Failure to reinstate salary even two years after the drastic cuts has landed the airline industry in a massive industrial relation crisis. While employees of Air India had organised a strike back in 2011, it is for the first time that private airlines are facing serious stress related to workers. IndiGo witnessed two of them, back to back. In the first instance, around 50 per cent of the IndiGo flights were delayed as a large number of crew members went on mass sick leave, apparently to participate in a rival airline's walk-in job interview.
Sri Lanka declared a state of emergency on Wednesday as angry protesters stormed the prime minister's office in Colombo, hours after president Gotabaya Rajapksa fled to the Maldives on a military jet, amid the country's worst economic crisis in decades.
In December 2019, the India arm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu surprised many with its ultra-competitive bid to become the transaction advisor for the country's largest strategic divestment in Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL). The multinational major quoted just Rs 1; the second-highest bidder, SBI Caps, reportedly quoted Rs 15-17 crore. For Deloitte, the motivation was to bag a prestigious deal adding a national energy company to its portfolio. No doubt, it expected BPCL to go to a marquee buyer in quick time.
India's jugalbandhi with coal and clean energy is coming unstuck, neither achieving adequate renewable generation nor ensuring sufficient coal-fired power in the quest to become a $5-trillion economy. Six months have elapsed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ambitious climate agenda for India at COP26 at Glasgow. The net zero emissions target by 2070 is a distant one, but there are nearer-term plans to meet 50 per cent of energy demand with renewables by 2030 by increasing capacity to 450 Gw. A cursory look at the balance sheet of India's climate progress since November reveals ponderous progress towards meeting the renewables target even as the country is scrambling to expand coal-fired generation in the face of a power crisis.
India's unabated tryst with Russian crude oil is slowly coming to an end. The time has come for Indian refiners to navigate, creatively, the choppy waters of the post-honeymoon period, and for Indian policymakers to take cognisance of the broader impact on India from the spillover of the Russian crisis - after Washington's warning to transgressors last week. Shipments from Russia to India have averaged over 1.8 million barrels a day since February, according to data from Paris-based market analytics firm Kpler. But much of the crude shipped to India was non-sanctioned because it traded below a price cap set by the US led G-7 nations in December.
'Recent underperformance notwithstanding, equities should constitute a major part of investors' financial portfolio.'
The President had been moved out of his residence on Friday, in anticipation of Saturday's protests.
Unveiling his infrastructure conglomerate's green vision, billionaire Gautam Adani on Tuesday said his group will invest $20 billion over the next 10 years in renewable energy generation and component manufacturing and will produce the world's cheapest green electron. The port-to-energy conglomerate plans to triple its renewable power generation capacity over the next four years, foray into green hydrogen production, power all data centres with renewable energy, turn its ports into net carbon zero by 2025, and plans to spend over 75 per cent of capital expenditure until 2025 in green technologies, he said. Speaking at JP Morgan India Investor Summit, Adani Group chairman said the USD 20 billion investment will be in renewable energy generation, component manufacturing, transmission and distribution.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday pressed for bridging the digital divide "both among nations and within nations", saying connectivity and communications have become the fundamental rights of every person. Also, there is a need to bring back the economies around the globe. Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum, he said it is difficult to imagine what India would have been without the 4G telecom network during the pandemic. "The digital divide must be bridged, both among nations and within nations.
'The question often being asked is whether the demand for petrol and diesel is price inelastic?' asks Arun Balakrishnan, former chairman and managing director, Hindustan Petroleum.
Sri Lanka's main Opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) on Tuesday handed over to the parliamentary Speaker motions of no-confidence against the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) coalition government and embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, even as the government announced the appointment of a cabinet sub-committee to look into the proposal for a new Constitution.
The anti-government protests near the presidential secretariat in Colombo resumed on Sunday after the authorities lifted the nation-wide curfew to celebrate the Vesak -- what we call Buddha Purnima in India -- festival.
'India has given assistance that we required, otherwise we would not have been able to survive this far.'
Karunaratne fell for 86 in the final session but Mendis was batting on 84 at stumps
Pakistan still has to acquire the patience you need in a democracy. The patience to accept that even if I do not like the government I have, I must wait till the next election to change it, explains Shekhar Gupta.
India is sitting on huge untapped solar photovoltaic offgrid opportunities, given its ability to provide energy to hitherto vast untapped remote rural areas, the scope of providing backup power to cell towers and its inherent potential to replace precious fossil fuels.
