Detailed Roadmaps for Flagship Infrastructure Projects in Place

In recent meetings, detailed roadmaps have been worked for the flagship infrastructure projects in key sectors. These flagship projects had been identified and approved by the Prime Minister in the infrastructure meeting held on 6 June 2012.  The projects are moving ahead smoothly and detailed timelines have been drawn up for intermediate stages. Mechanisms have also been put in place for regular monitoring and problem solving. A.   Shipping             Work has begun on the two new major ports in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. A technical committee has visited three sites to identify a suitable location for the major port in Andhra Pradesh and has submitted its report. Ministry of Shipping will finalize the site in Andhra Pradesh for the major port by 31st August, 2012. A note will be brought before the Cabinet by 30th September, 2012 seeking ‘in-principle’ approval for the major port project in Andhra Pradesh. The State Support Agreement for the major port at Sagar will be finalized and executed by 1st August, 2012 and thematter will be brought before the Cabinet for consideration and approval by 30thSeptember, 2012.  An SPV would be formed to implement both the projects in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh with 26% equity from the respective State Governments and 74% from Government of India. The SPV will then bid out the project on a PPP basis. The Ministry of Shipping will constitute a Project Steering Group with Secretary, Shipping as Chairman and the Secretaries of Economic Affairs and Planning or their representatives as members  to periodically oversee the progress on establishment of both the ports including finalizing the structure of the SPV, monitoring the bidding process, preparation of documents and award of concessions. B.        Civil Aviation             For the airport at Navi Mumbai, CIDCO is the nodal agency for the airport. CIDCO has prepared the transaction documents. For the Navi  Mumbai airport, the Ministry of Civil Aviation will discuss the matter with Govt. of Maharashtra and obtain their concurrence to the process to be adopted to manage the PPP award process after the documents are cleared by Govt. of India. This will be completed by 15 August 2012. The Ministry will subsequently move a note to CCI on  the process to be followed  including approval of concession agreements, etc. by Govt. of India. The airport project will be awarded by March 2013.  As regards the airport at Mopa, Goa, a Steering Committee under the Chief Minister already stands constituted. Consultants have also been appointed and the process of land acquisition is going on at full pace. The work is scheduled to be awarded by March, 2013. Similarly, at Kannur, Kerala, the State Government has set up an agency i.e. M/s Kannur International Airport Ltd. for implementing the project. The Ministry of Civil Aviation will propose a Standing IMG for all new PPP airports which will address all regulatory, traffic and pricing issues relating to these airports; harmonise thegreenfield airport policy with regard to matters of concern to both the Central and State Governments; and      suggest ways for fast tracking PPP airports under the Greenfield Policy. C.        Railways             The Elevated Rail Corridor in Mumbai is the railway project which is the most advanced stage. The technical feasibility study has already been conducted. A Draft State Support Agreement has been agreed to between the Government of Maharashtra and the Ministry. The project will be implemented in PPP mode. The concessionaire shall be finalized by 15th March, 2013. The revenue stream to make the project viable is the development of real estate for which the consultations with Government of Maharashtra are going on. The necessary documentation for the Project is under preparation/finalization. The Ministry of Railways will constitute a Project Steering Group with the Chairman Railway Board as Chairman, and Secretary (DEA), Secretary (Planning), Chief Secretary of the Government of Maharashtra (or his representative),Member(Engineering) and GM, Western Railways as members to monitor the implementation of the project including finalizing the documentation, overseeing the bidding process, and awarding the contract in timely manner;             The High Speed Rail Corridor Project between Mumbai and Ahmedabadand other routes is technologically the most advanced railway project. Pre-feasibility study has been conducted by M/s RITES in association with other expert consultants. There are various alternative options for implementing the project. Of all the options, only the SPV or the PPP options seem to be viable. The Ministry of Railways will constitute a Project Steering Group with the Chairman Railway Board as Chairman, and Secretary (DEA), Secretary(Planning), Member (Mechanical), Member (Engineering) and Member (Electrical) as members. The Terms of Reference of the Project Steering Group will inter-alia include (a) examining the options available for implementing this project and finalizing feasible options; (b) suggesting ways of strengthening the capacity of railways to design and execute high speed train projects; and (c) suggesting mechanisms for quickly moving forward on chosen options. The Project Steering Group may obtain expertise on high speed train projects through RITES. The Project Steering Group will meet each fortnight.             For Station Redevelopment, a new body that is  Indian Railway Station Development Corporation (IRSDC) is to be constituted to implement the redevelopment of stations. Five stations have already been shortlisted for redevelopment. The Model Concession Agreement (MCA) document prepared by Planning Commission will be used as a base document.  ======================================================================

