What are the reasons why a girl's education falls by the wayside? Why was Safeena a casualty too? Maybe because the education system doesn't give youngsters enough options? Or there are societal issues or pressures?
'Every report I filed for Rediff.com on the professor's incarceration, would leave me wondering for days, at the depth of the State's malevolence towards this disabled professor, and his equally deep capacity to tolerate it,' recalls Jyoti Punwani.' 'No country in the world would do what our country was doing to someone so helpless.'
Preparations are in the final stages by the Chennai-headquartered space-tech startup Agnikul Cosmos for the maiden launch of India's first-ever private launchpad and the second rocket launch by a private sector player.
Disney Star is mulling legal actions against Zee Entertainment for backing out from a $1.4 billion sub-licensing agreement for TV broadcast of international cricket matches in India, according to industry sources. This could brew another legal trouble for Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL), which is already facing an arbitration plea by Sony Group at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, claiming $90 million for breach of conditions of their merger agreement. Disney Star, an Indian subsidiary of media conglomerate The Walt Disney Company, is working on its strategy over the development, said industry sources.
He indicated his conviction will remain firm even if that "uprising" ultimately puts the party he faithfully served for 13 years in the dock.
'We started AgniKul to show that space transportation should be as simple as road transportation.'
According to CoWIN data, only 73 vaccination centres are currently active in India, of which 32 are government-run.
Media Firm Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd (ZEEL) sold its sports channel Ten Sports to Sony Pictures Networks for a US$ 385-million (about Rs 2,579 crore) in an all cash deal.
In gifting the submarine to Myanmar, India is competing with China for influence in the region.
'It will drive a lot of surrounding business, that is where we see some good projects coming in.'
Diesel sales in India fell 3 per cent in September as a receding monsoon continued to dampen demand and slowed industrial activity in some parts of the country, preliminary data of state-owned firms showed. While diesel sales by three state-owned fuel retailers fell year-on-year, petrol sales rose in September. Consumption of diesel, the most consumed fuel in the country -- accounting for about two-fifths of the demand, fell to 5.81 million tonnes in September from 5.99 million tonnes demand in the same period a year ago.
Outward remittances under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) surged by 50.64 per cent to $9.1 billion in the April-June quarter (first quarter, or Q1) of 2023-24 (FY24), driven by healthy growth across segments due to a revision in the timeline of tax collected at source under the LRS scheme and normalisation in international travel. Major drivers include equity and debt investments, deposits, and the international travel segment, among others. According to the latest RBI data, the amount remitted under LRS stood at $9.1 billion in Q1FY24, compared with $6.05 billion in the same quarter last year.
Over 1.4 million foreign pilgrims, about one-fourth of whom are from the Indian sub-continent, will perform Haj this year, Saudi Arabia's Haj Minister said on Tuesday ahead of the world's largest annual gathering.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 183 million hungry people while China comes next with 119 million, the Rajya Sabha was informed.
An accurate early warning system that correlates rainfall and the potential for landslides. That is the imperative, say experts as rains create havoc in hills across India and the toll mounts in Kerala's Wayanad slopes where landslides buried entire homesteads and possibly hundreds of people.
Plenty of other factors are likely to keep a lid on prices.
The Met office has issued a "red" warning for Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and west Rajasthan, stressing the need for "extreme care for vulnerable people".
'We have essentially tried to set out an agenda for the next five years and it, in essence, represents the political commitment to that agenda.'
The number of hungry people in India has fallen to by 9.5 per cent to 190.7 million now from 210.8 million two decades ago, but in neigbouring Pakistan the number has risen by over 38 per cent in the same period.
The Adani group plans to bid for setting up duty-free shops at the Macau international airport, as India's largest airport operator spreads its wings overseas. In a stock exchange filing, Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of the conglomerate run by billionaire Gautam Adani, said it has completed the incorporation of a wholly-owned subsidiary, MTRPL Macau Ltd, in Macau on November 20. The subsidiary has been incorporated for the purpose of getting into the duty-free industry.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications, which offers GSM and CDMA mobile services, said it added 1.62 million new mobile users in March.A company official said the net additions from January to March this year stood at 4.83 million. RCom, the country's largest CDMA operator, added 1.6 million mobile users each for the first two months.
Notwithstanding robust volume growth and a strong performance from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Tata Motors, the country's second-largest automobile (auto) manufacturer by market capitalisation, disappointed the Street with its January-March quarter (Q4) results for 2023-24 (FY24). While consolidated revenues saw a 13 per cent increase, lower-than-expected realisations in the Indian operations weighed down overall performance.
A dipstick survey covering 30 villages in Rajasthan threw up some worrisome numbers. About 250 children missed their regular vaccination schedule in March alone. These numbers are alarming, since India has around 600,000 villages according to the 2011 census. Sohini Das reports.
