This finance minister has come of age. That's not condescension. It is a praise, says Omkar Goswami.
It is urgent that we break the silence around the 'M' word, one ward and gram panchayat at a time, so that women and girls -- irrespective of their financial capacity -- can demand the information and materials they need, says Archana Patkar.
'Tinkering will not do. Merely staggering spectrum dues comes nowhere near solving the problem,' cautions Rahul Khullar.
Two Indian associates of alleged middleman Christian Michel James were on Saturday granted bail by a special court in a money laundering case relating to the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP chopper deal.
Two people, one legally assisting the affected people because of their exclusion from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and another whose relative has been declared a 'foreigner' by the quasi-judicial Foreigners' Tribunal (FT), talk to Rediff.com about the issues on the ground that people excluded from the NRC are facing and how it can turn into a long-drawn legal process.
Over a five-year period, the benefit of a sharp drop in interest rates would mean saving Rs 76,880 -- a significant number. But if the rate cuts are slimmer, say 25 bps or the number of years left is barely one or two years, shifting may not make too much sense.
Kejriwal believes in good governance and takes pride in his Hindu identity, points out Sudhir Bisht.
Official figures say 1.8 lakh workers have returned home to Bihar. Unofficially, however, that figure is said to have crossed 3 lakhs. Can Bihar cope?
Congress received donations worth over Rs 66 crore and NCP garnered about Rs 14 crore from individuals and business entities in fund contributions of over Rs 20,000 in the last financial year while BJP was among the parties which did not disclose such details to the Election Commission till the November 30 deadline.
The top court had granted bail to Chidambaram in the case lodged by the CBI saying he is neither a 'flight risk' nor is there a possibility of 'his abscondence from the trial'.
The two districts which are the part of Nepal's Bagmati Zone have suffered extensively in the April 25 earthquake which left a trail of death and destruction.
'It can't be a coincidence that he and his family, uncles and all, vanished from India only days before the scam was discovered.'
And no, the commercial sporting leagues didn't cause the drought, says Shekhar Gupta.
The PNB fiasco falls into a family line that involves non-fund limits - read contingent liabilities which are off-books. Harshad Mehta did it with bankers' receipts in 1992. Ketan Parekh exploited the ignorance of bankers who did not know the difference between a cheque and a pay-order. And the RBI blinked when it failed to insist the SWIFT platform be linked to the core banking solution. Raghu Mohan & Abhijit Lele trace the banking mess that was just waiting to happen.
Over 540 people have been killed and 1,700 injured in the fierce fighting in Yemen in the past few weeks with relief agencies on Tuesday warning of a dire situation.
Poor land-use planning, indiscriminate approvals of building plans and the absence of disaster-risk assessment in urban design have resulted in what experts term concentrated concretization, predisposing cities to disaster risks
Bangalore-based couple Sneha Sundaram and Bharath Bevinahally tell us how Kutuki, an early learning app, will change the way 200 mn kids in Indian will access education.
Ten-time Everest summiteer Tendi Sherpa tells Rediff.com contributor Anusha Subramanian why he cancelled his international climbing assignments to be with his community in the worst affected districts of earthquake hit Nepal.
Unless companies press the pedal on implementation, further stock price gains might be limited, says Hamsini Karthik.
Rains will continue to batter Tamil Nadu for the next seven days and the next 48 hours are "very crucial", the IMD has said.
Questioning the timing of bringing the Communal Violence Bill, Narendra Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, describing the proposed legislation as "ill-conceived, poorly drafted and a recipe for disaster".
The 7.9 Richter Scale temblor that struck Nepal on Saturday also affected parts of Tibet. The two border ports to Nepal were seriously affected.
'The humanity displayed by ordinary, lower middle class residents of north east Delhi -- Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs -- will be remembered perhaps even more than the evil wrought in the riots,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
Mandakini pounces on Agastyamuni but pile-up created by cement mixer forces river to change course, leaving town mostly unharmed, says N Sundaresha Subramanian
For the first time in the history of Budget-making in India, a single Budget will touch 65 crore Indians, says Shailesh Haribhakti.
Two days later, Afghanistan and Pakistan are still trying to dig out people from the rubble, even as panic spreads across the region.
Education remains one of the key focuses of the new government.
It discharged three accused -- Shyam Sahu, Shivnarayan Kalsangra and Praveen Takalki -- from the case.
The infighting in the AIADMK has made it weak on par with the DMK and other parties, says R Rajagopalan.
Road developers hoping for early relief from the government will have to wait longer.
The Budget may see new rural schemes and stepping up of funding towards existing programmes like MNREGA, rural housing, irrigation projects and crop insurance.
All credit to the finance minister for walking the fiscal and expectation tightrope extremely well in his budget speech, says Ganesh Natarajan.
It appears that the BJP government has succeeded in managing the communication of the PNB scam in a manner that its adverse impact on its electoral fortunes is largely contained
Meanwhile, the administration claimed it was fully prepared to deal with fresh fires in case they break out anywhere in the state due to a change in the weather.
The court has now posted the matter for further hearing on May 15.
'LIC's proposed investment will come out of what is technically called the 'policyholders funds'.' 'As the name implies, these monies belong to policyholders; that is, you, me and 25 crore others who have taken a total of 30 crore policies from LIC.' 'It is not the government's or LIC's money to play poker with,' says S Muralidharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas.
A day after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar demanded central assistance of Rs 12,000 crore to tide over the drought in 33 of the 38 districts in the state, opposition leaders appeared keener to politicise the issue by portaying themselves as champions of millions of drought-hit farmers.
Without some firmer pledge of debt relief, neither Greece nor the IMF is likely to accept a deal
The government's Swachh Bharat programme presents entrepreneurs with a chance to curb open defecation and make money in the process.
Let it gradually pull itself out of international routes and focus on linking remote towns and cities.
