The Chinese authorities have been rapidly building defence infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control, indicating that they are preparing for a long period of tension with India, points out Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog's first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report. As per the index, 51.91 per cent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot. Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent), Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
The 15 ministers were sworn in on Sunday for the expanded Gehlot cabinet, fulfilling a key demand of former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot whose rebellion last year shook the state's Congress government.
The appointment of new expenditure secretary comes a month-and-a-half ahead of the Budget for 2020-21 to be presented on February 1.
Key to China's decision regarding Taiwan will be its leadership's assessment whether the US will come to Taiwan's defence, explains Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
The government has merged the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) with the finance ministry to give it a better control over state-owned firms and facilitate its ambitious privatisation programme. Finance ministry will now have six departments while DPE's hereto parent ministry, the ministry of heavy industries and public enterprises will now be called the ministry of heavy industries. Previously, the disinvestment ministry - created under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government - was merged with the finance ministry and is now a department under it. Also, Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was abolished and administration of foreign investments was given to the finance ministry (FinMin).
As per a senior NIA official, the anti-terror agency has "nominated Inspector General of Police Santosh Rastogi to assist the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court to secure and seize the records related to the visit of Prime Minister to Punjab on January 5, 2022, from State and Central Agencies".
Any intelligence to be used in an operation has to be explained to the field staff. Merely retransmitting it without explaining the applicability to the local conditions will only elicit the standard response, V Balachandran tells Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa
Beijing will be intently watching Washington's response for any hint of weakness. Xi Jinping, who feels China has a limited window of strategic opportunity, will be emboldened to take additional initiatives in the Indo-Pacific and specifically against India and Taiwan, warns Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
Mishra and Doval hold the rank of a Cabinet minister.
They noted that the exercise had begun in 2011 and an Inter-Ministerial Group submitted its recommendations in 2012 after meeting for 10 times.
A 14-member council of ministers was sworn in Patna by Governor Phagu Chauhan on Monday and the BJP bagged seven berths.
The new government has asked all its ministers not to appoint officials who had served in key positions in the United Progressive Alliance government as their personal staff.
The income tax department will share PAN and bank account details of any entity with 10 investigative and intelligence agencies, including the CBI and NIA, under the integrated counter-terrorism platform NATGRID, according to an official order.
Govt had asked ISPs to block 500 websites but this could not be done due to technical issues.
There are very few authoritative and knowledgeable Indian writers who have a deep insight into Chinese strategic thinking and the internal dynamics within China. That is why China Unveiled: Insights into Chinese Strategic Thinking by Jayadeva Ranade, a former additional secretary in India's Cabinet Secretariat, makes for compelling reading, says Nitin Gokhale
Some cases are pending for two years.
Indebted Air India, which last made an annual profit in 2007, has seen its market share shrink in recent years.
The ministry had sent a draft proposal for the consideration of the Empowered Group of Ministers to price all domestically produced natural gas -- be of state-run ONGC or private sector Reliance Industries - as per the formula suggested by the Rangarajan Committee.
The CVC had received a complaint accusing Goswami of influencing decisions linked to Sinh and an enquiry in the case is going on, official sources said.
Over two lakh posts are estimated to be created by the Central government in its various departments.
Ajit Doval is now India's all-powerful security boss. This concentration of power disrupts our layered security system. Will it not weaken whatever remains of the power and authority of the home, defence and finance ministers? asks Shekhar Gupta.
National security, consolidation of border defences and border security highlights China's Tibet policy, points out Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan singh is slated to approve thirty-four 1979 batch Indian Administrative Service officers as secretaries to the government of India.
A committee headed by Anil Swarup has been appointed to re-start 215 large projects worth over Rs 7 lakh crore that have been stalled for various reasons, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.
Nearly 340 projects worth Rs 10 lakh crore are presently stuck.
Dr Viswapati Trivedi, secretary, Union Ministry of Mines, has been abruptly shunted out without prior intimation.
Wang Junzheng, Tibet's new Communist party boss, is on a number of sanctions lists by the US, Britain, the EU and Canada, for his tough role in Xinjiang, aimed at China's Uyghur ethnic minority, observes Jayadeva Ranade, the retired senior RA&W officer and distinguished China expert.
No more pushing of files with a focus on the process orientation in the government offices. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants the bureaucrats to show results under a performance monitoring and evaluation system (PMES) he is pushing for since 2009.
A joint secretary-rank officer in the Cabinet Secretariat has been found guilty of leaking Army Chief General V K Singh's letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the poor state of preparedness of his force and has been shunted out. A probe into the leakage by the Prime Minister's Office has also cleared General Singh of any wrongdoing in the episode, highly-placed sources said.
As per the well-established system, all the 249 public sector units are to sign a memorandum of understanding with their administrative ministries, setting the performance targets which are reviewed at the end of the fiscal year.
Protests at this time when efforts are underway to strengthen the PLA and keep morale high would be worrying for the military leadership, observes Jayadeva Ranade, the retired senior RA&W officer and distinguished China expert.
The controversial note on the 2G spectrum allocation by the finance ministry, which created a storm by suggestion that the then finance minister P Chidambram could have prevented the scam by enforcing the spectrum auction, was drafted after consultation with the Prime Minister's Office and officials of the cabinet secretariat.
PMO to have direct say in decision-making through MoS Narayanasamy.
A visit to Tibet appears to have become the new touchstone for expressing fealty to Xi Jinping, observes Jayadeva Ranade, the retired senior RA&W officer and distinguished China expert.
The Prime Minister's Office has refused to give information on the expenses incurred on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Singapore saying it is too "vague" and "wide".
B Raman pays tribute to S E Joshi who passed into the ages on Friday.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has asked for selective exemption from the order to seek permission from the Union cabinet before the sale or long-term lease of any land of the government or a government-controlled statutory body.
The Public Accounts Committee has, in a draft report on 2G scam, strongly indicted former Telecom minister A Raja and came down heavily on the Prime Minister's Office and the Cabinet Secretariat for not taking "corrective action" while not sparing even the prime minister for "some unfortunate omissions".
A CCEA meeting is scheduled for tomorrow but the approval for the Cairn-Vedanta deal is not listed on its agenda so far.
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