Whoever can make acquiring smartphones more affordable will win the sales game.
'The larger story of systematic destruction, which can and has been quantified, goes mysteriously missing from any political and/or public discourse about the ongoing devastation in the Ghats,' notes Prem Panicker.
The Nepal court on Wednesday sentenced star cricketer Sandeep Lamichhane to eight years imprisonment in a rape case.
Volkswagen Passenger Cars is targeting a volume sales growth of about 15 per cent in the country in 2024, even as it expects the Indian passenger vehicle (PV) industry to grow by 5-7 per cent in the current year, its India brand director, Ashish Gupta, said on Thursday. This means the company is expecting to grow 2-3 times faster than the Indian PV industry in 2024. But globally, the German automaker is expecting just 3 per cent rise in sales this year, down from 12 per cent last year.
The Information Support Force was regarded as the revised version of the PLA's Strategic Support Force, established in 2015 by the Chinese military to deal with space, cyber, political and electronic warfare to fight what was described as "informationised wars".
The threshold for a heat wave is met when the maximum temperature of a weather station reaches at least 40 degrees Celsius in the plains, 37 degrees in coastal areas, and 30 degrees in hilly regions, and the departure from normal is at least 4.5 notches.
Smart devices maker Samsung continued to lead the smartphone market in the country for the fourth consecutive quarter in July-September with a 17.2 per cent market share, market research firm Counterpoint said on Wednesday. Shipments of iPhone maker Apple crossed 2.5 million units in the reported quarter thereby registering an all-time high in a quarter, according to the Counterpoint's Monthly India Smartphone Tracker report. "Samsung maintained its leading position for the fourth consecutive quarter with a 17.2 per cent share driven by the success of its A and M series.
The equity cult has grown at a rapid pace in India in the last few years, with retail investors latching on to the stock markets like never before. At 126.6 million, the number of dematerialised (demat) accounts, where investors hold their securities in electronic form for trading purposes, are at record high levels. The growth rate, on an annualised basis, stood at 27 per cent in 2022-2023, up from barely 6 per cent a decade ago.
Most analysts have downgraded the stock of SBI Cards and Payments (SBI Card) as the credit card issuer posted weak results during the December quarter (Q3) of financial year 2023-24 (FY24). The sub-par show, analysts said, was for the eighth straight quarter. With this, they have slashed their earnings estimates by as much as 20 per cent over FY24-26 amid near-term pressure points in the company's growth outlook.
'The Modi government must create conditions to integrate millions into the rural economy as many migrants are certainly not going to return to live an undignified life,' notes Ramesh Menon.
Jet Airways India, which recently acquired Sahara Airlines, may come out with a public offering in the domestic and/or international markets.
Released on Wednesday, the report shows that 81 per cent of men and 72 per cent of women in India owned a mobile phone as of 2022, translating to a gender gap of 11 per cent. The numbers drop steeply in terms of mobile internet adoption. While 52 per cent of Indian men use mobile internet, women are way behind, with only 31 per cent of them accessing mobile internet, the report pointed out.
Reliance Communications is planning to hive off its direct-to-home and Internet protocol TV businesses into a separate company titled Reliance Digital Works.
Zetwerk is not exactly a household name, but this unicorn, boasting revenues of Rs 11,450 crore as of last year, is among the top four electronics manufacturers in India. The startup is capitalising on a notable trend in smart TV sales - fall in collective shipments from top brands like Xiaomi, Samsung, LG and an uptick in the market share of smaller, regional, and online brands. Emerging as a key Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) player, Zetwerk operates a plant in Haryana that caters to 10 per cent of the country's overall smart TV production capacity.
Even though electric two wheeler (e2W) companies saw a slight recovery in July of 12 per cent with 49,518 registrations - after a wash out in June because the government slashed the FAME 2 subsidy by a third - registrations are still lower for the second month in a row compared to April FY24. The slow pace has raised doubts about whether the registrations will reach anywhere near either Niti Aayog's ambitious target of 2.4 million vehicles in FY24 or whether they will be closer to the trimmed down industry expectation of around one million. In June, e2W registrations plunged to a mere 44,253, the worst month in more than a year, as companies hiked scooter prices.
NEET is a court-ordered examination, supposedly aimed at meritocracy. However, over the past years when the incumbent Narendra Modi government at the Centre began implementing it, it took on political and casteist colours, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
When Vineet Mittal first got into solar power, sometime around 2009, and was planting solar panels in Gujarat, renewable energy looked like a sector ripe for startups. Renewables were clearly the future of energy, and the big boys - Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, Adani Group, and the Tatas - were focusing much more on coal and petroleum. Little did Mittal know that things were going to change drastically.
