It is wrong to say the Congress doesn't matter. Certainly one set of people who do not believe that for a minute is the BJP. That's why even in his speech in Parliament on Constitution Day, Mr Modi called dynastic politics a threat to democracy, observes Shekhar Gupta.
With Sheikh Hasina as Bangladesh prime minister, all is well with the world of India-Bangladesh relations, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'Today, when Kailash Satyarthi is being honoured with the most prestigious global award, reports appear to the effect that many millions of Indian children are in 'slavery'. This is hardly the reputation that India should have when we are basking in the glory of 'Mangalyan',' says T P Sreenivasan.
The oil sector has been quite lucky for the Modi government. It has often provided an opportunity to the government to mend its finances, notes A K Bhattacharya.
According to the latest data available from the Centre and the states in the night, the total number of Omicron cases in the country was around 1,200.
Non-BJP chief ministers are retaliating. If the Centre can use its agencies to threaten, intimidate and jail its rivals, so can they. The fightback will get more intense, observes Shekhar Gupta.
With the Omicron variant of coronavirus slowly spreading its tentacles in the country, a number of states enhanced surveillance to trace, track and quarantine contacts of COVID-19 positive persons while Delhi began genome sequencing of samples of all infected people and has prohibited Christmas and New Year gatherings.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal urged start-ups to focus on three Ps - product, process, people - for building Aatmnirbhar Bharat.
Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.
the SC said, "We want that adequate compensation be paid to the victims' family".
'Unlike Trump, who has an isolationist approach, Bolton would like to roam around the world, trampling upon any sign of dissent,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Don't look for a volunteering job for money, but as an investment for life, advises management consultant Virender Kapoor.
If international crude oil prices zoom past the current level of about $90 per barrel and move towards $100 and beyond, middle-class consumers are not going to keep quiet about their discomfort, points out Arun Balakrishnan, former chairman and managing director, Hindustan Petroleum.
Intensifying screening of international passengers at airports, asking educational institutions to postpone their public events, and limiting gatherings, meetings, conferences to 500 people, are among the other measures announced by the government.
Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have announced a lockdown of educational institutions, malls and other places that attract people in large numbers, even as some of them have been reporting increase in positive cases.
The displacements were a result of a combination of increasing hazard intensity, high population exposure and high levels of social and economic vulnerability, a report says.
Shah said that the people of the country will decide about the principal opposition party to BJP in the 2024 polls and they have not given this label to any party.
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Aswathy Jwala, a social worker from Kerala, has launched a hunger strike at the Sharaniyavas slum where the Ahmedabad civic body has built a 600-metre wall apparently to hide slums from United States President Donald Trump's sight during his Ahmedabad visit on February 24.
Vithal, a 1950-batch IAS officer, died early on Friday morning due to old age ailments, his son Sanjay Baru, media advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh, told PTI.
'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers getting inoculated and vaccination of the frontline workers started from February 2.
The base will be used by carriers such as Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, to operate 70-seater ATR aircraft to places such as Bengaluru.
Any defeat for the BJP now would imply that anti-incumbency against Modi has set in, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Petrol and diesel prices were hiked for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday by 35 paise per litre, pushing the total increase in rates on petrol to Rs 36 per litre and on diesel to Rs 26.58 since early May 2020 when taxes on the two fuels were raised to record levels. Petrol in Delhi now costs Rs 107.24 a litre and diesel comes for Rs 95.97, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. The latest increase that follows the unrelenting hike in international oil prices has pushed pump rates across the country to their highest-ever levels.
Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu reported one case each, officials said.
S Jaishankar turned out to be a chip of the old block and that too, in modern parlance, a fully loaded chip. The father laid down the precepts of Indian strategy and diplomacy and the son put them into practice. T P Sreenivasan on India's new foreign secretary.
'The call to isolate Pakistan on the ground of sponsoring and supporting terrorism, particularly when the UN has not even defined terrorism, is a wild goose chase.' 'The responses of the various countries to the Uri attack provides testimony to this fact.' 'No country, not even Russia, was willing to condemn Pakistan for this dastardly act,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Meanwhile, flight operations from the Kochi international airport will resume at 12 noon on Sunday, an airport official said.
N Sathiya Moorthy explains how the recent floods may complicate the Cauvery issue among Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala
The prime minister noted that there may not have been any major public events in countries around the world and in India for around a year-and-a-half, but the enthusiasm for Yoga Day has not diminished.
SBI economists on Tuesday sharply slashed their FY22 GDP growth estimates to 7.9 per cent - the lowest among all analysts - from the earlier projection of 10.4 per cent growth. The economists at the state-run lender seemed to attribute the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 infections as a key factor for the revision in the growth estimate, and pitched for faster vaccination. "... our analysis shows a disproportionately larger impact on the economy this time and given that rural is not as resilient as urban, the pick-up in pent-up demand is unlikely to make a large difference in FY22 GDP estimates, and hence it could only be a modest pick-up," they said.
Effective prevention and following good hygiene is the best way to tackle the virus.
With cases hitting a new peak in several parts of the country, the demand for medical oxygen has increased as it is a critical component in the treatment of COVID-19-affected patients.
Goa, Kerala, Maldives and Dubai are among the popular destinations.
Kerala, Punjab, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are among the major agriculturally important states that have banned the use of glyphosate citing its adverse impact on human health.
Singh, who recently said all Rohingyas in India were "illegal immigrants" as none of them had applied for asylum as refugees, asked opposition parties not to make it a "political issue".
Indian centre-back Sandesh Jhingan feels he will be "tested to the limit" while enhancing his game outside his comfort zone at Croatian league Prva HNL.
'The very fact that she survived her migration to Bollywood, where many young lives have been sacrificed or abandoned to the streets, bears testimony to her grit, determination and good fortune,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
It will be the year of preparation for the electoral test in Uttar Pradesh, due in 2022. But before that, the West Bengal Assembly election will set the mood for the rest of 2021.
