'Mamata's numbers will reduce this time compared to 2016.'
Enter the fireworks city of Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu and you can smell a familiar mix of sulphur, potassium nitrate, aluminium and carbon - familiar because if you've ever burst crackers, say on Diwali or Onam, chances are they were made here. Almost every household used to contribute to India's festive joy by contributing almost 90 per cent of the fireworks made in the country. Before the pandemic, around 300,000 people worked in the industry directly and another 500,000 indirectly. Located 540 kilometres from Chennai, Sivakasi is famous for its fireworks and crackers, along with printing and matches, but is almost a ghost town these days.
'The Budget numbers presented severely underestimate the magnitude of the unstated fiscal crisis that we went through in 2018-2019, which cannot be conceivably be fully reversed in 2019-2020,' points out Rathin Roy, director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
Though this is part of the divestment drive, government's stake in these companies remains 100 per cent even after the buybacks
Take a look at the 10 biggest IT deals ever.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has shown that two of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra, wobble unpredictably.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tracks Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's project-launching spree with just about three months to go for the assembly election in India's most populous state.
As we wave goodbye to 2019, we look back at the highlights of the year, in the numbers that made it memorable.
'India is nowhere near the peak of the infection given its large population of 1.3 billion'
Had Finance Minister Sitharaman thought a little more about the middle class, disadvantaged sections, and the poor who are struggling, it would have been an inclusive Budget that would have made history, notes Ramesh Menon.
SVAMITVA is a new government project that primarily aims to demarcate abadi areas that includes inhabitant land, inhabited areas contiguous to abadi and wadis/basties in rural areas, using drone surveying technology.
It is wrong to say the Congress doesn't matter. Certainly one set of people who do not believe that for a minute is the BJP. That's why even in his speech in Parliament on Constitution Day, Mr Modi called dynastic politics a threat to democracy, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'We are looking at a joint venture between ISRO and a few companies to assemble the PSLV and launch it from Sriharikota.' 'In a month or two, the vehicle assembly building will be ready.' 'After that, we could see 13, 14 launches a year.'
India scripted history by successfully launching EMISAT, a military satellite, and 28 foreign nano satellites on-board its polar rocket from Sriharikota on Monday, in a complex mission which marked many a first for Indian Space Research Organisation.
Amid the protests against leading e-commerce firms, Flipkart and Amazon, shipments through the online route in fact witnessed a double-digit growth every quarter.
Even after five decades of use, the telescope at Ooty that Dr Govind Swarup designed and built continues to be the largest single frequency radio telescope in the world.
There is no doubt in our capabilities, says the Infosys co-founder.
Fans starved of live tennis action on TV will be able to watch the matches via a live stream on Tennis Channel's new Over-the-Top (OTT) platform -- Tennis Channel International or via Tennis Channel's.
'You will still want to take all the necessary precautions, which is the right thing to do.'
Pointing out to the 133-acre Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City on the outskirts of the financial capital, he said there is huge realty play opportunity that RCom's erstwhile corporate headquarters possesses, and pegged the potential value creation at the site at Rs 25,000 crore.
'It may be prudent not to plunge into a new online tax appeals system in one go, which could only create more disputes and increase the embarrassingly high tax arrears of the government,' warns A K Bhattacharya.
Brown dwarfs are thought to be the missing link between planets and stars, with masses up to 80 times that of Jupiter.
VMUnify, incubated from staffers' idea, to be spun off into an independent company.
It also carries equipment for meteorological data relay and satellite based search and rescue services being provided by earlier INSAT satellites.
Xiaomi now a lifestyle player, quietly launching a slew of non-smartphone products like Mi branded luggage, backpacks, apparel, U-shaped pillows, pens, home security cameras and air purifiers.
'What we are actually missing in India is a platform wherein the government engages with cybersecurity experts, gets them employed and then utilises their capability to deter such attacks.'
Increase of 10% to 12% likely in a bid to improve citizens' mood after demonetisation.
The wet market was where a variety of live animals were traded until it was shut down following fears that the coronavirus had jumped to humans either from bats or pangolins.
From 690,800 sq ft in 2013, the absorption by e-commerce companies in Chennai dropped to 31,150 sq ft last year.
According to software company Mavernir, the new virtualised networks would lead to a saving of 40 per cent in capex and 34 per cent in terms of lower operations cost for operators.
'Why do the English-speaking class feel they are the only ones who are efficient in work?' 'My own mother was from a village and she was more efficient than me. She used to handle crises better than me.' 'We will have to come out of our elite perception of governance.'
'There is a law that prevents the government from diluting its equity in the PSBs below 50 per cent.' 'That law has to be amended and given the parliamentary arithmetic of the political parties, it is not as simple to do that.'
The steep rise in prices of key components, coupled with a ban on the import of finished sets, is expected to hit prominent Chinese brands, such as OnePlus, Xiaomi, TCL, and Realme.
To be competitive, you need to focus on building products very rapidly, says Werner Vogels.
Though most of the voice-activated solutions are based in English, work is on to create solutions in Indian languages.
The Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, India's first planetary mission to explore Mars, has successfully completed one year around the Red planet on Thursday.
'There is space for many faces and many tongues in this Republic of ours. But it only has one Constitution, and its citizens are vigilant,' says Mitali Saran.
'Our drains are not filled with bodies, our hospitals not run out of beds.' 'That good news, or absence of expected bad news, is the truth that so many in the international community, and also within India, seem unable to handle,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
The company and US government agency will work together to develop data management and computing tools, as well as promote entrepreneurial initiatives in outer space.
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