Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in Washington, DC, ahead of the first in-person Quad meeting to be hosted by US President Joe Biden and discussed a broad range of issues of bilateral, regional and global importance, including the Indo-Pacific.
Expressing concern over the situation in Afghanistan, a group of eminent persons, including former ministers K Natwar Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Mani Shankar Aiyar, on Wednesday urged the government to continue engaging with the Taliban and not allow any political party to use the developments in that country to communally polarise Indian society for electoral gains.
India lost around 38.5 thousand hectares of tropical forest in the last decade. Nearly 14 per cent of the country's tree cover! It is one thing for Modi to announce that India will reach a net-zero level of emissions in 2070. But if it is serious, it needs to start today, points out Ramesh Menon.
'We don't need to hinge India-UK relations on shared hostility toward China,' observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India's growth projection released by the latest World Economic Outlook remains unchanged from its previous WEO (World Economic Outlook) update of July this summer but is a three-percentage point in 2021 and 1.6 percentage point drop from its April projections. According to the latest WEO update, released ahead of the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, the world is expected to grow at 5.9 per cent in 2021 and 4.9 per cent in 2022.
Ajit Balakrishnan on how to arrest a worldwide decline.
The PM said that countries sponsoring, aiding and funding terrorism must be held accountable.
Since 2012, 44 Indians have been anointed as grandmasters -- the highest achievement in chess, points out Arvind Subramanian, economist and former chief economic adviser to the government.
'There were two options before the government -- create a complex, cumbersome law, which will cause a tremendous amount of compliance challenges for startups or say let's go back and do a clean slate, where we do a framework of laws and policies'
He reaffirmed India's resolve to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and said peace and prosperity cannot coexist with terrorism, in remarks seen as directed at Pakistan.
Unless each attack drone can be neutralised, India will be literally deploying elephants to stamp out ants -- and the ants may still survive! points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The recent protests by employees of Urban Company and the case of a a Zomato delivery executive who died in a road accident point to the severely straitened condition of gig workers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Budget 2021 had promised several measures to help the cause of gig economy workers, but most of them are yet to see the light of day. Even after a year, the country's gig workers continue to be without any social security cover or a minimum wage guarantee. "In Budget 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government is looking toward including migrant and gig workers for social security benefits," says Srinivas Kotni, managing partner, Lexport, a consulting firm. Parliament had passed the Code on Wages in 2019 and Code on Industrial Relations, Social Security and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions in 2020.
'There is a vision in the Budget, and the vision is to take India from a largely agrarian, rural economy into a fast-track digitalised economy.'
'Nobody is talking about the inequality that is going to come.'
Aseem Chhabra brings you the Best of the Berlinale.
The growth opportunity for a business, people running the business, governance structure at a company, technology adoption and the firm's belief in frugality are the list of priorities which should be considered before choosing a stock to invest in, Jhunjunwala said.
Participating in an online session, a panel of Hindu-American women, from different walks of life, expressed their strong views in favour of President Trump.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
India and the United States can work together not to fight an 'authoritarian' China but to make it observe the rule of law, former US diplomat and Harvard professor Nicholas Burns said on Friday in a conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
'The killings are a worrisome escalation of tensions, but little is known about the immediate causes or results of the fight in Galwan and it is not possible, at this point, to assign blame'
'In today's world, more than ever, we feel the need for comfort, for love. There is so much to reassure us here -- the beautifully captured billowing embrace of the smoke, the golden light, the subject's expression as he prepares the food for sharing.'
'Economy is leading the way as far as the relationship between the two countries is concerned'.
The BRICS stressed on resolution of conflicts in a declaration issued after a virtual meeting of foreign ministers of the member nations of the grouping. The meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
We love a leader who oozes authority and firmness, notes Virendra Kapoor.
There is growing acceptance of the idea in the international community that engaging the Taliban government is a far better approach than ostracising it, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Modi cautioning that cryptocurrency can spoil the youth.
'The theme of death seems to be a theme about which many of us, raised in Western societies, have almost completely removed from consciousness; it represents a theme that is suddenly and forcefully resurging now.' 'And for some, this is scary and destabilising.'
'The really striking thing is that the Taliban has suo moto presented to us certain firm benchmarks against which it expects us to hold to account the Taliban rulers's actions in the period ahead' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Washington might occasionally make some noises about alleged human rights violations and related issues but commonality of interests will only see the Indo-US ties grow stronger, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Trump said the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by the companies in China continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the country.
American analysts and their camp followers in India are talking absolute rubbish when they try to establish that India is facing a Hobson's choice in regard of Donbass, called upon to take sides between Russia and the West, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Pint-sized 13-year-old Momiji Nishiya took gold in street skateboarding -- new to the Olympics in Tokyo -- while in one of the Games's staple sports a "Terminator" hunted down a dominator to set the swimming pool alight.
'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.
World leaders said they were looking forward to working with Joe Biden, as they welcomed the 46th President of the United States with praise and took parting shots at his predecessor Donald Trump.
'If the government does its job of vaccinating all the population with the booster dose, and also monitoring the virus, and we do our job of wearing a mask and avoiding crowded places, we will be free of this virus in a few months.' time.'
The Army chief said the nation is passing through a challenging period.
Wang Chang Qi, 80, was captured by Indian forces in 1963 after the India-China war. Convicted for spying, he was in Indian jails for six years till his release in 1969.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is the world's main banking messaging service which links around 11,000 banks and institutions in more than 200 countries, including India.
Any Indian government at this juncture would have voted and spoken exactly this way. It isn't just about the vast Indian dependence on Russian-origin military equipment. It is also about trust, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances