The indebtedness of Indian companies has had an adverse impact on the economy's investment climate apart from weakening their performance and seriously impairing the financial health of the banking sector. Unless both the problems are resolved, there is little chance of reviving investment and boosting growth on a sustainable basis, says A K Bhattacharya.
Indian cities will go down like a pack of cards if hit by a powerful earthquake, seismologists tell Rashme Sehgal.
'There exists a 'brotherhood' of sorts for a very long time and corrupt dealers and corrupt OMC officials are in it together,' Ashwani Attrish, founder, Empowering Petroleum Dealers Foundation, tells Sudhir Bisht, a veteran of the petroleum industry.
Fires are blazing across Jammu and Kashmir, the state of Uttarakhand and have reached the doorstep of Himachal Pradesh's capital city Shimla.
'It is a concocted letter and we suspect the IB (Intelligence Bureau) to be behind this game.' 'All the investigation agencies should have quietly gone about finding more about this alleged plot to kill the prime minister.' 'Why are you leaking such a letter that reveals the plot to the press as well as to BJP spokespersons?'
Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharati recently reiterated her commitment towards making the Yamuna Shuddikaran Abhiyan a success but said little else. It is obvious that in comparison to the Ganga about which she waxes eloquent at the drop of a hat, her treatment towards Yamuna can at best be described as step-motherly. Rashme Sehgal reports on efforts to save the river.
In most cases, the payback on energy saving projects offered by GIBSS are between one and three years.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel glances at the life and political career of Alexey Navalny who has been banned from challenging Vladimir Putin in Russia's presidential election.
It will now take at least two more years to get a clarity on the priorities and policies of the leadership of the new state of Telangana.
'I say Modi was India's last chance.' 'Because the kind of work this government has done -- I'm talking about physical delivery -- is fantastic, like no time in our history.'
The floods that engulfed the state of Jammu and Kashmir have been unprecedented in its history. In fact, the deluge of rains suffered by the state was at par --- and in some case, far worse --- than what was witnessed in Uttarakhand in June last year.
'The people of the state can be won over by love, and not by swords.'
Dinesh Patel, Utah's most high profile and influential Indian American, was conferred the Willem J Kolff Lifetime Achievement Award at BioUtah's 2013 Utah Life Science Award, the state's top science award ceremony.
'If a major earthquake of the kind that hit Nepal hits us in Delhi, 35 per cent of our homes would be destroyed.'
The average global temperature between January and October has been 0.68 degrees Celsius higher than the 20th century's average global temperature of 14.1 degree C.
India needs to have a re-look of whole gamut of its relations with major powers and also prepare for a more turbulent neighbourhood. But such is the tyranny of Indian status quo mindset that any talk of re-look at nuclear doctrine or foreign relations is treated as blasphemy, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, bottom, left, says he is fond of Bill Gates' famous quote: "Success is a lousy teacher." Back from a long foreign business trip, the founder-chairman of Bharti Enterprises talks to Malini Bhupta and Kiran Rathee about the challenges posed by Reliance Jio and how he is determined to come out on top once again. Mittal says , today, Airtel is as ready as Jio in pure-play 4G operations.
South African Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to five years in prison by Judge Thokozile Masipe, closing one of the most sensational trials in South African history and one that may yet fuel controversy about race and money in its justice system.
India has made a good beginning in the area of satellite navigation but still there is a long way to go.
We need to question ourselves if we are to be implicated as well in the institutional murder of Rohith and many other Rohiths, if not bodily but in spirit, because of our complicity in naturalising this elitist, exclusionary, discriminatory-to-the-core conception of education, says Kishalaya Mukhopadhyay.
'This little incident might seem trivial to most people. But when such things happen in the BCCI's own backyard...'
In an interview with Rediff.com Puducherry CM spoke about his plans for the state, Rahul Gandhi and his daily friction with the lieutenant governor.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made his debut among the world's most powerful people, ranked 15th on the Forbes list topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin who pipped his US counterpart Barack Obama for a second year in a row.
Several brokerage houses have given a year-end target of as high as 30,000 for the BSE bourse's benchmark Sensex, with fund managers telling investors not to redeem though the index is still only around 25,000.
'If there is any industry that is unfit for modern corporate form it is the diamond trade.' 'But no one was asking the right questions.' 'The music was playing and so the game was on,' says S Murlidharan, former MD, BNP Paribas.
Active citizenship through peaceful protest is a powerful tool, says Merril Diniz, who was part of a peaceful march that was struck down by police and CRPF personnel, while protesting against church attacks in Delhi.
Protester Sasi Perumal's death has given a new fillip to the pro-prohibition movement, which was beginning to draw attention across Tamil Nadu after different political parties began to make it a part of their poll manifesto for next year, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The government has decided to ban Indian women from being surrogate mothers to foreigners to stop 'commercial surrogacy'. How will this decision affect surrogacy in India?
The Indian Spring represented by Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, which has culminated in the Aam Aadmi Party's impressive electoral debut in New Delhi, began around the same time as the Arab Spring in 2011 but they led to different outcomes in India and the Arab world, says Ramesh Ramachandran.
'The consolation is that in recent years, the focus at the time of the anniversary has been increasingly shifting from Indira Gandhi's assassination to the plight of the thousands of innocent Sikhs who had been killed in retaliation,' Manoj Mitta, co-author of When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
Born in poverty and subjected to inhuman abuse, Kalpana Saroj overcame all hurdles to emerge a success story.
'We are rushing to 'develop' without carefully valuing natural areas.' 'With careful land use planning and scientific zonation at least 5 to 10 per cent of the country's land can be secured for tigers and other such species, and another 5 to 15 per cent kept under low-impact uses to support biodiversity that can coexist with human uses.'
India Inc has few leaders who are likely to grab headlines in 2015.
What is Narendra Modi like? What is his politics about? What will he do? What are his priorities? Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com speaks to Swapan Dasgupta to find out more about the man of the moment.
Trade between India and Indonesia stands at $20 billion.
Few top honchos of India Inc did very well in 2014.