CBI books ex-VC of Ignou for favouring universities

Neeraj Chauhan, TNN Jul 28, 2012, 02.58AM IST

Tags:

• Sikkim|
• Indira Gandhi|
• ex-VC of Ignou|
• Distance Education Council|
• CBI

• 

(The CBI on Friday registered…)

NEW DELHI: The CBI on Friday registered a case against former Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) vice-chancellor V N Rajasekharan Pillai for allegedly granting permission to two private universities, Punjab Technical University and Sikkim Manipal University, to run distance education courses in violation of rules.

The agency also conducted searches at his premises in Thiruvananthapuram and Kottayam in Kerala and seized some documents.

The pill pushers There are 20,000 pharma companies in India scrambling to get doctors to prescribe their drugs. The result - a questionable nexus Priyanka Sharma, Sushmi Dey & Indulekha Aravind / New Delhi/ Bangalore Jul 28, 2012, 00:56 IST source:Business Standard Amit Kumar was 22 when he was hired by a big pharmaceutical company as a medical representative in 1994. After 45 days of training, his sales target was fixed at Rs 75 lakh for the year. He visited several chemists in the area assigned him to find out who the popular doctors were and what medicines they were prescribing. Soon he had a list of 200 doctors with high “prescription potential” and started calling on them. Straightaway, Kumar received “subtle and indirect” requests. “Most doctors had an assistant or compounder who would convey to me the need for certain items.” The next day, these items — a laptop or a refrigerator — would reach the doctor’s clinic. The game got bigger with time. Once, when his colleague was pitching calcium products to an orthopaedist, the doctor said abruptly: “I am busy whitewashing my house; it is a very expensive affair.” The message couldn’t have been more direct. The next day, the company got the job done. Another time, his company had organised a medical conference in a Delhi five-star hotel. Accommodation at the hotel was paid for, but doctors had to pay for the food — on a previous occasion, one doctor had treated his friends to a lavish dinner at the company’s expense. But that didn’t help, found Kumar, as one doctor “had made around 40 international calls from the hotel”. “Doctors know that medical reps wants something from them,” he says sardonically. “And so they want something in return.” Indian pharmaceutical companies spend around 7 per cent of their turnover on market development. With domestic sales of Rs 60,000 crore, their annual marketing budget works out to Rs 4,200 crore. As companies cannot advertise prescription drugs, a large chunk of this money is spent on marketing directly to doctors. There are about 700,000 doctors in India; so the amount works out to almost Rs 250,000 per doctor per year. The Indian market is cluttered with drug makers. Till 2005, India recognised only process patents, not product patents. Indian companies were free to make any drug in the world so long as they tweaked the process a little. Even this rule was seldom enforced. The idea was to keep medicine costs low. That did happen, but the fallout was 20,000 pharma companies, many operating out of garages, and hundreds of brands for the same medicine. In such a fragmented market, heavy-duty marketing with the doctor is the only easy way out. Thus, most mid-size and large companies have 4,000 to 6,000 medical representatives on their rolls. The result is over-prescription. Amit Sen Gupta, joint convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, a coalition of civil society organisations working in the field of healthcare, says this is the reason doctors continue to prescribe cough syrups, though “no medical student is taught to prescribe them. Cough syrups are a throwback to the 1960s.” Indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics, he says, has made India a major source of superbugs. When doctors write expensive drugs, patients do not buy the recommended dosage and run the risk of under-medication. It starts with small gifts such as a pen or a notepad. Flattery is an indispensable tool of a medical rep’s trade. A consultant psychiatrist remembers the area sales manager of a pharma company would keep calling him “senior doctor”, though he had just started out. The drug maker offers to take care of chores: paying the bills and taking care of children’s school admissions. Within no time, the gifts start to become larger: cars and even overseas junkets for the whole family (sold as medical conferences at exotic locales). Sen Gupta recently found that a drug maker had sponsored a doctor’s son’s education in the US! Amitabh Saha, a psychiatrist who has worked with a pharma company, remembers the wedding of a fellow psychiatrist’s daughter. Doctors from across the country were on the guest list. “A pharmaceutical company had paid for everything, from the sangeet to the pheras,” he says. Another doctor in Mumbai asked the medical rep for — and got — a pair of Siberian Huskies for his son; each costs around Rs 35,000. An executive in a domestic pharma company, who heads the sales teams for Tamil Nadu and Kerala, says very few doctors refuse. “The most popular offers are sponsored trips to conferences and vacations for doctors and their families. It is not uncommon for bigger pharma companies to book 100 rooms in five-star hotels where conferences are being hosted for doctors.” Cash and gold coins are accepted, but consumer durables and cars are not favoured these days, he says. Some companies target senior doctors — in this extremely hierarchy-conscious profession, it is the surest way to popularise your product. Only, the benevolence of senior doctors doesn’t come cheap. A recent report of the Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare, tabled in the Rajya Sabha, found that expert opinions needed for drug approvals were ghost-written by companies that had sought the approvals. Reports sent in by different experts on a drug were found to be exact copies of each other — down to the errors! These opinions are submitted to the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation which uses them to approve or reject applications to launch the drug. There was “ample evidence” to suggest that these expert opinions were “actually written by the invisible hand of the drug companies and experts merely obliged by putting their signatures”, the report concluded. The third cog in this well-oiled machine is the chemist. His shop is where the medical representative gathers market intelligence: the prescription preferences of doctors, and whether they are recommending his medicine. (Some even pose as patients and ask others what the doctor has prescribed.) He can also be induced to sell a particular company’s medicine, though the doctor may have prescribed another brand. But, in comparison to doctors, the chemist gets crumbs. The medical rep may give him a few free samples which he can sell to unsuspecting customers. Particular brands can be pushed, says Lucknow-based chemist Sanjay Chauhan, only in the case of over-the-counter medicines which don’t require prescription and therefore the upside is limited. “While doctors might be sent to Singapore on vacations, we don’t get any benefits,” laments Raj Singh, owner of Rathi Medicos in New Delhi’s Vasant Kunj. * * * Doctors and pharma companies say the claims of the parliamentary committee report are exaggerated. On May 27, Aamir Khan’s show Satyamev Jayate turned the spotlight on “corrupt” doctors. His guests included the owner of a pathology lab who admitted to overcharging patients because he had to pay commission to doctors. Former Medical Council of India chief Major General (retired) Som Jhingon confessed to resigning in a year as he was unable to run the council in a disciplined manner, and K K Talwar, chairman of the board of governors of the council, revealed that since 2008 not a single doctor’s licence had been revoked even in cases of malpractice. Doctors all over the country were up in arms against Khan. Indian Medical Association Secretary-General D R Rai asked for an apology from Khan for “having defamed and given one side of the story on [the] medical profession.” Khan refused. The association did not respond to questions sent by Business Standard. A senior doctor, who is a member of the Indian Association of Paediatrics, says doctors are often undecided about which brand of a drug to prescribe. This is where marketing comes in. The problem, if there is one, has been created by the government which has allowed so many pharma companies to come up. Visits to medical conferences, he adds, are “simple marketing, not a nexus. As long as it doesn’t cross the limit, a gift is just a goodwill gesture to strike up a friendship”. A psychiatrist says not more than 10 per cent of psychiatrists in the country accept gifts, so it’s wrong to malign the entire fraternity. Some doctors insist that visits to medical conferences are serious business and not family vacations in disguise. On July 18, this lakshman rekha (sacred line) was the subject of deliberations between three important lobbies of the industry — Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India and Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association. “Calendars, notepads and pens act as brand reminders,” says D G Shah, director general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. “But when you take the doctor on a cruise, it is unacceptable.” Shah is lobbying with the department of pharmaceuticals to instate an ombudsman, a man of integrity, with the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance willing to bear the entire cost. Pharmaceutical companies say their interactions with doctors are unavoidable and harmless. “Doctors are taken for seminars and conferences, which is important to educate them. Even in developed countries there are such activities known as continuous medical education,” says Lupin President (India and CIS) Shakti Chakraborty. “Marketing is the very soul of the pharma industry,” adds R C Juneja, CEO of fast-growing Mankind Pharma. The government, which has received complaints of a nexus between doctors and drug makers, is working on a code of conduct for pharma companies and medical reps. “There have been a couple of meetings and we will soon notify the code,” says an officer in the department of pharmaceuticals. The plan, as of now, is to keep the code voluntary, but the government may consider making it mandatory if self-regulation fails. “We will watch for another six months as industry bodies have assured us that self-regulation will work,” the official adds. According to sources, the code proposes to curb even the number of samples given to doctors by a pharmaceutical company. Self-regulation is nothing new. In 2009, Indian Medical Council had barred its members from accepting gifts from pharma companies. Juneja of Mankind says curbs or self-regulation cannot work as the government does not have the means to monitor it. Some hospitals know that popular opinion is on the boil. One Delhi-headquartered chain has written a 50-page code of conduct for its doctors. Manipal Hospitals, which operates 17 hospitals, has created a corpus to help its doctors travel abroad on educational trips. “Doctors shouldn’t be tempted to accept any inducement,” says CEO Rajen Padukone. But a lot still remains to be accomplished. Virendra Singh Rawat contributed to this article (Some names in the article have been changed

