'Defence funding is channelled to State-owned research organisations where scientists are merely bureaucrats holding meetings and sending out minutes of meetings and press releases, but have long ago stopped any innovative work.' 'Unless this tragedy is fixed, India's chances to create world-conquering and job-creating new industries are slim,' says Ajit Balakrishnan.
About Rs 12,000 crore are stuck in India's first hotel district, Delhi's Aerocity, because of red tape.
What the new defence minister does with the Rafale fighter jet deal will decide if India wants to build genuine, long-term defence capability through an indigenous product that slashes life-cycle costs, or opt for glitzy signing ceremony with foreign vendors that would please the public, says Ajai Shukla.
Sitharaman said keeping morale of forces at the highest level was among the priorities of the government.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said saving lives and extending all help to the families of the deceased is the state government's priority.
Dhanteras, the prime minister said, has become even more special.
Examples of coordinated initiatives.
'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.'
Accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of having "reaped benefits" of communal polarisation in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress on Wednesday said the government should now focus on good governance and deliver on promises.
The Centre stressed that the next three weeks will be critical for the country reeling from the worst health crisis as it announced a series of measures to shore up medical infrastructure and supplies and scale up vaccination.
India's enemies be warned: The Rafale deal will bring a sea change in India's defence preparedness.
'As a nation we came up short, but that did not deter Kalam. He made it his life mission to exhort the young to greatness.'
DGCA panel has proposed tests be conducted even before a candidate is inducted into a flying training institute
Rather than going through the tedious, hit-or-miss process of physically designing hull forms and superstructures for warships and then determining how visible they are to radar, the company will simulate this process on supercomputers.
An analysis of WHO data shows that most of the countries with an older cohort of population and higher in the development index had a lower excess mortality rate than India.
Amid allegations of attempts to hush up a molestation row in St Stephen's College, its principal Valson Thampu on Saturday said it was not for him but the victim to go to police.
'It appears that Prime Minister Modi has to undo 50 years of State monopoly in the defence sector during which public undertakings like HAL or DRDO monopolised defence production and development with disastrous consequences.'
While its operating radius remains secret, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates it can easily strike targets 1,000 kilometres away and return to base.
Science in India has developed a great deal since C V Raman, particularly after the country gained Independence but we are yet to win a Nobel prize in physics, chemistry or medicine. Is it a reflection on the quality of Indian science? Or it has to do with the politics of Nobel prizes, as is often believed, asks Dinesh C Sharma.
The Mars mission is overwhelmingly irrelevant to space science and won't advance the frontiers of knowledge. It will divert attention from the real technological challenges facing the Indian space programme, and will further distort our science and technology priorities, says Praful Bidwai.
Godrej and some other firms are frustrated at what they say is the slow execution of projects and lack of government support, which are hampering India's efforts to compete with China and Russia as a cheaper option for launching satellites.
The 'Make in India' concept in the defence sector has the potential to help India meet 70 per cent of its defence needs in a few years.
With cruise missile and air strikes being India's most likely response to a hypothetical Pakistani terrorist outrage in the future, retaliation from the Pakistan air force is inevitable. That is where the S-400 will come into play, says Ajai Shukla.
The IAF faces a 'fighter gap' of 13 squadrons. The IAF would be caught seriously short in a two-front war -- the worst-case planning contingency in which China and Pakistan attack India simultaneously, points out Ajai Shukla.
China also had the largest illicit outflows of any country in 2013.
The National Democratic Alliance government has adopted half measures instead of moving decisively on defence.
The prime minister also welcomed convergence of views between India and ASEAN for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.
Offering lucrative incentives, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday invited US technology companies to start manufacturing in India, for meeting domestic needs and exports, under the 'Make In India' initiative.
As defence minister, Singh's most crucial challenge will be to speed up the long-delayed modernisation of the three services besides ensuring overall coherence in their combat readiness.
Some officials, despite repeated warnings, continue to browse the Internet and visit social networking sites from the very same computer in which classified information is stored, says Vicky Nanjappa
Not just Vietnam, but other countries in the region like Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, have also expressed an interest in acquiring the BrahMos cruise missile. Debalina Ghoshal explains the significance of the move.
'It is imperative to restore the dignity and authority of the services chiefs. Erosion of this has resulted in lowering of service efficiency. It is also time to end the practice of taking seniority as the sole criterion for appointing chiefs.'
Govt reconstitutes body, says will not interfere in senior PSB appointments
Hemant Shivsaran lists the number of projects the Modi government has announced since August to woo Gujarat voters.
The 155-millimetre, 52-calibre Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System, which was successfully tested in Pokhran, demonstrated its potential to be a world-beating system.
DRDO says it is working with the navy to fit the Rustom-1 with an Automatic Identification System that will identify Indian fishing vessels along the maritime boundary
'When a person is capable of infecting 50 others, will you think about the privacy of the person or about protecting the lives of people?'
'With Pakistan's 'first use doctrine' threatening the use of nuclear weapons early in a war with India, the S-400 will shield vulnerable targets like Delhi and Mumbai, complicating Pakistan's targeting calculations.'
There are a lot of very bad men out there. And Syed Asif Ibrahim is the best officer to deal with them. Aditi Phadnis reports
After the Ladakh fiasco where Xi Jinping did not expect the Indian Army to resist his land-grabbing tactics, he has to save face before his colleagues in the Communist party.' To bring the threat of a mega-dam to the northern Indian border is a clever move, observes Claude Arpi.
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