Irrespective of the outcome of the Karnataka elections and notwithstanding Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's desire to retire after the polls, a feature of the contest in the southern state is his emergence as a major state-level leader.
London, April 30, One of Britain's most senior cabinet ministers has resigned after growing pressure over her handling of targets to deport illegal immigrants. The resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd came after documents leaked in the British press showed that she set a target to increase the number of deportations by 10 per cent, despite her denials.
Given the weakened position of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) at the national level, the uneasy truce between its two factions led, respectively, by the present and former General Secretary, will be of interest mainly to the party faithful.
Any undergraduate student of economics would vouch for the fact that an economy in a recession requires a fiscal stimulus package (or more government spending and lower taxes). Such a stimulus can only be managed if the economy constrains its fiscal spending in times of growth. Restraint on spending in good times would allow the creation of a buffer for a strong fiscal policy response in the event of a downturn. This Keynesian prescription of counter-cyclical fiscal policy is expected to stabilise output of an economy over business cycle dynamics.
Mumbai, April 24, About 90 per cent of child rape cases were pending trial in India in 2016, no more than 28 per cent of such cases ended in conviction, and there is a 20-year backlog in bringing cases to trial, the latest available national crime data show.
These data indicate the government move to prioritise a change to legislation that allows courts to grant the death penalty to rapists of children younger than 12 will not bring quicker or better justice because there is no plan to address conviction failures and court delays.
All economies want to produce more within national borders. This urge arises from the popular belief that manufacturing is a good source of jobs for low-skilled workers. President Donald Trump's fixation with bringing back jobs to American factory floors by any means necessary is merely an extension of the same age-old fetish for manufacturing.
It's April and a time to celebrate for millions of young Indians who have just finished their school-leaving class XII examinations. The days that follow help them unwind after months of exam preparation. The celebrations, however, are short-lived. The next many weeks and months are consumed preparing for admission tests for entry into a wide variety of disciplines.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi set out an ambitious agenda when he announced his administration's Make in India programme in September 2014. The centerpiece of that programme is the National Manufacturing Policy, the purpose of which is to make India a global manufacturing hub. Its intent is to increase manufacturing's share of the country's GDP from 16 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022 and to create 100 million additional jobs by that year.
The much-dreaded trade war has come dangerously close to fruition after the tit-for-tat exchanges between the United States and China over the course of the past week.
"Data is the new oil" has been a clichéd maxim of the internet age. But the events that unfolded last week have underlined the extent of complexities that can be created in society depending on the nature of its usage.
Following the key reforms of demonetisation, Real Estate Regulation & Development Act (RERA) and Goods and Services Tax (GST), coupled with enabling policy initiatives, the real estate sector is looking at new business models that are set to change its very dynamics.
The 180 km-long march of Maharashtra's farmers from Nashik to Mumbai that swelled to about 40,000 in number by the time it reached the state capital is a potent reminder of the burgeoning problem of agrarian distress in India. It is also indicative of how this segment of the Indian population -- which comprises about 60 percent of the total -- has found itself repeatedly short-changed in the country's developmental process.
On Sunday, January 7, the New York Times ran a front page story titled "Rising Anxiety in India is Piercing Modi's Aura of Invincibility". The article discussed the decline in GDP, consumption and consumer confidence and its impact on India and Indians.
India is now into the fifth year of its unique experiment of legally binding companies to be socially responsible. This push by the government to solve the country's most challenging social problems was based on the idea that the corporate sector will come up with transformative solutions that will scale up impact across the country. As the development goals of the country are immense and everyone recognises that the challenges can only be overcome with the effort of every stakeholder in the ecosystem, many scholars viewed it as the right move by the government.
While much of the world is busy worrying about losing jobs to automation in the future (and this is overstated), what has crept past for over a decade is that automated systems (to most, Artificial Intelligence, or AI) already play a major role in whether or not -- and how -- we get the jobs we still have, and these are used by a steadily growing number of Indian and multinational companies.
