Life expectancy at birth improved from 59.7 years in 1990 to 70.3 years in 2016 for women.
The prospective owners of Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet Ltd plan to cut the airline's fleet, shrink its network and return to a "plain vanilla" business model to achieve profitability, two people close to the investors said.
20 years ago this week, India and Australia played one of the greatest Test matches in cricket history. Sreehari Nair relives the sound and the fury of that unforgettable game at the Eden Gardens.
Long queues outside grocery stores, inflated prices, difficulty in getting important items -- these were some of the problems encountered by people in the National Capital Region (NCR).
How to deal with a country that has made export of terror a reason to make the world notice and fund it? Rediff.com contributor Sanjeev Nayyar offers a few suggestions
'Our children score very high marks, but do not get admission in good colleges. They get top rank, but they do not get jobs because they belong to the so-called forward caste.' 'What can we do when a boy or girl from the community with first rank is considered only at the 6th or 7th position for a government job just because those with reservation get precedence over us?'
The flawed response to the crisis has fed a us-vs-them mentality in which the banker, the expert, the coastal entrepreneur, the immigrant, the foreigner are all villains. The crisis was not that much of a problem; the response -- the over-reaction, the sovereign debt build-up and the lasting anger -- is the problem, says Mihir S Sharma.
Muslims need to get out of their Isolation Syndrome, argues Mohammad Sajjad.
'We are in touch independently with leading players, and they are denying it as well.' 'The Indian digital footprint is rising, creating new opportunities.'
He assured the startups that both the banking system and the government will make the resources available to them
Weather forecasts have notoriously large error margins.
Nitish Kumar and his officials maintain that Bihar has one of the lowest crime rates in India. Bihar police crime data indicates otherwise.
'It is important to destroy, to undermine, to debunk the narrative of ISIS,' Olivier Roy -- one of the world's leading experts on radical Islam -- tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in an exclusive interview.
The overall message to the middle class is: the days of freebies are over.
'Our experience in Nagaland and Kashmir for the last 60 years has shown our insanity, defined by Albert Einstein as doing the same thing again and again and yet expecting different results,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Indian bond yields may not spike if the government opts to increase spending when it unveils its annual budget in late February.
'In the three years since 2014 social tyranny has become a very real problem.' 'The government has denounced this tyranny -- once in a while.'
'But its supporters in North India bash on regardless,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'If the money we spend on importing pulses reach our farmers, there won't be any suicides'
French journalist Nicolas Henin was captured by the terrorist organisation, the Islamic State, and spent 10 months in captivity explains how the growth of the Islamic State is result of the West's limitation in seeing the IS merely as a terrorist organisation while ignoring its political message and goals.
'The army has been open about its determination to keep the PML-Nawaz out of power at all costs.' 'Both the military and the higher judiciary have indicated a preference for Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik e Insaaf,' says Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan Desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
The Indian economy was on an impressive growth path through the first decade of this century till it was brought to an abrupt halt by the policy inertia during UPA2 and the Modi government's inability to restore economic and financial momentum. Fascinating glimpses of what went wrong from Puja Mehra's must-read book The Lost Decade: How India's Growth Story Devolved Into Growth Without A Story.
Every time a filmmaker wishes to explore history or religion on his or her terms, self-appointed experts and limelight-seeking zealots swoop in to protest, says Sukanya Verma.
A Delhi Police head constable, Ratan Lal, was among the nine killed in the violence that erupted on Monday over the amended citizenship law.
India's top metro cities need to improve their infrastructure and other civic amenities too.
'The verdict must be seen as something more; as a historical balm, a moral restitution and the deliverance of justice to a people wronged,' argues Vivek Gumaste.
Perhaps India needs to implement these for Achhe Din to happen.
'There is no difference between the earlier government and the present government.' 'They are all following the economic policy based on the Chicago School of thought.' 'This school of thought says the government should have very little role in governing the country and the majority of the work should be handed over to the private sector.' 'This has not succeeded in the US.' 'Yet, it is being tried here by people like Arvind Subramaniam, Arvind Panagariya, Urjit Patel and Raghuram Rajan.'
'Tying somebody to the jeep is not the military way, but the officer was able to come out of the situation without any bloodshed.' 'I am not supporting him, but I am also not criticising him.' 'He had to use some mechanism to save the uniformed personnel, many of whom were Kashmiri boys of the J&K police,' points out Lieutenant General D B Shekatkar (retd), who was instrumental in the surrender of a record 1,267 terrorists in Kashmir.
In a message to separatists, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday asserted that nothing would be achieved by terrorism and that the "great" Indian democracy provides freedom to make choices unlike countries where democracy ceased to exist.
Colonel Anil Athale (retd) recalls how the Battle of Panipat, 258 years ago, changed the history of India for the next century and half.
'Balakot and Pulwama will definitely help the BJP, but it will still not help them to create a 2014 like situation or go beyond that.'
'Nehru's hegemonic politics has been responsible for many ills, which undoubtedly includes Kashmir'
There are some 20-odd schemes with this default provision, or something close to it.
Mandatory prescription of generic names is not a complete solution. Rather, in the absence of a range of approaches, it could mean passing the choice of selecting a drug from a doctor to a pharmacist, says Chandrakant Lahariya.
Kashmir was indeed in need of a messiah that summer; 70 per cent of its population aged below 31 were up in arms against the Indian State. Every nook and corner of the land brought forth stories of youngsters with crushed bodies and an unfaltering spirit.
'What lies at the core of Abe's stance is Japan's crisis management ability amid the increasingly tense North Korean situation,' says Rajaram Panda.
Tripura's popular chief minister shows up the failures of the elitist central leadership of India's Left, says Devesh Kapur
The Supreme Court-appointed SIT on Friday called for effective norms to curb betting in cricket and a stronger set of norms for P-Notes, while also making a case for bringing donations to educational and religious bodies under tax net.
If India is to follow a smart cultural diplomacy, it has unmatched advantages over both China and Pakistan, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
