Two consecutive days of grid collapse has left almost half of India's population without power. Three major grids -- northern, north-eastern and eastern -- have crashed. Reportedly, over 20 states have been affected. Trains have stalled, markets have closed down, and institutions and offices have been forced to announce holidays.
Two consecutive days of grid collapse has left almost half of India's population without power. Three major grids -- northern, north-eastern and eastern -- have crashed. Reportedly, over 20 states have been affected. Trains have stalled, markets have closed down, and institutions and offices have been forced to announce holidays.
Two consecutive days of grid collapse has left almost half of India's population without power. Three major grids -- northern, north-eastern and eastern -- have crashed. Reportedly, over 20 states have been affected. Trains have stalled, markets have closed down, and institutions and offices have been forced to announce holidays.
Apart from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, where none of the estimated 6.7 million construction workers got cash transfer benefits, the coverage of the construction workers was the lowest in Delhi, where only about 5 per cent of the estimated workers received cash under the PMGKY, followed by Kerala and Uttar Pradesh (22 per cent), among major states. In India, construction workers belong to the unorganised sector but account for the highest share of non-farm jobs after manufacturing.
Senate passed the measure earlier in a rare New Year's Day session and Obama said he will sign it into law shortly.
'There is no shortage of any APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) in the country'
Instead of its once haloed existence as the year of lofty goals and vision statements, it is now staring at an epitaph that may well read: The year when death ran amok and the gods went missing, notes Arundhuti Dasgupta.
To build one's political and ideological arguments on the dead bodies piling up outside our crematoriums is despicable and breaches the basic tenet of human civility, argues Vivek Gumaste.
The move, the government says will help prevent incidents of fire which has increased abnormally high during the westerly winds this month.
Thomas Isaac has been in and out of the national news in his role as Kerala's finance minister since 2018 for various path-breaking tax initiatives. But it is 2020 that he has become more prominent, principally in the GST council.
Making his 23rd birthday memorable, Shubankar hit six birdies, three of them on last six holes, including the dangerous 16th, also called 'Calamity'.
Ten people were killed and 38 others went missing as incessant rains battered Uttarakhand on Saturday triggering landslides, cloud bursts and flash floods which flattened homes and stranded hundreds of pilgrims with the Chardham Yatra coming to a grinding halt.
Not to say that India couldn't have handled the situation better, but on average, it didn't do anywhere near as badly as the naysayers make it out argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
Climate change has induced erratic extreme rainfalls, especially in the South Asian region
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
'During Amit Shah's recent visit to Kerala, the strategy of concentrating the attacks on the CM on false charges was clear enough.'
In an unusual comment, Afghan Taliban has praised India as a "significant country" in the region and said New Delhi has done well to resist United States calls for greater military involvement in Afghanistan.
In his address, Modi said climate and calamity are linked to culture, and it will be difficult to avoid calamity as long as concerns for the climate do not become a part of culture.
"Speaking of leaving the country is a language of treachery. Leave whatever glory this country has given you, here only," the Bharatiya Janata Party ally said in an editorial in the party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.
Modi, who was in Osaka, laid special emphasis on building a disaster resilient future.
"We had declared four labourers of Assi Ganga Hydel project along with 19 workers as dead after the calamity. And now, four persons have been reported alive," said R Rajesh Kumar, district magistrate of Uttarkashi.
A team of experts of Archaeological Survey of India has found that the north eastern outer wall of the sanctum sanctorum of Kedarnath temple was slightly damaged at some places.
Mahesh Vijapurkar is not surprised that 41 villages in Sangli district want to be merged with Karnataka because of the perennial drinking water shortage in their villages.
Five days after a huge avalanche buried their camp in high mountains of the Karakoram range, army rescuers are yet to find any trace or bodies of 138 people missing in the calamity, mostly soldiers.
Is it that the entire Opposition is misleading the people with falsehoods, and the only repository of patriotism, truth and national interest is the Congress party, asks Tarun Vijay
The vaccine would be first made available to the vulnerable population and eventually, it would be available in the private market for all.
Though Bachchan did not take any names, her remarks come a day after BJP's Lok Sabha MP and Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan said there was problem of drug addiction in the film industry and also actor Kangana Ranaut's recent remarks calling Bollywood a 'gutter'.
Officials at the UAE embassy in New Delhi on Friday said the UAE had not officially announced any financial aid for Kerala flood relief. However, Vijayan claimed there was no lack of clarity on UAE aid for the flood-ravaged state.
Assuring all assistance to the cyclone affected, Home Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday said a Central team would visit Puducherry and Tamil Nadu's Cuddalore district soon to make an on-the-spot assessment of the damage caused by the calamity that left 47 dead.
'A lot of unauthorised encroachments have taken place in our forest area.' 'The landslides are partly because of such encroachments.' 'The other factor is deforestation.' 'Protection of forest resources is not on the agenda of any government.' 'The damage caused by the rain in Kerala is a man-made factor.'
A Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress Party activist was on Wednesday arrested for allegedly posting 'irresponsible' comments on the social networking site Facebook regarding cyclone Hudhud which hit the North Andhra Pradesh coast earlier this month.
Terming the severe floods in Orissa as man-made, Congress on Tuesday accused Biju Janata Dal government in the state of failing to provide relief to marooned people after exposing its inability in preventing the calamity.
Imposing a blanket ban on construction of houses and commercial establishments along the banks of rivers, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna on Monday announced setting up of a statutory body to look into planning and development of the flood-hit areas of the state.
Senior Congress spokesperson Ghulam Nabi Azad said the claim made by the prime minister on Tuesday of Rs three lakh crore getting into the banking system post-demonetisation, is in clear contrast to what the RBI has said.
Sitharaman raised excise duty and road and infrastructure cess on the auto fuels by Rs 2 per litre each to raise over Rs 28,000 crore.
'But can it afford to present a scenario within the existing legal framework of fiscal consolidation?', asks A K Bhattacharya.
Even with the possible expenditure roll-overs and off-budget financing, the fiscal deficit target will not be met. The FRBM Act, after its amendment in 2018, allows a fiscal deficit slippage of not more than 0.5 per cent for any given year, provided there are justifications. These justifications include war, national security, severe collapse in the agriculture sector, a major natural calamity, big structural economic reforms, or the decline in real output growth of a quarter by at least 3 percentage points below its average of the previous four quarters.
Tejashwi accused the Nitish Kumar-led government of meting out "step-motherly" treatment to migrant labourers.
All covers have a war exclusion clause. For cargo, shipping, and aviation industries, war schemes are available.
