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Yamini Aiyar

Yamini Aiyar

Articles by Yamini Aiyar

Powerlessness of the powerful bureaucrat

The difficulties experienced by our BLOs is an urgent call for reframing the debates on India’s frontline State. (PTI)

Published on Dec 23, 2025 08:23 pm IST

In Bihar, the wait for a new governance model

The challenge for the new government, regardless of who wins, will lie in marrying politics with sustaining the State rather than suppressing State capacity. (PTI)

Published on Nov 05, 2025 08:48 pm IST

New GST regime: A grand bargain reduced to imperfect compromise

The GST Council was set up as the site for collective decision-making on indirect taxes. Unlike other federal institutions, this was a product of the states coming together rather than the Centre controlling the purse strings and “inviting” states to the bargaining table. (@FinMinIndia X/ANI)

Published on Oct 07, 2025 09:27 pm IST

Citizen-State relations and the burden of document raj

The Indian bureaucracy’s obsession with paper (files, orders, documents) is well known. Anthropologist Mathew Hull traces this to the colonial bureaucracy’s distrust of local Indian functionaries, which manifested itself in kaghaz raj or “documentary rule”. (HT Photo)

Published on Aug 13, 2025 08:16 pm IST

The Emergency and politics of the body

The political and administrative zeal to comply with Sanjay Gandhi and his bulldozer gang was shaped by the nature of power he wielded over regional leaders. (HT Photo)

Published on Jun 23, 2025 08:52 pm IST

DOGE lessons for the State capacity debate

DOGE is a cautionary tale on the misuse of efficiency as a value proposition to direct State power towards the pursuit of elite interests. (AFP)

Updated on Jun 03, 2025 07:39 pm IST

How best to resolve the federal deadlock

The representational dilemma will only be resolved when the consequences of persistent inequality are acknowledged, and new institutional arrangements debated in this context (PTI)

Published on Mar 12, 2025 07:22 pm IST

Niti Aayog 2.0 in the time of global churn

New Delhi: A man walks past Niti Aayog, in New Delhi, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (PTI Photo/Vijay Verma) (PTI10_23_2024_000173B) (PTI)

Published on Jan 14, 2025 08:20 pm IST

The disenchantment with the secular ideal

The violence in Sambhal after the survey team arrived in late November is just a fleeting glimpse of what could lie ahead. . (PTI Photo) (PTI)

Updated on Dec 17, 2024 09:12 pm IST

Lessons in democracy from the US elections

For Trump’s voters, his questioning of the electoral process is a “democratic corrective” (Bloomberg)

Updated on Nov 21, 2024 08:08 pm IST

The elusive quest for jobs in Viksit Bharat

New Delhi, India - Aug. 3, 2018: Candidates register for jobs during Job Fair organised by Delhi Government especially for differently abled people, at Employment Exchange Office, Pusa, in New Delhi, India, on Friday, August 3, 2018. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna / Hindustan Times) (Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO)

Published on Jul 23, 2024 10:03 pm IST

Needed, a reframing of the debate on jobs

FILE PHOTO: A worker checks sift joints used for cement filtration at its manufacturing factory in the industrial area of Kolkata June 12, 2012. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri (INDIA - Tags: BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT)/File Photo (REUTERS)

Published on Jul 16, 2024 08:50 pm IST

Mandate 2024: The mirror has cracked

Patna, Bihar, India -May .01, 2024: Voters standing in queue for casting votes at a polling booth during seventh and last phase of Lok Sabha election at Danapur Diyara in Patna, Bihar, India, Saturday,01, 2024. (Photo by Santosh Kumar/ Hindustan Times)

Published on Jun 05, 2024 01:22 am IST

Viksit Bharat vs Garib Kalyan, a balancing act

People watch the live telecast of the interim budget 2024 by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, at a showroom in Gurugram, on Thursday. (ANI)

Published on Feb 01, 2024 10:23 pm IST

Beyond Silkyara smiles, gloomy state of workers

Workers rescued from the tunnel. (X)

Published on Dec 02, 2023 12:06 am IST

A public servant or his master’s voice?

Ahead of the 2019 polls PM Modi launched the Gram Swaraj Abhiyaan. (ANI)

Published on Nov 06, 2023 11:42 pm IST

Simultaneous polls may hurt federalism

Voters stand in line during polling for the seventh phase of the West Bengal assembly elections in Kolkata. (Representational Image / PTI)

Published on Sept 05, 2023 09:51 pm IST

Modernity mandates can’t be exclusionary

Despite increasing institutional births, the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey found that nationally, around 11% of births still happen outside formal facilities(AFP)

Published on Aug 08, 2023 10:03 pm IST

Raj laws can spur a new welfare model

Rajasthan’s laws are a reminder of the centrality of social movements in shaping welfare.(Shutterstock)

Published on Jul 26, 2023 10:13 pm IST

The steel frame needs some training reform

220 million hopeful candidates applied for central government jobs between 2014 and 2021. Of these around 720,000 qualified.

Published on Jul 03, 2023 10:14 pm IST

Keep India’s delicate federal balance intact

Sardar Patel’s logic for the IAS was powerful, which would ensure adequate state representation in policy decisions taken by the Union(HT Archive)

Updated on May 26, 2023 05:09 pm IST

Grassroots democracy needs urgent attention

As concerns over the state of democracy grow, the battle for democratic local governments is even more urgent. (Parveen Kumar/HT ARCHIVE)

Published on Apr 23, 2023 07:40 pm IST

In India, is a guaranteed funded pension feasible?

For most of India, pensions are illusory, available only to formal, permanent, largely government, employees. Before 2004, it was their privilege, baked into the social compact with the State (Arun Mondhe/HT ARCHIVE)

Updated on Apr 02, 2023 09:21 pm IST

The structural constraints that hinder reform in India

The table reports on the actual approval and release of funds to states.

Published on Mar 09, 2023 08:02 pm IST

Welfare spending cut could pose significant livelihood challenges

Welfare has now been relegated to the margins of government spending (Hindustan Times)

Updated on Feb 02, 2023 07:42 am IST

Celebrate civic political action for its own sake

Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement, the Chipko movement, and the movement for a gamut of rights (information, work, food), to name a few, have played a crucial role in entrenching liberal norms and prising open spaces for rooting substantive democracy (HT PHOTO)

Updated on Dec 30, 2022 09:11 pm IST

Reframing policymaking to tackle rural inflation

From dams to rural roads and electricity distribution, existing infrastructure in rural India urgently needs maintenance. (AFP)

Published on Nov 02, 2022 08:56 pm IST

India’s key role in 21st century non-alignment

India’s stature and the call for renewed leadership emanates from the power of her example. It is the resilience of the Indian democratic project that distinguishes India as a non-western global leader like no other. (ANI)

Published on Aug 24, 2022 09:05 pm IST

What Sri Lanka tells us about the democratic project

The island’s future now hangs in the balance with the formal political process seeking to reinforce the status quo. (AFP)

Published on Jul 20, 2022 08:58 pm IST

Understanding the Agnipath protests

The path to reform doesn’t lie in piecemeal contractualisation of the State. It has to be rooted in the real challenges of the Indian economy, the aspirations of mobility and the social value of government jobs (Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo)

Updated on Jun 20, 2022 09:23 pm IST

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