Bank customers allege wrong TDS deduction on term deposits

Bank customers allege wrong TDS deduction on term deposits

by TNN | Jul 28, 2012, 05.39AM IST




INDORE: Bank customers are alleging wrong deduction of TDS from the term deposits (STDRs) where there is no actual credit or payment of interest which credited or paid on cumulative basis.

S Jamindar, a customer of State Bank of India having a 'term deposit' account, in his letter addressed to the RBI governor and chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), has written, "I would like to draw your kind attention on a 'term deposit' account wherein interest has been credited cumulatively on the date of its maturity while TDS was wrongfully deducted on yearly basis." ToI has a copy of the letter in its possession.

The issue being that if a bank is justified in deducting 'TDS' under the provisions of section 194A of the Income Tax Act 1961 on yearly basis on the amount of interest calculated. But how can the TDS be deducted in a hypothetical manner on the time deposit account without actual credit or payment of interest?

The customer believes that there was clear-cut violation of the provisions of section 194A of the I-T Act 1961. It has happened at a time when CBDT has already issued a clarification on the issue. The CBDT, vide its Circular No 03/2010 issued vide FNo 275/66/2007-I-T (B) dated March 2, 2010, reads "It is clarified that since no constructive credit to the depositor's / payee's account takes place while calculating interest on time deposits on daily or monthly basis in the CBS software used by banks, tax need not be deducted at source on such provisioning of interest by banks for the purposes of macro monitoring only.

In such cases, tax shall be deducted at source on accrual of interest at the end of financial year or at periodic intervals as per practice of the bank or as per the depositor's / payee's requirement or on maturity or on encashment of time deposits; whichever event takes place earlier; whenever the aggregate of amounts of interest income credited or paid or likely to be credited or paid during the financial year by the banks exceeds the limits specified in section 194A".

As such, the customers are bound to offer interest income for taxation which in facts has not been earned or accrued actually to him/her during said period. This is principally wrong and certainly against the provisions of the Income Tax Act/Rules. As per I.T. Act, the interest credited cumulatively on the 'Cumulative Time Deposit' has to be taxed cumulatively in the year of maturity of such deposits, says the letter.

