'We are rushing to 'develop' without carefully valuing natural areas.' 'With careful land use planning and scientific zonation at least 5 to 10 per cent of the country's land can be secured for tigers and other such species, and another 5 to 15 per cent kept under low-impact uses to support biodiversity that can coexist with human uses.'
Reforms do happen and one example is Odisha which has taken steps to create a dedicated municipal cadre.
As many as 82 per cent of child workers in the national capital said that given an opportunity, they would not like to attend school
From coming up with the correct list of beneficiaries to finding enough people to work as Ayushman Mitras to generating awareness about the scheme - many things need to fall in place before it can be successfully launched in a few days.
The BJP knows the CAA, combined with a fresh nationwide NRC process, is an idea that's dead on arrival. Where it lives on is as a divisive, polarising instrument as its rivals have to take a position against it and thereby be exposed to the charge of 'Muslim appeasement' again, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
Lack of literacy is compromising the ability of farmers in India and China, two of the world's most populous countries with the smallest farm size, to raise productivity without losing soil fertility, says Kunal Bose.
With Narendra Modi about to make his first Independence Day speech, there is a buzz in Delhi that Modi will make some big announcements to signal major reforms and directional shifts. But we have to wait and see if it happens, says Mohan Guruswamy.
India's beloved President -- there has been no other who has influenced the nation as much -- never stepped back from inspiring people to be the very best that they could be.
Have India's tigers increased by 30 per cent in the last four years?
States are now gearing up to implement the scheme, integrating it with their own public health insurance plans and tying up the loose ends.
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In 2008-09, the economy grew at 6.7 per cent despite poor farm sector growth of 0.4 per cent.
In Indian elections today, India's Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath says, "Muscle Power has been replaced by 'Money Power,'" adding that the Election Commission's greatest dilemma is worrying about how the media can be prevented from influencing the outcome in the coming general election.
Life expectancy at birth improved from 59.7 years in 1990 to 70.3 years in 2016 for women.
A large number of rich farmers, who earn more than salaried employees in the cities, get away with paying no tax at all in view of the government's lack of will to consider an agricultural income tax
Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in mankind's history has such an idea taken the concrete shape in form of a law. The National Food Security Bill, which will come via ordinance and not after the debate in Parliament, is an incredible economic tool to tackle the hunger of poor Indians. Also, it has already been condemned widely as a political gimmick.
Pricing isn't at the heart of Ikea's strategy. It is understanding how Indians live.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ayushman Bharat health care scheme is just a slogan for the moment, it is the state's Mukhyamantri Amrutum health assurance scheme which is a comforting reality for many.
'It was the Supreme Court's order (recommending changes in the SC/ST Act).' 'Isn't it wrong not to accept even the court's order?' 'Are you bigger than every institution?'
It also provides that no preliminary enquiry will be required for registering a criminal case and an arrest under this law would not be subject to any approval.
In the 66th year of the Indian Republic, eight people died of cold every night in the nation's capital.
'Open defecation kills more Indians than any terrorist organisation could, but turning that around will take communicating that all Indians are created equal and that continuing this practice is anti-national,' points out Rahul Jacob.
As the Uttar Pradesh assembly election battle hits new lows, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani walks you through all you need to know about the fifth phase of polling on February 27.
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
Some Lok Sabha candidates in Haryana, which has the country's lowest sex ratio, are facing a strange demand from bachelor voters -- "get us brides in return for our votes".
'Don't forget the BJP in the last election almost doubled its vote.' 'Even if they were not traditional BJP supporters, they were convinced about Mr Modi.' 'If the voter perceives that Mr Modi has performed well and he reinforces it, they will vote for him.' 'Otherwise, they won't.'
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
That's what teachers are telling students in many Indian schools.
The Opposition on Monday charged the government with trying to promote crony capitalism, creating fear by giving "unbridled power" to taxmen, trying to snoop into people's lives through increased use of Aadhaar through the provisions of the Finance Bill.
Sanitation is always clubbed with other departments, which lead to its neglect, says Devanik Saha.
On the first anniversary of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, Sangh Parivar affiliates say they are annoyed with the ruling dispensation but can't live without it either
More people will be literate, on the Internet, linked to the national identification scheme and likely to receive electricity, especially from alternative-energy sources.
Union Minister of Environment and Forest Prakash Javadekar on Friday expressed anguish over the unabated poaching of the rare one-horned rhinoceros in Assam's Kaziranga National Park and the rapid shrinking of forest cover in the northeast region.
'If anyone is able to understand the importance of Modi's endeavours to revive the economy -- even against opposition from sections of his own saffron brotherhood -- it is the former prime minister,' says Amulya Ganguli.
As many as 75 million households that do not have access to banking services will be covered and at least one bank account opened for each household, against the earlier proposal of two.
Akbar is rumoured to have once asked the navratnas of his court what the greatest pleasure in the world was. The stock answers came back: wealth, power, women, food, wine and so on, with the emperor's own contribution being hunting. Birbal was the outlier; he asserted that the greatest pleasure in the world was surely a good bowel movement.
India's rising GDP may have propelled the middle class to become richer, buy new cars, travel around the world and build assets, but it further pushed the economically disadvantaged and poor into poverty and drudgery, says Devanik Saha.
Less than half of rural households are engaged in agriculture.
Only the Indian elite would rather not breathe than be ordinary.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first trip to New York as leader of the world's most populous democracy, will draw perhaps the largest crowd ever by a foreign leader on US soil when he takes the stage on Sunday in Madison Square Garden before a crowd forecast to total more than 18,000 people.
