What some of our leaders were up to on Wednesday, October 19.
Rediff.com's Satish Bodas takes us on a trip to Kerala with these stunning pictures.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
'Except that the population was much less.' 'I remember my uncle and family moving away from the base of a hill whenever it rained for more than a couple of days without a dry day in between.' 'Perhaps the older generations knew if it rained for more than a certain time, they must pack up to a camp or to a relative.' 'As some of the interviews of the survivors on the Malayalam television channels show, the elderly people had a premonition a tragedy would happen, and those who acted on those premonitions survived.'
It is in circumstances like this that the Constitution becomes extremely important. It reminds us that we have a commitment towards higher human values to fulfil, a path to get back to, suggests Shyam G Menon.Else, we risk being rudderless in an ocean of money and majoritarianism, suggests Shyam G Menon.
Could the MPCE survey results be used as a basis of reconstructing the Consumer Price Index with new weights, asks Madan Sabnavis.
The Met office has issued a "red" warning for Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and west Rajasthan, stressing the need for "extreme care for vulnerable people".
Temperatures in 17 locations breached 48 degrees Celsius on Monday, with the relentless heat affecting health and livelihoods across large parts of northwestern and central India.
'The PM who is first among equals, who has to listen to others, take their point of view into account and who would have to be a good manager'
After the Kerala government declared the coronavirus outbreak as a 'state calamity', as the three positive cases were detected from Thrissur, Alapuzha and Kasaragod, tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran admitted that the sector had suffered a hit. The sector had aggressively launched promotional advertisements in the domestic and international markets after the floods to revive the sector. However, all the efforts took a beating, with mass cancellations of hotel bookings after the outbreak of the infection in the state was reported.
'We have integrated start-up space created in almost all the 14 district headquarters of the state.'
'They have incubation facilities providing entrepreneurs common facilities like shared software, legal support, fab labs, hardware, manufacturing facilities and services like chartered accounting facilities, etc, enabling the start-ups to concentrate on technology R&D and product development.'
Will people buy as many cars as before if more office-goers are working from home? How much existing office space in commercial buildings will become surplus, and what will that mean for the construction industry, asks T N Ninan.
'One is happy. The moment one starts criticising the BJP, ED, IT and CBI comes to one's house.'
According to the IMD forecast, monsoon is likely to be normal this year.
Ramaswamy was a distant fourth with 7.7 per cent of the votes polled in the Iowa Caucus
In nearly 100 seats, the BJP stands almost no chance of winning. In 200 seats, it is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress where the BJP has an upper hand. In 243 seats, the BJP is pitted against regional parties and it is not going to be easy. That is why 400 seats may end up as a pipe dream, states Ramesh Menon, author of Modi Demystified: The Making of a Prime Minister.
'He has emerged as a formidable leader who cannot be ignored anymore, who cannot be mocked.'
'It will be important strategically and geographically because there is no port in India which is as close to the international shipping route as Vizhinjam.'
'The 2024 election results will lead to much intense targeting of Modi, more intense debates, many more breakdowns in Parliament and many more movements on the streets.' 'The results have hit Modi's standing, and the politics of the Opposition parties will be sharply focused to ensure that Modi doesn't get back his charisma of being 'invincible' with help of State power.' Sheela Bhatt looks at the political situation through the prism of 2024 Lok Sabha election results.
The country's per capita income is likely to grow by close to 70 per cent to $4,000 by fiscal 2030 from $2,450 in fiscal 2023, helping it become a middle-income economy with $6-trillion GDP, more than half of which will be coming in from household consumption, says a research report. Per capita income/GDP has risen from $460 in fiscal 2001 to $1,413 in fiscal 2011 and further to $2,150 in fiscal 2021. The biggest growth driver will be external trade which may nearly double to $2.1 trillion by 2030 from $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2023 when the GDP printed in at $3.5 trillion, Standard Chartered Bank said in a weekend report which assumes a 10 per cent nominal GDP growth annually from now on.
The 'black paper', titled '10 saal anyay kaal' also alleged that issues such as rising prices, unemployment, subversion of institutions and farmers' 'distress' had plagued the country.
'What The Kerala Story is trying to do is take the fake hate propaganda which we saw earlier only on WhatsApp to the big screen now.'
'Continuity in a common agenda is essential, not to disrupt the progress achieved so far,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The south-west monsoon, crucial for the country's agriculture-based economy, is likely to hit the Kerala coast by June 2, the Indian Meteorological Department said on Thursday.
The news will augur well for the country as large parts have been witnessing agriculture distress and water levels in reservoirs in west and south India have dipped to low levels.
The four astronauts are -- Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla -- Modi said at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thumba near the Kerala state capital.
Southwest monsoon, the key to the agriculture driven trillion-dollar Indian economy, on Tuesday brought showers to Kerala bringing much-needed relief to farmers.
The gold, weighing over 30 kg, was seized from the "diplomatic baggage" that had landed by air cargo at the Thiruvananthapuram international airport recently from the Gulf.
Thomas Isaac has been in and out of the national news in his role as Kerala's finance minister since 2018 for various path-breaking tax initiatives. But it is 2020 that he has become more prominent, principally in the GST council.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The country has seen that "people are God" in elections, the PM said.
In fact, bullock carts have vanished not just from towns but even in Kerala villages they are increasingly become curious objects from a distant past. Proliferation of all kinds of motorised goods vehicles from trucks to three-wheelers, and development of road network linking every nook and cranny of the state have made the oxen carts to recede into history in Kerala.
While a normal rainfall signals growth and prosperity, a below normal rainfall could spell disaster making food more expensive, aggravating the power, water shortage, hitting industrial production which in turn will put more pressure on the government's kitty.
In Kerala, the use of black ranges from such convenience to strictures by community and religion to fashion and personal choice. One would have to be really insecure or too fond of the well settled life to see black solely as a badge of protest, points out Shyam G Menon.
Mammootty is towering as the unflinching enigma that prevents Bramayugam from being a middling genre exercise, observes Arjun Menon.
The quality of employment has deteriorated in 12 of the 21 major states and Union Territories, as the proportion of workers in regular or salaried jobs declined between July 2022 and June 2023 compared to the previous year, according to a Business Standard analysis of the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by the National Statistical Office. Assam experienced the most significant decline in the share of workers in salaried work, dropping by 8.7 percentage points to 10.8 per cent in the July 2002-June 2023 period from 19.5 per cent in the July 2021-June 2022 period. This was followed by Delhi (6.2 percentage points), Uttarakhand (5.2 percentage points), and Chhattisgarh (1.6 percentage points).
Monsoon will hit the Kerala coast on June 1, setting the stage for the four-month annual rainfall season crucial for India's agriculture-based economy. "The date of onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala is likely to be on June 1 with a model error of four days," the India Meteorological Department announced on Tuesday.
'The moment a new election comes, new guarantees are announced.' 'The BJP is adept at diverting people's attention.'
Kerala is becoming a breeding centre for terrorists, particularly Inter Services Intelligence activists, Bharatiya Janata Party national secretary Indra Sena Reddy said on Monday.
Indicating a faster-than-expected recovery, remittances from migrant labourers and the number of first-time EPFO registrations have crossed the pre-lockdown levels in September, according to a report. Another silver lining is the massive 60 per cent increase in the number of Jan Dhan accounts to over 41 crore and the balances in them, which also indicate the fall in crimes during the lockdown months, SBI Research said in a report on Tuesday. After a significant reduction in remittances due to the lockdown in April, it improved in June and July, and the numbers in September have crossed the pre-pandemic level in February.
