Tax proposals regressive: Jayalalithaa

The Budget lacks flavour as it does not have any specific announcement of schemes to enthuse different segments, including the States, said Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. In a statement, she said it also does not speak of the status of implementation on many schemes announced in the last two years and that the people of Tamil Nadu had higher expectations which have not been met. Ms. Jayalalithaa, however, welcomed and appreciated the launch...

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The Academy Award 2016 in pictures

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Highlights of Union Budget 2016-17

Affirming that the economy is right on track, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget for 2016-17. Citing that the CPI inflation has come down to 5.4% from 9 plus, he said it is huge relief for the public. Tax Infrastructure and agriculture cess to be levied. Excise duty raised from 10 to 15 per cent on tobacco products other than beedis 1 per cent service charge on purchase of luxury cars over Rs. 10 lakh and in-cash purchase...

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Banks need an autonomy stimulus

At a time when banks are in trouble globally, recent reported losses heighten the tendency to put Indian banks in the same basket. But global bank shares are falling because of an expected fall in bank earnings as interest rates become negative. In India, however, interest rates are firmly positive. In India, reported bank profits are soft because provisions are being made for weak assets. Tackling a problem at the root bodes well for the future....

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BJP seeking a CM candidate in Uttar Pradesh

For a BJP struggling to even appoint a party president to engage the complex caste arithmetic of Uttar Pradesh, Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani’s fiery turn in the Lok Sabha during a discussion on the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula and charges of sedition against students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has led to speculation that it could be Ms. Irani, or two other Delhi-based leaders from Uttar Pradesh,...

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Will double farm income by 2022: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged the State governments to give priority to agriculture even as he pledged to “double the income of farmers” by 2022, to mark India’s 75 years of independence. To attain that goal, Mr. Modi said the Centre had adopted a scientific approach to farming and urged farmers to utilise the various agricultural initiatives introduced by his government. “Today, the farmer is facing numerous challenges. The...

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Jaitley may announce cut in corporate tax rate

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to propose in his budget on Monday the lowering of the corporate tax from 30 per cent to 29 per cent, the first cut in the series planned to bring it down over the next four years to 25 per cent. The roadmap for these cuts, along with the corresponding withdrawals of tax exemptions each year, will also be announced. A top official source told The Hindu that the fiscal deficit for the current year...

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Niira Radia enters healthcare business; Ratan Tata inaugurates first hospital

Making a comeback, PR veteran and former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia has ventured into healthcare business through a new entity Nayati Healthcare, whose first hospital was inaugurated in Mathura on Sunday by Ratan Tata. Inaugurating the 351-bed multi super specialty hospital, Mr. Tata said, “It is heartening to see a full fledged specialty hospital being established in Mathura with considerable personal sacrifice, driven by passion and a...

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Clinton cruises to big win over Sanders in South Carolina

A decisive victory over her challenger Senator Bernie Sanders in South Carolina brought back momentum into former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two narrow victories and one massive loss to Mr. Sanders over the last month had eroded the aura of invincibility that surrounded her and Saturday’s landslide victory in South Carolina, where she won three fourth of the votes, restores that in good...

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Republicans’ frantic efforts to derail Donald Trump fall flat

The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak. Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on February 19, he warned that Donald Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November. But Rove, the master strategist of George W. Bush’s campaigns, insisted it was not too late for them to stop Mr. Trump, according to three people present. At a meeting of Republican Governors the next...

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Record-breaking South Korea filibuster runs beyond 100 hours

South Korean opposition lawmakers seeking to block a government-backed “anti-terrorism” bill pushed their record-breaking filibuster into a sixth straight day of speeches in the parliamentary chamber on Sunday. The filibuster began on Tuesday and had continued around the clock for more than 115 hours by Sunday afternoon, making it the world's longest, according to the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper. The marathon filibuster easily surpassed a...

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Is India at an inflection point?

The first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed a great deal of unrest and turbulence in several countries across the globe, notably in West Asia. India was spared the kind of protests that marked the “Arab Awakening”, though it did confront a number of disparate protests, which cumulatively reflected a high level of discontent. Individual incidents had even then begun to spark off violent reactions. However, it is the metastasising...

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Holding the newspaper to account

Newspapers continue to play an important role in society and politics. In some respects they play an enhanced and widening role in this digital age, even as they have come under disruptive pressure of varying degrees. Typically, in India as well as in most other countries, daily newspapers have become contested, at times bitterly contested, sites where various extraneous as well as internal factors and interests are at play, often having it...

