Articles by Khushwant Singh

It has been six years since the launch of the Smart City Mission in 2016. Yet its core idea, of creating a participatory model for urban governance, remains elusive. Especially for the urban poor. If people had hoped for a better managed, inclusive city with sustainable and resilient infrastructure, that hope has been cruelly belied. Plenty of projects under the Smart City mission are underway in many cities. But few have achieved the objectives they set out for themselves. Which raises the question, what does the smart city mission provide for the urban poor? Have their lives changed at all…

In today’s employment scenario, the race to get a government job, any job, can get real ugly. Recruitment to the armed forces is particularly sought after. The main reasons that tend to turn any government recruitment scheme into a subject of controversy, at times leading to violent protests. A recent Railway recruitment process had to be scrapped for precisely those reasons. Now, a new recruitment scheme for the armed forces has seen violent protests in states like UP, Rajasthan and Bihar. Vehicles and trains were burnt by angry protestors who saw in the scheme a plot to deny them permanent…