'The travesty of recent Indian strategic thought is it emerges not from our brains, but from whatever part of the anatomy that secretes the prickliest hormones,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The government will seek Parliament's approval for Rs 37,000-crore additional spending on infrastructure development in the second batch of supplementary demands for grant. Earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced additional budget of Rs 25,000 crore as capital expenditure (capex) on roads, defence, water supply, urban development and domestically produced capital equipment. Besides, the central government approved issuance of a special interest-free 50-year loan to states of Rs 12,000 crore for infrastructure development.
Modi told the leaders that Tomar was just a phone call away for protesting farmers and the agriculture minister had conveyed the same to farmer leaders earlier this month.
The collection from borrowings and other liabilities will be 20 paise, while income tax will yield 17 paise to every rupee collection.
The ban on import of 101 items is a big step towards an Atma Nirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India). This list of negative items contains not only small items but weapon systems of high and critical technology. More such items will be added to this list shortly which will save crores of rupees in imports, the defence minister said.
The best available recourse to keep the defence sector healthy, is to source most of our requirement within the country so that procurement outlays under both the Revenue and Capital heads flow within the country, recommends says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
The additional outgo to combat the impact of COVID-19 will significantly erode the fiscal consolidation achieved by the state governments in the past three years, an RBI report said on Tuesday. In its study of the state budgets of 2020-21, the RBI report which has dwelled on the theme 'COVID-19 and its Spatial Dimensions in India', said that Gross Fiscal Deficit (GFD) of the states would spiral during the current fiscal.
It is learnt that the Chinese JF-17 was cheaper but could not match the technical parameters of the Tejas Mk-IA variant and the offer of maintenance of the Su-30 fleet as proposed by India.
The crisis in Indian banking has now reached a point where the NPAs of many public-sector banks are higher than their net worth
Indian economy about to take-off
'Let us hope that this Budget delivers.' 'It needs 10 per cent plus real GDP growth in 2021-22, the rebound year,' notes Omkar Goswami.
'The missile mounted near Kailash-Mansarovar is called DF-21. It is a medium-range, 2,200 kilometres ballistic missile. Its advantage is that it can cover all cities of north India, including New Delhi'
The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
With an aggressive Opposition and unyielding government, important legislation could be the biggest casualty, as details of the helicopter contract surface.
Putin's idea was to attack his neighbouring country, he has to stop and then only we can find a solution, said the German ambassador.
What should concern the Indian citizen is not the fact that the world's biggest assault rifle purchase was scrapped. What should is the fact that the tender was for a type of rifle that has never been produced, says Nitin Pai.
This will be the second all-party meeting called by the government to discuss the COVID-19 situation since the outbreak of the pandemic.
China also had the largest illicit outflows of any country in 2013.
The Opposition on its part wants to corner the government by raising issues like alleged shortcomings in the healthcare system during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and the distribution of Covid vaccines to states.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman on Monday announced a Rs 12,000 crore interest-free 50-year loan to states for spending on capital projects in a bid to boost economy. The loan is over and above borrowing ceilings of the states and the repayment will be one bullet payment after 50 years, she said.
Jaitley's tenure as defence minister saw clearance of a number of big ticket reform measures and simplification of military acquisition process.
Corporation tax is the single largest source of income, contributing 21 paise to each rupee earned.
He said the aim has been to create firewalls to deal with the cyber attacks and that the issue is being addressed in a "serious way".
Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana, who was lynched by a mob in Pakistan's Punjab province over allegations of blasphemy last week, was buried according to Buddhist and Catholic rites at Ganemulla, a suburb north of Colombo, on Wednesday.
The navy is pushing hard for IAC-2 to be a 65,000-tonne, flat deck carrier that is designed and built in India, with technical and tactical consultation from the US navy -- the global masters in aircraft carrier operations.
It's time Rahul Gandhi became attuned to the reality of the 21st century instead of recycling failed political jargon of the 20th century,' argues Virendra Kapoor.
Another crucial power group, the US legislative Congress, is increasing pressure for closer ties between Washington and New Delhi.
US Defence Secretary Llyod Austin described China as a pacing challenge for the United States.
He said in almost all areas of security-related activities, the space -- earth observation, communication and electronic intelligence, among other things -- plays a very major role.
The finance ministry on Wednesday reimposed expenditure curbs on ministries and government departments for July-September quarter. There will be no spending restrictions on the ministries of health, rural development, agriculture, MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) and railways as part of a two-pronged strategy. "The existing guidelines for expenditure control have been reviewed. "Keeping in view the evolving situation arising out of Covid-19 and anticipated cash position of the government, it is felt essential to regulate Quarterly Expenditure Plan (QEP)/Monthly Expenditure Plan (MEP) of specific ministries/departments for July-September, 2021," the Department of Economic Affairs in the finance ministry said in a notification.
Senior Colonel Liu Degang said the Arjun tank is "very good" and suits Indian conditions.
The National Democratic Alliance government has adopted half measures instead of moving decisively on defence.
The company will raise $1.8 billion for the under construction and contracted portfolio of 12 GW, which includes the country's first manufacturing-linked solar power plant of 8 GW.
Jhunjhunwala passed away early on Sunday morning due to a cardiac arrest, a source in his newly set up airline said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the interest of all employees of state-owned banks which are likely to be privatised will be protected, even as bank unions observed a two-day strike against the government's privatisation decision. Replying to a query during a press conference, she clarified that public sector presence will continue in the banking space. "...we have announced public enterprise policy based on which we have identified those four areas in which we said government presence, public sector presence will be there, and bare minimum presence is what we have said, in that financial institutions are also there. "Meaning, even in financial sector we will still have the presence of public sector enterprise...not all of them are going to be privatised," she said.
The new army chief's highest priority must be to address the critical hollowness in the Indian Army's operational preparedness, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Data shows that the PM's overseas travel bill reduced from Rs 140.14 crore to Rs 87.16 crore in the second year; data for third year is not available yet.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday hiked tax on petrol and diesel, raised import duty on gold, levied additional surcharge on super rich and brought a tax on high value cash withdrawals as she sought to spur growth with reduction in corporate tax and sops to housing sector, startups and electric vehicles.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday exhorted farmers to adopt natural farming saying it will help not only save water but also produce better crops, and invited them to join a mega programme on it on December 16 as it would prove beneficial for them.
'Let's get a woman to be the antagonist, who really throws me around and hammers the s**t out of me. That would be fun.'