If the impact of the Greece crisis spreads across Europe and parts of the world which are more interconnected than ever before, India cannot hope to be insulated, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
From Jammu and Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh, consumers are facing power cuts ranging from 2 hours to 8 hours.
India has rejected as "totally false" allegations that it blockaded a key trade checkpoint on the border with Nepal amid protests over that country's new constitution even as it emphasised that it is for the Nepalese people and parties to find a mutually acceptable solution.
Sanath Jayasuriya is both 'angry' and 'sad' to witness his beloved Sri Lanka grapple with enormous financial crisis and civil unrest but the former cricketer is expecting that democracy will soon be restored in the island nation.
The 193-member general assembly voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to condemn Russia's "illegal so-called referendums in regions within the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine and the attempted illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, following the organisation of the above-mentioned referendums".
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
Declining crude price translates into lower under-recoveries for OMCs
India believes in sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayaas and walks ahead with it, Modi said.
ITC's first foreign venture in the hotel space - a premium and luxury mixed-use development - has been "adversely impacted" by Sri Lanka's economic crisis, the firm said. The $300-million project under WelcomHotels Lanka (Private) Limited (WLPL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of ITC, comprises a luxury hotel and a super-premium residential apartment complex on 5.86 acres of prime sea-facing land in Colombo. In its latest annual report for financial year 2021-22 (FY22), ITC mentioned that the project's construction was running on schedule till the third quarter (Q3) of FY19, but was adversely impacted due to disruptions in the aftermath of the terror incidents in 2019 and thereafter by recurrent waves of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Congress on Monday strongly criticised the Union budget, saying Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech was oblivious to the declining GDP and the budget was a case of "wrong diagnosis and prescription".
What can households do with the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes? How can they find Rs 100 and smaller denominations?
A party of newbies which had anger as fuel and hope in its own capability to work wonders suddenly finds itself not only in government but put on fast forward by everyone. These are heavy burdens for a fledgeling party, to perform under a microscope. Transparency is what they promised, and they are in a glass house now, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has spooked financial markets globally, will set the tone for Dalal Street this week amid concerns over energy prices and foreign fund outflows, analysts said. Participants will also track key macroeconomic signals like GDP estimates and PMI data for manufacturing and services sectors to be announced this week, they added. "With earnings season behind us and given the overall sentiments, markets are expected to move in sync with global peers in the coming week. "A close eye will be kept on the developments concerning the Russia - Ukraine crisis and considering the inflation overhang, market participants will also observe movements in energy prices," said Shrikant Chouhan, Head of Equity Research (Retail), Kotak Securities Ltd.
'We actually have a problem because there may be too much activity in India.' 'Markets don't like too much concentration. But we are very happy with our collaborations in India.'
As power generation across northern and western India bore the brunt of the coal scarcity, spot prices at IEX rose to Rs 10.8 a unit during August 25-27, compared with Rs 8.7 a unit on August 22.
On Tuesday, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met Russian oil giant Rosneft's chief executive officer Igor Sechin and discussed raising crude imports from that country, in addition to talks about going for more acquisitions.
Sri Lanka on Thursday signed an agreement with India to jointly redevelop the strategic World War II-era oil tank farm in the island nation's eastern port district of Trincomalee, in a new milestone in bilateral economic and energy partnership.
The civil aviation ministry appears supportive of SpiceJet because it does not want another airline to fail. The real test now will be the capacity of the airline's chairman, Kalanithi Maran, to raise funds. And he needs to do this quickly.
Appearing on national television to mark the silver jubilee of the party he founded in 1997 after breaking away from the Janata Dal, Prasad, who is suffering from many ailments and convalescing at his MP daughter Misa Bharti's residence in New Delhi, recalled his struggles for OBC quota and the fight for the rights of the weaker sections.
India has so many relationships, such an ability to communicate and find touch points with different countries and regions.
Amid surging coronavirus cases in India, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday made it clear that the government would not go for lockdowns in a big way and only resort to local containment. In a virtual meeting with World Bank Group president David Malpass, Sitharaman appreciated the initiatives of the World Bank to increase the lending space for India to enhance availability of finance for development.
There are multiple near-term worries for the stock of India's largest listed consumer company, Hindustan Unilever (HUL). While inflationary pressures will weigh on its profitability, demand pressures - especially in the rural market - are expected to hit the firm's revenues. This is why brokerages have cut the earnings estimates for financial year 2022-23 (FY23) by 7-10 per cent.
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The IMF and World Bank have stopped loans, and the FATF warned its 39 member nations to block Taliban assets.