Issues Regions Publications Programmes Faculty Internships/Fellowships Events About Us Press India & the world   Indo-Pak   Military   Terrorism   Naxalite Violence   Nuclear   Suicide Terrorism

EVENTS RELEASE OF IPCS TASK FORCE REPORTS 27 July 2012 1400-1730hrs 1400-1530 hrs: "India's Nuclear Doctrine: An Alternative Blueprint"Discussants: Amb. Sheel Kant Sharma & Mr Bharat Karnad 1545-1715 hrs: "Trans-Himalayan Trade and Development 2020: Looking Beyond Nathu La" Release & Introductory Remarks by Shri V. Kishore Chandra Deo (Honourable Union Cabinet Minister, Tribal Affairs and Panchayati Raj) & Prof. Saugata Roy (Honourable Minister of State for Urban Development) Discussants: Mr BG Vergheese & Mr Pema Wangchuk Venue: Conference Room-II, India International Centre All are Welcome

Sikkim Chief Minister addresses 12269 students at Gangtok

Gangtok, July 27: (source:IPR)


The State Government will be rewarding the topper students of class twelve with cash prize amounting to Rs one lakh’ said the Chief Minister, Mr Pawan Chamling while addressing the students gathered at Tenzing Namgyal Memorial Ground (Guards Ground), today. "The Chief Minister said that the toppers of class twelve students will be given one lakh, followed by seventy five thousands and fifty thousand to the second and third state topper respectively".
. The orientation programme on quality education and development organized by Human Resource Development Department, Government of Sikkim was witnessed by 12269 students from class eight to twelve and 2312 teachers from six constituencies from in and around Gangtok. It may be mentioned here that the Chief Minister has been touring the state to meet and interact and exchange his ideas with the students on quality education.

 The Chief Minister expressed that the state government want the Sikkimese students to be successful, capable and good citizens of the country who possess the mindset of first world country. Therefore, the commitments, responsibilities, motivation should be created from within to achieve larger goals in the interest of the Sikkimese. Citing few examples of the first world countries where the education and health sectors are more expensive, the Chief Minister informed the gathering that education is the basic components of human development which  is free of costs in the state. Stating this, he also sought the responsibilities of students in striving hard and grab the opportunities as education has become accessible to all in the state.

 While speaking on the quality education, he stated that quality education has been the major concern of the Government and consistent efforts have also been laid on quality at all levels. The government is spending 20% of the state budget towards education sector and has a target of making Sikkim the second literate state in the country after Kerala by 2015, he added.  He also asked the teachers to impart value based education to the students so that they are prepared for the future besides being successful and a good human being. In this regard, the Chief Minister highlighted about the various schemes and programmes like Chief Ministers Meritorious Schemes, opening of Livelihood Schools in the nook and corner of the State, Comprehensive Education loan scheme and many more initiated by the State Government in education sectors.

Talking about the further plans of the government towards the enhancement of capacity of the students the Chief Minister informed the students about the government plan to provide coaching for national competitive examination including UPSC, engineering and in various other disciplines. In this way we will be preparing a well equipped human resource who can face the future challenges, he added. The Chief Minister also announced that the pre primary classes will also be started in the schools from next academic students.

Wrapping up his address to the students the Chief Minister urged them to be honest and dedicated towards their education and take full benefit from the programmes and schemes of the government in human resource development sector which are meant for them.

The Minister for HRDD Mr. NK Pradhan while addressing the gathering of the teachers and the students talked about the concept of education which has been given utmost importance by the state government for the holistic development of the human resource of the state.

VERIFY YOUR MEDICINE........

In India if at anytime you are worried about the authenticity of a medicine (i.e if  you feel the given medicine is fake or counterfeit), remember - every unit of medicine produced at the factory is labelled with a 10 digit unique code.

When you purchase any medicine, you can send this code (which is at the back of the unit) in the form of an SMS to 9901099010. You will receive an SMS which tells you if the medicine is genuine and provide you with the batch number, expiry date and other information.

Dr. Abdul Kalam's Letter to Every Indian


Why is the media here so negative?
Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements?
We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.

The President of India
Shri Pranab Mukherjee

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY SHRI PRANAB MUKHERJEE ON HIS ASSUMPTION OF OFFICE AS PRESIDENT OF INDIA

Central Hall of Parliament, New Delhi, 25th July 2012
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Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil,Shri Hamid Ansari,Smt. Meira Kumar, Shri Justice S.H. Kapadia, Members of Parliament, 

