'Every issue that Muslims are facing today affects Muslim women. But how come women's issues don't affect the community?' 'How does the community benefit by the practice of halala or polygamy?'
The government aims to cover around 60 million people in the age category, irrespective of income, with an assured 5 lakh annually to be shared within the family.
India has called for a ceasefire, release of all hostages, and peaceful resolution of the Israel-Hamas conflict through dialogue and diplomacy. The Centre informed Parliament that India welcomed the agreement on the first phase of the Gaza Peace Plan. The article also covers India's energy sourcing strategy and the release of Indian fishermen by Pakistan.
A seasoned politician and two-term Member of Parliament, Dr Shakeel Ahmad, who has served as a Union minister and senior Congress leader, resigned from the Congress party, marking the end of his decades-long association with an organisation that his family has been part of for three generations. In an interview with Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff he speaks why he quit the party.
On his 200th birth anniversary, Utkarsh Mishra traces the life, thought, and legacy of Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of India.
'For the first time in this country, perhaps the first time anywhere, we are going to use backwardness index.' 'It is a fundamental shift in the discourse in the country's social justice.'
While data can empower communities, it reinforces identities, making local politics more caste-centric, with decisions increasingly contested on the grounds of representation.
Such dynamics could lead to shifting alliances and, in the worst case, local governance getting paralysed as each group demands proportional power-sharing, explain Amitabh Kundu and Mehebub Rahaman.
According to the Central Statistical Organisation data, released earlier in the day, Index of Industrial Production grew by 16.7 per cent in January against just a per cent during the corresponding month in 2009.
With Indian statistics facing heavy criticism from all quarters in recent times, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for coordination of statistical activities in the country and evolving and maintaining statistical standards, will have to explore ways to reduce dependence on outsourced secondary data collection.
'Mamata needs to address the anger and resentment among various sections of the Hindu community because low-scale communal violence has always paid richer electoral dividends for the BJP.'
Palak and Anuja endear us to their bittersweet world, observes Sukanya Verma.
The government's initiative to migrate SEZ data from NSDL software to ICEGATE system for streamlined reporting of import data caused double counting of gold imports, resulting in inflated figures and the issue has now been largely rectified, government sources said. The downward revision has provided the actual picture of trade deficit (difference between imports and exports), which was earlier looking very high. The deficit for November will now be revised downwards from $37.84 billion to about $32.8 billion. Similarly, there will be a revision in overall import numbers as well.
The Industrial of Index Production was 1.9 per cent in April and 2.5 per cent in May last year, as per the data released by Central Statistical Organisation.
Companies that have been reluctant to share their production and sales data with the government for calculation of various indices will now be forced to do so.
Standard & Poor's, which has threatened to downgrade the country's sovereign rating to junk, sees economic growth improving.
Standard & Poor's, which has threatened to downgrade the country's sovereign rating to junk, sees economic growth improving.
rediffGURU Aasif Ahmed Khan counsels students on the best career options in tech and engineering.
In February 2007, for instance, durables grew at 1.1 per cent compared with 20 per cent for the same period last year.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) is in talks with the Department of Posts to take the help of its staff in collecting sample data for the proposed Consumer Price Index for Rural India (CPI-R). The data for the index would be collected from 1,000 villages, Chief Statistician of India Pronab Sen said on the sidelines of a national seminar on the results of the 61st round of the National Sample Survey.
The Finance Ministry on Friday said the CSO has underestimated GDP growth rate for current financial year and exuded the confidence that economic expansion will exceed 5.5 per cent.
Finance Ministry had pegged the growth at 5.7 per cent and RBI at 5.5 per cent.
Erasing early gains, the rupee on Thursday closed six paise lower at 53.22 due to sustained dollar demand after government estimates pegged ongoing fiscal's GDP growth at a decade low of five per cent.
The government response was key in overcoming the recent financial crisis, but the time is now ripe for credible fiscal consolidation.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday indicated that growth of the economy has slowed to 5.5 per cent in July-September quarter of the current fiscal from 6.9 per cent during the year-ago period.
Keeping pace with the rapidly changing income and consumption pattern, the government will soon come out with a new Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and develop indices for measuring growth of SSI sector and calculating consumer prices in urban areas.
The Indian economy has clearly been on an upward growth path -- from an average annual rise of three to four per cent in the first three decades, growth took a sharper upturn in the eighties.
The Indian economy will grow by 6.9 per cent in 2011-12 against 8.4 per cent in the last financial year according to government estimates.
The Central Statistical Organisation, the government agency responsible for keeping track of how the economy is performing, goes through five phases of estimating how much India's GDP amounts to each year.
CSO revised downwards the construction sector numbers, which account for nearly 9 per cent of India's GDP, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008. This revision to 6.9 per cent as against the initial estimate of 12.6 per cent leads to 40 basis point upside to GDP growth. For agriculture, CSO revised the growth numbers to 2.2 per cent as against the initial estimate of 3.5 per cent. This led to higher agriculture growth of 2.7 per cent in January-March 2009.
Advance estimates of national income growth released today by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) project it at 7.2 per cent in 2009-10, pegging it a notch below earlier forecasts of the Reserve Bank of India (7.5 per cent) and finance ministry (7.75 per cent). With economic growth back on track the government may initiate a phased withdrawal of the fiscal stimulus package.
The projected gross domestic product figure for the current fiscal, as put out by the advanced estimates of the Central Statistical Organisation, is lower than the Reserve Bank of India and the finance ministry's forecasts.
Among the 18 states and Union Territories of which data is available, Bihar recorded the highest State Gross Domestic Product (SGDP) in a year when the global financial meltdown pulled down country's economic growth rate to 6.7 per cent from 9 per cent.
Agriculture and allied activities are likely to grow at 5.4 per cent in 2010-11, compared to just 0.4 per cent in 2009-10, according to Advance Estimates released by the Central Statistical Organisation on Monday.
India scores a pitiable rank at 127 in terms of per capita income.
Per capita income of Indians grew by 14.5 per cent to Rs 46,492 in 2009-10 from Rs 40,605 in the year-ago period, as per the revised data released by the government on Monday.
According to the GDP data released by the Central Statistical Organisation on Tuesday, the country's farm sector grew by 2.5 per cent and 4.4 per cent each in the first two quarters of the current fiscal, against 1.9 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively, in the same period last year.
India can now claim membership of the select list of economies that have an annual national income of over $1 trillion.
A relatively slow performance by the industrial sector and a high base effect may slow down gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second quarter (July-September) of fiscal 2007-08 to below 9 per cent, feel analysts.
Economist and former Reserve Bank Governor C Rangarajan on Monday said that the economy will recover in the second half of 2009 and there would be distinct improvement in growth in 2010-11.
Indian economy is expected to grow between 7 and 7.4 per cent in the three months up to September 2008, as against 9.3 per cent in the year-ago quarter, five top economists of the country told Business Standard. The government is slated to release the quarterly numbers on Friday.