China will increase its defence spending by "around seven per cent" this year, as it vowed to guard against "outside meddling" in its territorial disputes.
Faced with prospect of its assets across the globe being seized just like Pakistan and Venezuela, the government decided to scrap retrospective taxation but the international embarrassment could have been avoided had 'attached' shares of Britain's Cairn Energy Plc not been sold, according to tax and legal experts. On Thursday, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to scrap the tax rule that gave the tax department power to go 50 years back and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India. The 2012 legislation was used to levy a cumulative of Rs 1.10 lakh crore of tax on 17 entities, including UK telecom giant Vodafone, but substantial punitive action was taken only in the case of Cairn.
Given the security dilemma prevailing between India and China, India should curb the operation of Chinese telecom companies in India, asserts Dr Rup Narayan Das.
'If the museum in his memory inspires and instils among Brahminical British Indians an attitude of equality towards Dalits, the edifice would be worth it,' reports Ashis Ray.
The president and First Lady Melania Trump will travel to New Delhi and Ahmedabad during the visit.
'Initially, Gift City was just another real estate project, but all that changed with Modi moving to New Delhi,' notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Pawan Ruia has finally done it, a beaming Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, then West Bengal chief minister, had said at the reopening of the 70-year-old Sahagunj factory owned by Dunlop in 2005. But with the Calcutta high court passing a winding-up order in 2013 and the Trinamool Congress-led state government passing a Bill to take over the company in 2016, the once-upon-a-time undisputed leader in the Indian tyre industry looks vastly undone. But that can hardly be a deterrent for Ruia, who has a penchant for making headlines one way or the other.
'It is sad that Kerala had so many Covid patients which is primarily due to the mismanagement of the Left government.' 'The technical committee was full of CPI-M leaders who happen to have medical degrees with no experience in public health.' 'They were advising the CM and we are paying for those mistakes.'
Chidambaram mocked her with a tongue-in-cheek tweet.
However, the Indian capital markets regulator rejected the claim saying it neither received any such request, nor provided any such information to the concerned department in Antigua.
'The growth drivers are mostly invisible, but the growth is undeniable at least for now,' notes Debashis Basu.
"The RSS is trying to change the nature of India. Other parties haven't tried to capture India's institutions," he said.
Indonesia, Turkey and Afghanistan also see important polls in the seven short weeks between end-March and mid-May, says Shankar Acharya
His remark comes hours after the government disclosed before the Supreme Court eight more names, including that of Pradip Burman, one of Dabur India promoters, a bullion trader and a Goa miner against whom it has started prosecution for allegedly stashing black money in foreign banks.
The real battle for NEET abolition can take much more time and energy, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
As India gears up to honour its pravasis on January 9 to mark their contribution in the nation's development, rediff.com presents perspectives from eminent writers on the Diaspora. Kicking off the series is Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who points out that the change of the Diaspora policy put in place by Rajiv Gandhi following the military coup in Fiji and his decision to stand by them, was the one defining moment in India's dealings with its overseas family.
A bill to amend the Citizenship Act, one of the six items on which government had issued ordinances, was on Monday passed by the Lok Sabha.
The retrospective amendment will help BJP and Congress escape the fallout of a 2014 Delhi high court judgment that held both guilty of violating the FCRA.
India's roughly $150 billion outsourcing sector generates about three quarters of its revenue from the United States.
It may be 2017, but the 'uska baap kaun hai, maloom hai kya' still dominates India.
Allegations of strains on democratic and constitutional institutions across the board, security threats from outside, a greedy Opposition inside, were all a part of the package then as now, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'To expect that he has a magic wand to resolve all differences and announce breakthroughs in all issues during his first visit to the US is to be unrealistic,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Why the prime minister's legacy will depend on how he governs, not the number of state elections he fights as personality contests, says Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress on Wednesday stepped up attack on Union minister V K Singh, saying his remarks against the army chief-designate were unbecoming of a minister and a former general of the armed forces and demanded that the prime minister "censure" him.
'Today, if the international community is seeking space, if not place, here, then the message is not unclear in any which way. 'It does not reflect well on the nation's standing in the international arena, where human rights issues go a long way in building bilateral relations and benefiting from international cooperation, more than any aspect of politics and diplomacy,' N Sathiya Moorthy.
A group of six US lawmakers had recently introduced 'The US Call Center and Consumer Protection Act of 2013' in the Congress that requires overseas call centre employees to disclose their location to US consumers.
"When Modiji undertakes a trip abroad, thousands of Indians wait to welcome him and foreign nations are eager to do business with India," he added.
His answer to every question was, "I am politically victimised", the CBI said.
'The Left is dying, but its economic ideology rules, unchallenged.' 'Modi is its newest standard-bearer.' 'Even in today's bitterly polarised politics, if there is one thing on which not just the BJP and Congress, but all other parties agree, it is that socialist economics is the only way to survive,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Ahead of Delhi assembly elections, Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party has collected around Rs 19 crore as donations from cross section of people, most of them are the first-time donors to a political party.
'From his persistent fuelling of pan-Hindu nationalism to pandering to narrow Gujarati chauvinism, Rambo rides again, using fair means and foul -- and often foul -- to gain the battleground,' says Sunil Sethi.
In a 35-minute address to the Indian diaspora, the prime minister said that his government was not afraid of taking "big" and "tough" decisions in the interest of the country.
After the defence ministry termed as "illegal" his decision to put a ban on promotion of Army Chief designate Dalbir Suhag, Gen (retd)V K Singh, now a Union minister, justified his action on Tuesday.
The Centre on Friday submitted before the Supreme Court that all the information on black money received from foreign countries, with which India has double taxation avoidance agreement, cannot be disclosed.
Infosys has been focusing on winning more lucrative digital technology and automation outsourcing contracts.
Of the total 53,334 cases of frauds reported during 2008-09 and 2018-19 fiscal years, involving a whopping Rs 2.05 lakh crore, a highest of 6,811 cases were reported by the ICICI Bank.
A mix of industrialists and businessmen, who have inherited riches or rose from humble backgrounds and even endured boom and bust cycles, the top five MPs are illustrative of how the political stock of the wealthy is increasing rapidly.
A few state-owned banks such as IDBI Bank, Union Bank, Indian Overseas Bank have announced results for FY14.
'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.
Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, believes that the US has enough highly skilled engineers and raising the cap on H-1B would hamper the wages of senior workers already in the industry.
