Any NGO critical of the government is unlikely to receive a green signal. The new amendment will leave NGOs vulnerable to harassment. It was the NGO sector that helped provide compassion and food to millions of people during the lockdown. The new Bill will render such cooperation and camaraderie impossible in future, observes Rashme Sehgal.
There is a need for tax reforms in the country in a bolder way, Singh said.
Rajeev Srinivasan on how India has continued to disappoint, but could outdo Singapore one day.
Cleo Paskal attends a Mumbai vote-counting party in Mumbai that looked at the coming Modi Sarkar with hope and optimism.
'Make cash available now, don't put people into suffering.' 'You should not come to a situation where the operation was successful and the patient is dying.' 'What did not happen in India for several years, you cannot do in 50 days.' 'This is agony and pain.'
ndependent of the political fallout, which Stalin has sought to arrest through the withdrawal of the measures as fast as they were introduced, there are concerns about the way those decisions came to be taken, without adequate application of mind, not in official terms but in political and electoral contexts, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Estimates suggest Sina Weibo has over 500 million users.
Retired senior US diplomats Teresita and Howard Schaffer believe the 'US cannot afford to continue restricting its contacts with Narendra Modi.' Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC.
Venture capital investments in India's start-ups nearly halved to $1.5 billion in fourth-quarter 2015
'That is the one headline the world is reading about India this week, and it is a potentially damaging story...' 'I don't think a panic mentality has set in, but this story is one that investors and market watchers are absolutely seized with.'
Three years after the prime minister's election promise that his government would create 10 million jobs, the emerging picture is not pretty. Employment HAS TO take on a critical status in the government's agenda, says Shyamal Majumdar.
India, with the right blend of the physical and the virtual, can emerge as the global nerve centre of complex modern multinational supply chains in the post COVID-19 world.
'The promises of netas and babus and new laws, however well-meaning, mean little.' 'What matters is implementation on the ground.' 'Every law is finally implemented by a vast army of offici
'By lifting his visit to vibrant new functional and emotional planes, Modi saved it from looking like a mere obligatory give-and-take. This is no mean achievement. With his penchant for execution, he must fast track action on the proposals agreed upon, so that the fine print matches the hype,' says B S Raghavan.
The decision to slash insurance coverage will have an impact on private health sector.
Terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to demonetise high value currency notes as "startling and bold", Chinese official media has said it is "far from enough" and India may "look at ideas" from China's crackdown against corruption which has shown "efficiency".
Gujarat is a flourshing state but its business model is not so well accepted at national level.
Crude oil shipments from the US to India rose to the highest levels in November since the conflict began in Ukraine in late February, sparking hopes of a resurgence in oil flows from the US to the subcontinent, reveals shipping data. Shipments from the US have surged as Western nations prepare to impose additional sanctions on Russian crude flows. The US shipped around 450,000 barrels per day of crude last month to India, twice that of shipments in October, according to data from London-based commodity intelligence provider Vortexa.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday warned unscrupulous elements not to play with the lives of the poor by depositing illegal money into their accounts as stringent law against 'benami' transactions were in place to deal with them, as he asked the youth and other sections to move towards a "cashless society".
'When I talk to my colleagues in the Railways, they say 'aadmi toh bohot hai, lekin matlab ka aadmi ek bhi nahi hai (the Railways has a bloated workforce, but doesn't have employees with have the skillsets that matter)'.'
'We all wanted a strong Centre with a decisive mandate from the people, to allow them to take bold decisions.'
As a sitting head of government Narendra Modi enjoy immunity from suits in American courts and also enjoy personal inviolability.
Months after his meeting with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a lawmaker has praised his "honest, transparent and open" governance, which he said is attracting American companies to invest heavily in the Indian state.
'Both reflect prejudice and short-sightedness peculiar to Mr Modi's way of thinking.'
The PM said that the Supreme Court has conducted the highest number of hearings via video-conferencing in the world during the coronavirus pandemic.
As India gets ready to roll out one of the largest vaccine programmes, billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday said his group is working with authorities to provide technology tools and backbone for mass inoculation against COVID-19. Ambani's telecom venture Jio was rolled out four years back, offering free voice calling and dirt-cheap data. Today, Jio is India's largest telecom operator with over 400 million users, each connected to the internet. At a Facebook event, Ambani said the government's digital push kept the country running even during the pandemic and is now helping in the rollout of one of the largest vaccination programmes.
Modi's non-reference could also imply that the BJP may be keeping its alliance options open vis--vis the AIADMK. It could also imply that the BJP's national leadership had not given up on the DMK returning to power in the state post-poll, and the Centre having to do business with a new government in Fort St George, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Describing the Narendra Modi-led BJP's electoral victory as a "breathtaking landslide", eminent American think tanks and experts have said the win has given him an opportunity to "redefine" Indian politics.
Despite recent developments that have accelerated the impending extradition of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, who has been in custody in London's Wandsworth Prison for over two years, the last month has seen his uncle Mehul Choksi dominate the headlines instead with his circus-like exhibition in the Caribbean that has involved red herrings such as a "girlfriend", to whom his wife seemed to have no objection, and possibly concocted stories of being kidnapped and manhandled. Choksi was widely regarded as Modi's Svengali in Mumbai when he returned from Belgium to expand his business. He had fled to Antigua well before news around how Modi finagled thousands of crores from Punjab National Bank (PNB) and other institutions through a series of allegedly coordinated and fraudulent actions involving letters of undertaking, or LoUs.
'Political meetings will be a mere side show; the main show is economic investment and the business partnership. The success of Modi's US visit will be judged on the basis of India's ability to attract American investment and setting up of manufacturing in India to give jobs to millions,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
On the eve of the Modi government's two years in office, the RSS-linked Bharatiya Mazdoor Sabha leadership met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. After the meeting, the BMS claimed the FM told its delegation 'the government has realised that labour reforms are not essential for industrial growth in the country.'
'For short-term gain, the BJP makes extraordinary promises, they take extraordinary decisions, but in the long term it is going to impact both them and the country.'
'If 17-year-old Modi wanted to get out of the marriage, which was imposed on him by a socially backward society and his family, it's not only ethical but his right to walk out of the forced marriage...' 'Jashodaben, a highly conservative woman who understandably, by the social standards of India of the 1960s, opted to remain confined to the marriage instead of kicking Modi out from her life for not starting the marriage in the real sense...''In spite of media pressure, if she does not speak against Modi, it suggests that Modi has not ill-treated her or exploited her after parting ways.' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt speaks to people in the know about the controversy over Narendra Modi's marriage.
It is likely to be a stormy affair with divergent views on market borrowing. Centre will likely press states to borrow to make up for the shortfall, but states want either the Centre or the GST Council to do so.
For one, the prime minister's residence will go vegetarian for the first time; Amitabh Bachchan, deservingly, will be conferred the Bharat Ratna; and the people can expect a lot of emotion-loaded communication from the prime minister, feels Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
'The approach today is, instead of giving loans to 100 MSMEs, let us give one loan to a big-ticket corporate.' 'And so many of these big fish deceived the banks and the banks are in the doldrums now with high NPAs.'
It is in no way a government of the economic Right. The Right is limited to religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other party, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The choking of natural drainage brings monsoonal Mumbai to its knees year after year.
The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha began on June 17 and is scheduled to conclude on July 26.