Your Excellencies, Friends and fellow citizens,

I am deeply moved by the high honour you have accorded to me. Such honour exalts the occupant of this office, even as it demands that he rises above personal or partisan interests in the service of the national good.The principal responsibility of this office is to function as the guardian of our Constitution. I will strive, as I said on oath, to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution not just in word but also in spirit. We are all, across the divide of party and region, partners at the altar of our motherland. Our federal Constitution embodies the idea of modern India: it defines not only India but also modernity. A modern nation is built on some basic fundamentals: democracy, or equal rights for every citizen; secularism, or equal freedom to every faith; equality of every region and language; gender equality and, perhaps most important of all, economic equity. For our development to be real the poorest of our land must feel that they are part of the narrative of rising India.I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flicker of a lamp in a small Bengal village to the chandeliers of Delhi. I was a boy when Bengal was savaged by a famine that killed millions; the misery and sorrow is still not lost on me. We have achieved much in the field of agriculture, industry and social infrastructure; but that is nothing compared to what India, led by the coming generations, will create in the decades ahead.

Our national mission must continue to be what it was when the generation of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar and Maulana Azad offered us a tryst with destiny: to eliminate the curse of poverty, and create such opportunities for the young that they can take our India forward by quantum leaps. There is no humiliation more abusive than hunger. Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India.

What has brought us thus far, will take us further ahead. India's true story is the partnership of the people. Our wealth has been created by farmers and workers, industrialists and service-providers, soldiers and civilians. Our social harmony is the sublime co-existence of temple, mosque, church, gurudwara and synagogue; they are symbols of our unity in diversity.

Peace is the first ingredient of prosperity. History has often been written in the red of blood; but development and progress are the luminous rewards of a peace dividend, not a war trophy. The two halves of the 20th Century tell their own story. Europe, and indeed the world, reinvented itself after the end of the Second World War and the collapse of colonization, leading to the rise of great institutions like the United Nations. Leaders who ordered great armies into the field, and then understood that war was more barbarism than glory, transformed the world by changing its mindset. Gandhiji taught by example, and gave us the supreme strength of non-violence. India's philosophy is not an abstract in textbooks. It flourishes in the day-to-day life of our people, who value the humane above all else. Violence is external to our nature; when, as human beings, we do err, we exorcise our sins with penitence and accountability.

But the visible rewards of peace have also obscured the fact that the age of war is not over. We are in the midst of a fourth world war; the third was the Cold War, but it was very warm in Asia, Africa and Latin America till it ended in the early 1990s. The war against terrorism is the fourth; and it is a world war because it can raise its evil head anywhere in the world. India has been on the frontlines of this war long before many other recognized its vicious depth or poisonous consequences. I am proud of the valour and conviction and steely determination of our Armed Forces as they have fought this menace on our borders; of our brave police forces as they have met the enemy within; and of our people, who have defeated the terrorist trap by remaining calm in the face of extraordinary provocation. The people of India have been a beacon of maturity through the trauma of whiplash wounds. Those who instigate violence and perpetuate hatred need to understand one truth. Few minutes of peace will achieve far more than many years of war. India is content with itself, and driven by the will to sit on the high table of prosperity. It will not be deflected in its mission by noxious practitioners of terror.

As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my view, education is the alchemy that can bring India its next golden age. Our oldest scriptures laid the framework of society around the pillars of knowledge; our challenge is to convert knowledge into a democratic force by taking it into every corner of our country. Our motto is unambiguous: All for knowledge, and knowledge for all.The weight of office sometimes becomes a burden on dreams. The news is not always cheerful. Corruption is an evil that can depress the nation's mood and sap its progress. We cannot allow our progress to be hijacked by the greed of a few.

I envisage an India where unity of purpose propels the common good; where Centre and State are driven by the single vision of good governance; where every revolution is green; where democracy is not merely the right to vote once in five years but to speak always in the citizen's interest; where knowledge becomes wisdom; where the young pour their phenomenal energy and talent into the collective cause. As tyranny dwindles across the world; as democracy gets fresh life in regions once considered inhospitable; India becomes the model of modernity.As Swami Vivekananda in his soaring metaphor said, India will be raised, not with the power of flesh but with the power of the spirit, not with the flag of destruction, but with the flag of peace and love. Bring all the forces of good together. Do not care what be your colour-green, blue or red, but mix all the colours up and produce that intense glow of white, the colour of love. Ours is to work, the results will take care of themselves.

There is no greater reward for a public servant than to be elected the first citizen of our Republic.

Jai Hind