After decades of decline, the global prevalence of undernourishment is increasing.
The forthcoming budget needs to delay fiscal consolidation, instead should focus more on supporting the pandemic battered-economy and boost consumption demand by offering income tax soaps and cutting fuel taxes, says a report. In a pre-budget report, India Ratings said it expects the new budget to consolidate and strengthen the plan set out in the last budget, rather than trying out new things by continue with the revenue and capital expenditure pattern of FY'22 to provide stability and consolidation to the past/ongoing efforts, and to focus on boosting demand by generating employment opportunities in areas/sectors that have been impacted more by the pandemic. The report therefore expects the finance minister to delay fiscal consolidation and make it to be a gradual and calibrated process, thus ensuring the necessary fiscal support that the economy needs is available till the recovery acquires its own momentum.
As India builds its data centre capabilities, it is imperative that it is supported by green energy. This is because data centres are guzzlers of energy.
The assurance comes as India's Covid graph dips -- on Friday 1,109 new coronavirus infections were reported -- and also one case of a new Covid strain in Mumbai.
India's electric mobility goal, which has so far been riding on two wheels, is all set to graduate to four wheels. At least, the journey has begun. Hyundai Motor India said it would invest Rs 4,000 crore till 2028 to launch half-a-dozen electric vehicles (EVs) in India. It would eventually straddle premium and mass segments. The first of these - the electrified version of an internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered model - will go on sale as early as next year.
Housing sales across top eight cities rose 51 per cent last year, even as the office market continued to slump due to the Covid pandemic with gross leasing witnessing a 3 per cent fall, according to Knight Frank India. Housing sales increased to 232,903 units during last year, from 154,534 units in 2020, but demand was down 5 per cent from the 2019 pre-pandemic levels and 37 per cent lower than the 2011 peak numbers. In the office segment, the gross leasing of office space fell to 38.1 million square feet in 2021, from 39.4 million square feet in the previous year, due to the adverse impact of the second wave of the Covid pandemic.
'Rain-fed farms in the drier parts of the country are feeling the pinch of lack of water, and this pinch is only going to increase. Some of the biggest companies have shut down because of non-availability of water.'
Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog's first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report. As per the index, 51.91 per cent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot. Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent), Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
The Netherlands won their fourth Olympics women's hockey title, beating Argentina 3-1 in the final at the Tokyo Games on Friday.
Ahead of the fifth and final Test against England, India's junior physio Yogesh Parmar tested positive for COVID-19 in Manchester, leading to the cancellation of the team's training session on Thursday.
The government is pushing the public sector behemoth ONGC to involve private sector companies and service providers wherever possible to help raise oil and gas production, Petroleum Secretary Tarun Kapoor said Thursday. Kapoor's comments came days after the second-highest ranked official in his ministry asked Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to give away a 60 per cent stake plus operating control in India's largest oil and gas producing fields of Mumbai High and Bassein to foreign companies. "ONGC has to explore more so that it can discover more oil and gas reserves and bring them quickly to production to raise domestic output. The government is very clear that ONGC has to do more," he told reporters.
India is the most polluted country in the world, with more than 480 million people or about 40 per cent of its population living in the Indo-Gangetic plains in the north where pollution levels regularly exceed those found anywhere else in the world by an order of magnitude, stated the University of Chicago's Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report.
Why does the world's fastest-growing major consumer of energy fail to attract investments in oil and gas? This is a question worth pondering after private sector conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) failed to close a $15-billion downstream asset deal with Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco. It's understandable if multi-billion dollar investments in oil and gas projects or deals involving state companies that need to traverse a complex bureaucracy at state and federal levels and the corridors of ministries unravel. However, Mukesh Ambani-run RIL, India's most successful energy company, is not typically known to fumble on closing deals (Ambani closed deals worth around Rs 2 trillion early last year in telecom and retail with blue chip investors).
Reacting sharply to the Global Hunger Report 2021, the Women and Child Development Ministry said it is 'shocking' to find that it has lowered the rank of India on the basis of FAO estimate on proportion of undernourished population which is found to be 'devoid of ground reality and facts, and suffers from serious methodological issues'.
After long discussions, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and England and Wales Cricket Board had said more test results will be taken into consideration before taking a call on the match getting underway.
