With this allocation of portfolios, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP has got most of the 'plum' ministries.
A series of bypoll losses has pushed the Modi government into panic mode. Uncharacteristically, it's letting events dictate its actions, says Shekhar Gupta.
A newspaper vendor from Neknoor in Maharashtra tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
India's wholesale price-based inflation is at a 30-year high, leading to a "very alarming" situation for the country, former World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu said on Thursday. He, however, doesn't see any risk of hyperinflation, but cautioned that if retail inflation follows wholesale prices, it might lead to "inflationary crisis". Participating in a virtual event organised by the Asia Society, India, Basu said the inflationary situation in India is at a "very risky bend".
Crops including fruit, vegetables account for 60% of GDP in agriculture, forestry, fishing sector.
The irony of this scheme to benefit farmers is that it could add to the problems for the government because the mechanism to procure and store crops like pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds barely exists.
The prime minister also asked senior ministers to hand-hold the new incumbents, sources said after the meeting.
That would result in the military under-spending about Rs 80,000 crore over the financial year.
The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has granted seven authorisations to companies for selling automobile (auto) fuels in the country. These new approvals are under the relaxed guidelines for authorisation to market transportation fuels that were revised in 2019. This is expected to make the competition more intense in India's petroleum retail business. According to a top oil ministry official, a fresh marketing authorisation has been granted to Reliance Industries (RIL) under these norms. This is being done since RIL's existing retail marketing authorisation has been transferred to its subsidiary Reliance BP Mobility
The finance ministry is working on a second relief package for the Indian economy hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak and the 21-day nationwide lockdown imposed to curb the contagion, sources said. Last month, the government announced a Rs 1.70 lakh crore relief package in the form of foodgrains and cash transfers for the poor and vulnerable section of the society to help them deal with the hardships caused by the lockdown. Now, the government is working on a stimulus to be given to hard-hit sectors of the economy after the lockdown is lifted, sources said, adding that an announcement is expected in the next few days depending on the severity of the pandemic.
Most farmers depend on rainwater for farming.
Cereals like millets can help alleviate malnutrition and improve public health, reports Surinder Sud.
The Indian economy appears to have slowed down in 2018-19 due to lower private consumption, tepid growth in fixed investment and muted exports, a finance ministry report has said.
"We now realise that the so-called farmer agitation hardly remains a farmers' agitation. It has almost got infiltrated by Leftist and Maoist elements, a flavour of which we saw over the last two days when there were extraneous demands to release people who have been put behind bars for anti-national (and) who have been put behind bars for illegal activities," Goyal, the Minister for Railways, Commerce and Industry and Food and Consumers Affairs, said at FICCI's annual meeting.
Developers grappling with labour shortage and getting construction material to sites could be among a list of problems.
While rising food inflation is a matter of grave concern for a significant chunk of the population and for policy makers as well, it marks a turnaround in the fortunes of the farmer, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
The number of terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir has shown significant decline since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, the Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
Thousands of farmers are protesting on various borders of Delhi since November 26, seeking repeal of three farm laws enacted in September.
The chief minister, who had on Wednesday expanded his new cabinet by inducting 29 ministers, had played it safe by and large retaining old faces, as 23 of them were Ministers in the previous Yediyurappa cabinet, while six were new.
Foodgrains production in 2020-21 is projected to be a record 144.52 million tonnes, which is 0.80 per cent more than the production in 2019-20.
The Finance Ministry expects the economic growth in the current fiscal to improve to 5.5 per cent from 5 per cent last year on back of likely pick up in agricultural output on account of good monsoon rains.
India's fuel demand in May slumped to its lowest in nine months as restrictions to curb the second wave of COVID infections stalled mobility and muted economic activity. Fuel demand fell 1.5 per cent to 15.1 million tonnes despite the low base of May 2020 and was down 11.3 per cent when compared to the previous month, according to data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry. India was under one of the world's strictest lockdowns in May last year, which brought all mobility and economic activity to a grinding halt.
Non-performers were not punished, performers were not rewarded, points out Utkarsh Mishra.
The manpower requirement will be met with the officers from FMC (both cadre and deputation) and by new hiring.
The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to release funds for MNREGA and to pay compensation to farmers in drought-affected areas.
Rajiv Kumar will continue as vice-chairman of the body, along with other full-time members V K Saraswat, Ramesh Chand and V K Paul.
Prices have continued to move up in Delhi's markets, wholesale and retail, on supply worries and spoilage due to record cold weather.
There's a need to train 40,000 pilots over the next year-and-a-half.
Following several instances of poor drafting of Cabinet notes and bills in the recent past, on September 11, the Cabinet Secretariat wrote to all ministries and departments to read up paragraph 55 of the 'Handbook of Writing Cabinet Notes'. Archis Mohan reports.
Faulting previous governments for not taking adequate measures to economically empower women in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said his government was constantly creating an environment in which women self-help groups can connect villages with prosperity as he released Rs 1,625 crore as capitalisation support fund to over four lakh such groups. In a virtual interaction with the women self-help groups (SHGs) under the "Aatmanirbhar Narishakti se Samvad" (dialogue with self-reliant women) initiative, Modi said in a changing India, opportunities are increasing for women to move forward. The movement of woman SHGs has intensified in the last 6-7 years with over 70 lakh of them working across the country, a figure over three times more than earlier, he said, adding over eight crore women are connected with these groups.
'Why has this turned out to be one of the greatest humanitarian crisis that has caught the Centre and the states in a bind with no answers to this unexpected tsunami?' asks Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
This was the one Budget that required radical departures on all these fronts, when it had none, asserts, Shreekant Sambrani.
While consumers feel that petrol pinches directly, diesel hurts indirectly, as it is an input in almost all the goods and services we use.
The MHA on Friday, while extending the lockdown for two more weeks till May 17, lifted many restrictions in green and orange zones. There are no restrictions on sale of non-essential items by e-commerce platforms in green and orange zones, a home ministry spokesperson said, adding barber shops and salons are also allowed to open in these areas.
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
Agri experts are meeting FinMin ministry officials on Monday to give their inputs on the Budget.
Now, the chief minister is under pressure to make good his promise after the December 4 incident in Nagaland's Mon, where 14 people were killedAFSPA has eclipsed all other achievements of the Biren Singh government.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
A day after his ministry rebuked Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down inflammatory content, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said social media platforms cannot give differential treatment while handling problems on Capitol Hill and the Red Fort.
Nangiohbok Rymbai, a graduate in economics who works as a daily wage labourer in Shillong, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
