Articles by Vibhuti Patel

Trupti Shah, feminist and environmentalist, lived her life to the fullest embodying her belief that the feminist perspective is not an ideology but a way of life.

India: Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins edited by Mushirul Hasan and Zoya Hasan, Council for Social Development (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2013; pp xx + 298, Rs 795

A socio-economic profi le of Muslims in Maharashtra commissioned by the Maharashtra State Minority Commission indicates dismal conditions on the social, economic and educational fronts as also poor representation in the legislature and the Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service cadres.

Women's Studies and Women's Movement in India since the 1970s: An Overview by Kusum Datta

 since 1983, the CAG has been made a member of the House of Commons. DecentralisationTo reduce the workload on the system and make it effective, Mathur suggests that the office of the CAG needs to be decentralised and that independent wings of this body need to be constituted at the level of the states. Presently, the accountant general, who is responsible for auditing the finances of the states, also functions as a subordinate office of the CAG. However, the accountant general enjoys no constitutional and legal status, so he is unable to deal effectively with the Public Accounts Committee of the legislature or take up critical issues with the state government. Mathur points out that the original draft of the Constitution made by the Drafting Committee did contain a provision for an auditor general for the states but this provision was done away with on the recommendations of the expert committee which reasoned that many states may not choose to exercise the option of appointing a separate auditor general and that auditing and accounting could become one entity under the authority of the CAG. To strengthen audit mechanisms, this situation needs to be remedied. The book suggests that the accountant general