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UltraTech acquires Jaypee group's cement assets for Rs. 16,500 crore

ltraTech Limited has agreed to acquire Jaypee Group’s 22.4 million tonnes of cement capacity assets for Rs.16,500 crore, making it the largest deal in the Indian cement sector. Kumar Mangalam Birla’s cement flagship firm entered into a binding agreement with Jaiprakash Associates Ltd., for the acquisition of its identified cement plants having a total cement capacity of 22.4 mtpa and situated in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh,...

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Live: Jaitley presents Union Budget 2016-17: 'Rs 38,500 crore for MGNREGA in 2016-17'

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents his third Union Budget. Here are the live updates: 11.30 a.m.: 11.30 a.m.: Total rural sector allocation Rs. 87,769 crore. 11.27 a.m.: Two schemes for digital literacy for rural India to cover 6 crore households in the next three years. 11.26 a.m.: Rs. 9,000 crore for Swachch Bharat Abhiyan. 11.25 a.m.: 5,542 villages have been electrified, more than the last three years combined. 11.24 a.m.: Rs....

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NASA turns to public to help humanoid robot ‘see’ better

NASA is asking coders to create algorithms to improve 3D vision of its first humanoid robot in space for maintaining the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up astronauts for critical science and repair work. Humans use glasses to help them see better, but for robots, the fix is in their code, NASA said. The Robonaut Vision Tool Manipulation contest offers a total of $ 10,000 in prizes for the best algorithms. Robonaut 2, or R2,...

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Bees, other pollinators at risk, may hit food output

Bees and other pollinators face increasing risks to their survival, threatening foods such as apples, blueberries and coffee worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, the first global assessment of pollinators showed on Friday. Pesticides, loss of habitats to farms and cities, disease and climate change were among threats to about 20,000 species of bees as well as creatures such as birds, butterflies, beetles and bats that fertilise flowers...

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Turning to Potter for life lessons

The news of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a stage production, based on a story co-written by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, has taken social media by storm, and sent Potter heads into a frenzy. The play picks up from where Rowling left us after the final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And, takes us forward to the time when Harry is an exhausted employee at the Ministry of Magic. I, like others, cannot wait for July...

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Only 5.5% who earn are tax payers: Economic Survey

India is far from being a full tax-paying democracy with about 5.5 per cent of the people who earn paying tax and only 15.5 per cent of the net national income being reported to the tax authorities, according to the Economic Survey tabled in the Parliament on Friday. The survey estimated that just four per cent India’s voters are taxpayers, though it should be closer to 23 per cent, and 85 per cent of the net national income fall outside the...

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Mayawati, Yechury take on Smriti

The opposition that had walked out during Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani’s reply in the Lok Sabha on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the charges of sedition against students in JNU, mounted a concerted fight back in the Rajya Sabha, with rhetorical flourishes and a questioning of facts from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bahujan Samaj Party. BSP chief Mayawati had been demanding the inclusion of a...

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Rich feed off subsidies worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore: Economic Survey

India’s rich feed off subsidies worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore a year that are meant for the poor, according to the Economic Survey. And this figure only considers the subsidies on six commodities, two public utilities — the Railways and electricity — and one small savings scheme, the Public Provident Fund. “There are a fair amount of government interventions that help the relatively better-off in society. In many cases, this takes the form of...

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Astronaut Scott Kelly heading home

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who returns next week after nearly a year aboard the International Space Station, has said that the secret to enduring the longest U.S. space flight is marking individual milestones, not ticking days off the calendar. Since arriving at the space station on March, 27, 2015, Mr. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korneinko have served with eight different crewmates, unpacked six cargo ships, weathered two botched...

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Indian components used in IS explosives: report

Products from at least seven Indian companies figure in a large supply of components that have ended up in explosives used by Islamic State terrorists, according to a study released on Thursday. The European Union-funded 20-month-long study by the Conflict Armament Research (CAR) states that the seven Indian companies “manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented” by their field investigation teams. However,...

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NASA releases mysterious ‘Moon music’ heard by Apollo 10 astronauts in 1969

NASA has made public the recording of the mysterious ‘outer-space music’ that Apollo 10 mission astronauts heard as their spacecraft flew around the far side of the Moon in 1969. The transcript of the conversation between Apollo 10 astronauts Eugene Cernan and John Young mentioning the strange sound and the crew’s response to the phenomenon were released in 2008. However, the audio of the discussion and the sounds that the astronauts were referring...

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