The move could affect thousands of people, including Australian cricketers currently playing in the Indian Premier League in India
"China's position on the Zangnan region (South Tibet) is consistent and clear. We never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing while responding to a question.
India's cricketers and staff have been cleared of COVID-19
Debt funds typically held 0-5 per cent of their portfolio in cash and cash equivalents before this Sebi diktat.
More people seemed to be returning to their workplaces towards the end of the year, even as railway and electricity numbers disappointed. Most other indicators held on to their gains.
India's dependence on imported crude oil to meet domestic demand has been a matter of concern for years. Delivering the inaugural address at the global energy summit - Urja Sangam - in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for enhancing domestic oil and gas production to cut the import burden. He aimed at lowering it by at least 10 per cent by 2022 - to coincide with the platinum jubilee of India's independence. But this target is far from being achieved and the country's import reliance has only risen.
A report by the Azim Premji University showed that during the pandemic 270 million Indians were pushed into poverty. Meaning that they were not poor according to the government poverty line before, but have become now. Aakar Patel mulls on the state of the nation as the Modi government enters its eighth year.
CPI-M veteran Pinarayi Vijayan was elected its Parliamentary party leader, paving the way for his successive stint as chief minister of Kerala.
A US Congress-constituted quasi-judicial body on Wednesday asked the Joe Biden Administration to designate four nations, including India, as "countries of particular concern", alleging that religious freedom conditions there in 2020 continued their negative trajectory.
The Congressional-mandated 2020 Trafficking in Persons report of the State Department, released by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday, noted that Maoist groups, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, forcibly recruited children as young as 12 to handle weapons and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and in some cases be human shields.
He termed the situation with China as 'very dangerous' and said India under Modi does not have any clear cut strategy on China, which is testing the country and will not sit silent.
'No different from anyone else, if they are coming from a declared hotspot they will have to quarantine'
Describing India as one of the most important partners of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, the Biden Administration on Tuesday said that it welcomes India's emergence as a leading global power and its role as a net security provider in the region.
Life expectancy of Indians at birth in 2019 was 69.7 years while Bangladesh has a life expectancy of 72.6 years and Pakistan 67.3 years, the 2020 Human Development Report said.
Despite a massive underperformance at the bourses since the last six months, analysts are turning optimistic on Reliance Industries (RIL). Those at Jefferies, for instance, say that the company is a proxy play for India's consumption growth story. The key catalysts for the stock, according to a Jeffries note, include faster-than-expected market share gain in retail, oil-to-chemicals (O2C) stake sale, recovery in gross refining margins (GRM), potential public listing of Jio and even a possible banking licence going ahead. That apart, analysts feel any tariff hike in Reliance Jio (RJio) - its telecom venture - will also aid performance. With balance sheet adequately de-levered, proceeds from a strategic stake sale in the O2C business will create a sizeable war chest for the company, analysts say.
India has clearly conveyed to Pakistan that the entire union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including the areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, are an integral part of the country by virtue of its fully legal and irrevocable accession.
Though COVID-19 will wreak more damage to the finances of the Indian population, the insurance sector is unlikely to get hurt.
IT major Wipro's Azim Premji donated Rs 22 crore a day or Rs 7,904 crore in a year to emerge as the most generous Indian in FY20 and top a list of philanthropy. Premji pipped HCL Technologies' Shiv Nadar, who had earlier topped the list collated by Hurun Report India and Edelgive Foundation, by a wide margin.
'No one knows the final details about it yet but there will be a stricter protocol in Brisbane than here.'
Verma wins compound individual gold, opens tally for India.
That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
There are 9,75,861 active cases of the coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 17.54 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said 50 districts account for 66 per cent of the total caseload and the COVID-19 case fatality rate has progressively declined to 2.10 per cent, the lowest since the first lockdown was imposed on March 25.
Registering a jump of 10 places in the rankings, Uttar Pradesh occupied the second position in 2019 as against 12th in 2018.
'The recent price hike would only be beneficial if the airlines continue to operate at 80 per cent airline capacity. An increase towards 90 or 100 per cent airline capacity would again add pressure to the fares as demand remains muted. Also, we are in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year which is a seasonally weaker quarter,' says an analyst.
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