Several private hospitals across the country said they have no clarity on procuring COVID-19 vaccines under the new policy announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that it has led to the vaccination being put on hold at their centres.
India has too many small companies and this is inefficient. It should instead have only a handful of very large players running its economy and these giants can then compete with the world, observes Aakar Patel.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said he regrets not being able to learn the world's oldest language Tamil during his long political innings as a chief minister and prime minister.
Roads are becoming smarter even if the people driving on it are not. A set of smart technologies is making construction, maintenance, and traffic management much more efficient.
In a business friendly move, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday said that Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), used for large value transactions, will be made available round-the-clock from December. In December 2019, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was made available on a 24x7x365 basis. Currently, RTGS is available for customers from 7.00 am to 6.00 pm on all working days of a week, except second and fourth Saturdays of every month.
NITI Aayog had been asking for Rs 7,500 crore for three years to set up an AI framework.
James Wilson explains why Indians are destined to silently suffer the cash shortage for half a dozen more months.
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
The tiny Central American nation of El Salvador has embarked on an interesting experiment by recognising bitcoin as legal tender. This is proving painful for many of its citizens but it's a useful "pilot" project for larger economies that are contemplating the peculiarities of this new asset class. El Salvador has a population of 6.5 million and GDP of about $27 billion.
'An armed helicopter equipped with counter-drone systems will provide the airborne counter-drone capability and flexibility needed to protect India's critical assets.'
After staging a strong recovery from COVID-induced slowdown in 2021, India's exports are likely to extend the growth story to the New Year also on increased demand in the global markets, boost in domestic manufacturing due to production-linked incentive schemes and implementation of some interim trade pacts. Expectations of positive growth in the country's exports are also backed up by the outlook of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which predicts a 4.7 per cent expansion in the global merchandise trade volume in 2022. Exporters believe that the outbound shipments would cross $400 billion mark in this fiscal going by the current momentum and may reach $475 billion in 2022-23.
He has left no one in any doubt about his ability to take bold, even out-of-the-box, decisions, to gauge the feelings and aspirations of the common people at the grassroots and to ensure that polices and schemes do not remain on paper, but are implemented, says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said a strong domestic manufacturing base in electronics and telecommunications will mitigate burden of growing imports for the sector.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented the Budget for 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha that is expected to provide relief to the pandemic-hit common man as well as focus more on driving economic recovery through higher spending on healthcare, infrastructure and defence amid rising tensions with neighbours, As India emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the ninth Budget under the Modi government, including an interim one, is widely expected to focus on boosting spending on job creation and rural development, generous allocations for development schemes, putting more money in the hands of the average taxpayer and easing rules to attract foreign investments.
The US has been, historically, a sleeping partner in India-China relations. Today, any attempt by the Modi government to make a bilateral move to improve relations with Beijing could upset Biden's apple cart, notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The country's largest lender State Bank of India has seen a perceptible increase in the number transactions happening at its multiple digital channels, with the percentage moving from 60 per cent in the pre-pandemic period to 67 per cent currently, chairman Dinesh Khara said. The rise in the number of digital transactions at the bank was largely driven by pick up in e-commerce during the pandemic-induced lockdown, which restricted movement, he said.
Work on a dozen decisions to start by next week.
During the month, inflation in vegetables shot up to 35.99 per cent, as against 26.10 per cent in October. Likewise, the prices of cereals and eggs grew at a faster pace of 3.71 per cent.
The Customs clearance required for moving equipment like laptops, desktops, etc out of SEZ units was delaying things as the clearance had to be taken in person after a first level of approval online.
For the past few weeks, the government has been in an overdrive, pushing stuck projects with the larger aim to improve the country's economic growth, which had fallen to a four-year low of 4.4 per cent in the first quarter of this financial year.
It has become common for our trade pundits to make emphatic claims that India is set to become the next major global manufacturing hub.
ICT products make up a minuscule $ 407 million, out of the $ 35.54 billion of total inbound shipments from the US, as of now.
The US National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on five prominent Muslim-American activists, including an Indian-origin attorney, according to the leaked documents which showed use of objectionable religious slurs against these individuals.
To believe that the key job of his senior ministers is to ensure that his image be kept intact whatever be the outcome of his policies is to expect too much even of someone as ambitious as Narendra Modi, asserts Rashme Sehgal.
Some of the policy measures announced are expected to go a long way in removing current challenges on financing faced by businesses and also increasing economic activity, especially in areas of construction and manufacturing.
'The no-rate cut policy and preference to wait for the Budget and clarity on the fiscal front demonstrate RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das is maturing in his new role,' notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Agriculture, social services, education, defence and so on will be brought into the digital fold and every gram panchayat will be connected to the internet.
The government has the upper hand in the ongoing negotiations, and it is unclear if a real debate will happen, observes Tulika Narayan.
Before the MCC came into effect, Modi was busy laying stones, cutting ribbons, and unveiling plaques across the country.
'India needs offensive and defensive security measures to protect itself.'
Neeraj Prakash, MD, Shriram General Insurance, explains how new measures proposed in the Motor Vehicles Act can smoothen the lives of the insured and insurer and how the government plans to make more vehicles owners buy insurance.
In a bid to resurrect Air India privatisation, the government is planning to give flexibility to potential investors to decide on the humongous debt with the national carrier, a top official has said. The flexibility to potential investors on the quantum of the Rs 60,074 crore debt that they want to absorb will replace the current condition of the buyer taking over more than a third of the debt and transferring the rest to a special purpose vehicle, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said.
Cyber crimes caused by the insured's employees also get covered under the policy but would exclude the actual perpetrator.
Once installed, the LAIRCAM system increases crew-warning time, decreases false alarm rates and automatically counters advanced intermediate range missile systems.
The government is believed to be working on a strategy to resolve the matter related to Wednesday's Supreme Court order asking Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee to appear within six weeks before the Ghaziabad trial court in a pending payment case.
A 15 per cent corporate tax rate for services companies in SEZs, setting up a fund for deep-tech startups and establishing clusters to demonstrate design-to-manufacturing capabilities of tech firms were some of the key demands made by the IT sector at the pre-Budget consultation on Monday. The participants shared their views and suggestions regarding Big Data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation, incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, and corporate guarantee to startups for competing with other nations.
The agreement would divert China's attention and keep them busy in the Pacific theatre, probably resulting in a reduction in threat perception in our area of interest in the Indian Ocean, notes Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Government's objective is to bring down the cost of cultivation through efficient use of fertilisers and agro chemicals, and increase in realisation. It is, thus, planning to connect 200 agricultural mandis with electronic National Agricultural Mandis this year and 225 next year, to enable farmers to sell their produce hassle-free online.
Unlike the race to buy airwaves by telecom companies, airports by infrastructure companies and city gas networks by energy companies, the race to develop super apps by consumer-facing companies in India has not brushed up against any regulatory issues. Officials at the ministry of electronics and information technology and at other regulators are happy they do not have to meddle in who among the Tata group, Reliance Industries Ltd, Flipkart or Paytm will manage to build an app that sweeps in customers. Unlike separate apps a customer uses on her mobile to order groceries, buy food or airline tickets or just make payments, a super app can perform all these functions.
Toll collection is a key instrument for the government to attract private investment.
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