind many of the developing countries in the world, to which we have started providing aid for their development. Gandhiji considering cleanliness as next only to godliness, had given much importance…
Whither Administration?
Dr. Rao VBJ Chelikani The waves of reforms that are touching the shores of civil service do not seem to touch military and judicial services. Defence Services i). In the technology-intensive world that we are living in, the recruitment to the defence services also has to be reviewed, so as to deviate from the traditional ‘Standing Army' concept and involve other citizens in the society ‘on call' in the deployment-strategies. Instead of increasing the numbers like China, we need to invest more in increasing the capabilities of our defe…
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