A group of first time voters who run 10 km everyday to prepare for fauji recruitment rallies, tell Rediff.com's Archana Masih they need two things: quality education and jobs.
'While the poor have little say in shaping India's intellectual or public discourse, they do have a significant role in deciding political outcomes,' points out Roshan Kishore.
Opposing a dialogue with Pakistan till it stops 'exporting' terror into Jammu and Kashmir, a Bharatiya Janata Party delegation led by Jammu and Kashmir president Ravinder Raina at an all-party meet in New Delhi on Thursday said those seeking engagement with the neighbouring country should meet the victims of violence to understand their pain.
'Businessmen like Rajiv render public service when they speak truth to power,' observes Virendra Kapoor.
"Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe, in both developed and developing economies. We have to move fast, decisively, and together. The right, urgent, measures, could make the difference between survival and collapse," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said on Tuesday. Worldwide, two billion people work in the informal sector (mostly in emerging and developing economies) and are particularly at risk, the report said, adding that the COVID-19 crisis is already affecting tens of millions of informal workers. "In India, Nigeria and Brazil, the number of workers in the informal economy affected by the lockdown and other containment measures is substantial," ILO said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted that with pro-people measures and infrastructure development, Modi has not only prepared a blueprint for making a strong 'new India' but also a self-reliant one for the country's 'golden future', while party president J P Nadda declared that the period will be known for taking tough and big decisions and turning challenges into opportunities.
The Congress has never given India a PM who was a prisoner of his or her own image, said Rahul Gandhi at the party's MPs' meet.
An astrologer told Ramesh Menon that he was increasingly having worried parents asking him about the future of their children who were showing serious behavioural changes like lack of tolerance towards others, shunning social interaction, and even violent behaviour. They were worried because they had never ever seen such traits in their children before the pandemic.
Here's a glimpse of all that happened around the world last week, in 9 images.
The most experienced administrator in the country seems to have sat back and allowed bureaucrats and policemen to manage the lockdown, observes Jyoti Punwani.
As with the Spanish flu, the world must be ready for a second and third wave as this start-stop-start-stop response plays out, recommends Rahul Jacob.
An average nine unidentified bodies, largely of drug addicts and beggars, are recovered from the streets of the national capital every day.
Women and children have been given short shrift with these crucial sectors facing substantive budgetary cuts, discovers Rashme Sehgal.
The family of nine, Mukesh, his parents, wife and five children, the youngest less than a year old, set out from their 'home' under a flyover in Palam in southwest Delhi on the long walk to their village. While he pushed the cycle, the others walked alongside, some holding bags, others unwieldy bundles on their heads, some barefeet as they walked on the hot tarred road under a scorching sun and others wearing flimsy footwear.
With the first salary date after demonetisation around the corner, will India's labourers be able to take their hard-earned wages home?
May 2021 will end with double-digit unemployment rate, falling employment rate and substantial loss of employment, points out Mahesh Vyas.
A worker has died in a "work-related fatality" at the site of a 2022 World Cup stadium in Qatar, the country's World Cup organizing body said late on Saturday.
Modi said his government has taken 'historic' decisions and the nation progressed rapidly in the last one year, even as he acknowledged that there is a lot that needs to be done and many challenges and problems face the country.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.
She had faced criticism over the existence of UK Home Office deportation targets and her knowledge of them.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggesting five measures to conserve money for the fight against COVID-19, including a complete ban on media advertisements by government and PSUs for two years and suspending the Central Vista beautification project.
MGNREGA scheme: A significant Rs 17,370.58 crore has been carried forward over to the next financial year as unpaid dues as demand for work continued unabated for the scheme in rural areas.
If the precautions are not taken and guidelines are not followed properly, there can be chances of spike in cases, the government said.
The panel also stated that without the lockdown the country would have witnessed a peak of over 140 lakh cases.
India has declined assistance offered by the United Nations of its integrated supply chain for COVID19-related material, saying the country has a "robust system" to deal with the required logistics, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
'That way, it will be helpful for India because by April, temperatures will be in the late 30s and early 40s.' 'So, if we are able to sustain these 21 days, and go to that temperature zone, it will be a way of nature protecting us.'
In a nearly 25-minute televised address to the nation, Modi said implementation of the lockdown will be strictly ensured in its second phase and detailed guidelines will be brought out on Wednesday to ensure that outbreak does not spread to new areas.
'The jobs that are being created now are the delivery boy jobs which are of extremely poor quality, or contractual jobs where you hire a person on a per piece basis.'
If Team Rajini expected Kaala to carry the superstar's political message off-screen, it may have proved counter-productive. If the not-so-infrequent presence of Muslim residents of Dharavi, including that of Kaala's ex-love Zarina, in many scenes is expected to convey a political message, it is a no-brainer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
If pandemic (mis)management threatened to dominate Goa's electoral discourse, the BJP is up against a deeper structural issue in its organisation, created by the fact that a majority of the legislature party and the ministerial council is made up of Congress defectors, disparagingly referred to by the Opposition as "imports". Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
'The handling of the pandemic, under this totally constitutional and legal three-level dictatorship, has begun to show its downside,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
'Give cash assistance of Rs 75 per person per day and an android phone and you will see the economy reviving.'
'How many people have been skilled up and thus able to escape from needing to be in NREGA? The true success of NREGA would lie in its irrelevance -- that is, people no longer need it as a crutch.' 'NREGA should enable them to climb out of poverty and stand on their feet.' 'But this is expressly forbidden by NREGA rules. Skill development, which is what India needs more than anything else, appears to be outside the purview of NREGA,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
India has asked its nationals living in Saudi Arabia, who have received their Emergency Certificates, to get their final exit visa immediately from the Saudi authorities.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has started preparing the ground to rescue Indians who are expected to be deported from Saudi Arabia as it goes ahead with its new job law, Nitaqat. Sheela Bhatt reports
The new government has to make conscious efforts to rebuild social equality and bring the people together.
'Evacuation' has been key to disaster management in Odisha. The aim is to achieve zero casualty.
A total of 77 deaths were reported since Thursday evening of which 27 fatalities were reported from Maharashtra, 17 from Gujarat, 11 from West Bengal, seven each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, three from Delhi, two from Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and one from Karnataka.
'I am sceptical of the Indian economy returning to a sustained high-growth trajectory any time soon'
'You can't make the poor rich overnight.' 'Nor can you fly millions in planes.' 'But remember that word: Empathy.' 'Who in the BJP is speaking in that language to these millions?' 'Someone putting an arm of understanding, warmth, comfort around them?', asks Shekhar Gupta.
