Kartik Lokhande's blog

Published in The Hitavada CityLine on April 2, 2013 Amendment to money lending law in cold storage since 5 yrs By Kartik Lokhande When the issue of farmers’ suicides had occupied centre-stage some years back, Maharashtra Home Minister (the then Deputy Chief Minister) R R Patil had announced to punish money lenders hard. The then Chief Minister late Vilasrao Deshmukh, in 2008, had announced that Bombay Money Lending Act would be amended to incorporate stringent punishment for private money lenders exploiting the farmers. However, despite strong statements by Maharashtra’s top two authorities, the amendment bill is in cold storage since five years. Maharashtra forwarded the Bill to the President’s office, which sent it back with some queries. Savkargrast Shetkari Samiti has been following up the issue and it staged demonstrations at Azad Maidan in January this year to register protest against State Government’s inaction in this regard. The Bill comprised an important amendment...

Published in The Hitavada CityLine on April 1, 2013 Pvt money lenders tightening grip over farmers in State Number of money lending licences issued and renewed has increased steadily in past five years while that of suspension/cancellation of licences has decreased By Kartik Lokhande With rising penetration of banks in rural areas, institutional finance is increasing. At least, this is popular perception. However, reality is far from this. In fact, in Maharashtra Government’s own admission, number of private money lenders is increasing steadily in the State. More shockingly, number of borrowers from these private money lenders has doubled in past five years! The Government’s own authentic data incorporated in Economic Survey of Maharashtra for past five years reveals that number of licences issued to private money lenders by the Government has increased steadily. In 2008, the Government had issued new licences to 1,212 private money lenders. The figure rose to 1,595 in...

Published in The Hitavada CityLine page 3 on March 30,2013 ALL ABOUT SET TOP BOX By Kartik Lokhande With the cable television signals going digital from analog from midnight of March 31, every household is talking about installation of set top box (STB). Though many in the administration and in households are talking about STBs, many aspects about this device are still not part of common knowledge in general public. ‘The Hitavada’ presents reality about set top box and busts myths associated with it. Why Set Top Box? What is it? Set Top Box is a device that converts digital satellite signals to television sets. Installation of STB has been made mandatory after passage of Digitalisation of Analog Cable System Ordinance, paving way for amendment to The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act. The Government has made STB mandatory with the main intent of plugging revenue leak. The Government gets entertainment duty on every cable television connection. However, in the ex...

After 1962 war, Chavan lays blue-print for India's defence effort As a successor to V K Krishna Menon, Yashwantrao Chavan was a young Defence Minister. He had the big responsibility of answering to the pointed queries of the Opposition as well as own party members. He had to make sure that while replying to a flurry of questions on what went wrong in 1962 war, he had to provide a blue-print of India’s future defence effort. For the purpose, a holistic thought needed to be given. In his maiden speech seeking grants for Defence, Chavan focussed on all these points. Here is an abridged version of the speech he gave in Lok Sabha on April 8, 1963.  AT THE outset, I must thank honourable Members who participated in the discussion on Demands for defence, not only for participation but for unanimous support for Demands they gave. I do not propose to go into details of some of the administrative type of questions raised, but certainly I propose to deal with some major issues ...

Published in The Hitavada CityLine on March 27, 2013 Child/under-age marriages still exist in Maharashtra By Kartik Lokhande Child marriages are gone, at least in Maharashtra. Or, so do we tend to think. But, the latest data compilation by a non-Governmental organization shows that child marriages still exist in a progressive state of Maharashtra, and not a single district including State capital of Mumbai proves to be an exception. Vidarbha region fares well only by comparison on the count of child or under-age marriages, as none of its districts features in ‘top five’. National Plan of Action for Children, 2005, had set the target of eradicating child marriage by the year 2010. However, the ‘Children in India-2012’ report published by Central Government a couple of months back shows that 113 offences were registered across the country under Child Marriage Prevention Act. Of these, 19 were reported in Maharashtra. With this figure, Maharashtra ranked second across the...

TRICK-I-PEDIA (Published in The Hitavada ‘Time and Tide’ column on April 20, 2012) The latest research by Marcia W DiStaso, Assistant Professor of Public Relations at Penn State University, points out a factually correct observation about Wikipedia. The research finds that 60 per cent of Wikipedia entries are full of factual errors. When Wikipedia was launched, the initiative was lauded the world over as the game-changer in referencing and information warehousing. However, as the days passed by, it became a common experience that not all the information or maps uploaded on Wikipedia were factually correct. Virtually untraceable sources wrote articles by referring to sources available to them and their own knowledge, which in most cases proved to be their perception. Besides, some cases of information placed on Wikipedia with an intention to assassinate someone’s character also came to fore. A writer, whose father’s factually incorrect biography was posted on Wikipedia by untrac...

Two movements, one thread… and the ‘Animal Farm’ (Published in The Hitavada on November 22, 2011)   By Kartik Lokhande In ‘Animal Farm’ (1945), included among the best 100 English language novels, the author George Orwell discussed well the concepts of revolution, transition, people’s Government etc. In the novel, animals in a farm revolt and drive out its owner. Animals take control of the farm and frame Seven Commandments. The most critical Commandment is – All animals are equal. However, things go wrong. Predators starve as they follow the rule and treat the prey equally. Several other factors get involved, raising questions about applicability of the most important Commandment. Finally, it all ends up with a little addition to the Commandment. The revised Commandment reads – All animals are equal, but some animals are More Equal Than Others . One can find that the story is true even today. Especially, the revised Comandment quoted above. Going just a few...