A nation touted at places like the World Economic Forum in Davos a few years ago as an economic superpower in the making is only just beginning to address the problem that only 27 per cent of children in class 5 in its village schools can subtract

Rahul Jacob: India's failing grades

Business Standard

A couple of days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)'s decision to slash power tariffs in Delhi, especially for those whose usage of electricity was below 400 units a month, a colleague recounted a tale that reflects the breathtaking cynicism of the city, even in the Age of Arvind. His wealthy neighbour had installed five separate electricity meter in the house, most of these in the name of his household help, to qualify for the lowest consumption slab.Like many of us, I became a Kejriwal fan months ago. Watching him calmly confront the more than occasionally abrasive Rajat Sharma on Aap ki Adalat, he seemed exactly the sort of politician India needs. I felt that again listening to his first speech to the Delhi Assembly.A couple of weeks in Indian politics, however, is an eternity. Frenetic populism by AAP in the form of giveaways of electricity and, much more damagingly, of free water to a middle class that can afford to pay for it in a city where the water table is dropping precipitously

Rahul Jacob: Our rights, whose responsibility?

The overhang of corporate debt is the primary straitjacket that ties our firms down, not the bottlenecks created by our alternately slothful and interventionist courts and bureaucrats

Rahul Jacob: It's the debt, stupid

Our leaders must focus on India's long-term challenges or risk becoming the basket case of this century

Rahul Jacob: A distracted Republic

To ensure that we do not have a repeat of this damaging episode, it is time that the Indian foreign service changed its practices for taking servants overseas

Rahul Jacob: Maid to order?

Speaking before reporters, delegates and representatives of NGOs exactly a week ago as the trade talks in Bali seemed destined to collapse, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma stood firm. If the talks failed, "those who are speaking up for the poor and hungry people cannot be blamed," he insisted.Even allowing for a strategy of brinksmanship that eventually worked, the comments smacked of the kind of grandstanding that our officials are all too guilty of when provided an international stage. Bridges, a trade journal, reported that after Mr Sharma's comments, several countries in the G33 effectively deserted India. "There is no G33 anymore... India has left and joined ALBA," Bridges quoted one trade official who was part of the G33 as saying. (ALBA included such global heavyweights as Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.) At the press conference last Thursday, a journalist from Benin shouted at Mr Sharma, "You don't speak for us."The likely explanation for this loss of support, documented by other t

Rahul Jacob: Can we speak for the world's poor?

Andreas Volwahsen directs the eye to the brilliant, if underappreciated, aspects of iconic Indian heritage sites

Monumental showstoppers

The widely held belief that India is guaranteed a demographic dividend because it has millions of young people entering the workforce every year has been repeated so often that it has begun to seem like a religious mantra. This notion floats above the messy facts on the ground such as our inability to create large numbers of labour-intensive jobs in factories, arguably the most serious unfinished business of the reforms that started in 1991. An openness to investment in this sector as well as relatively high literacy rates among men and women in China and the rest of East Asia largely explains why these countries were able to cash their dividend in the past 30 years.Recent reports on the drop in female participation in the workforce to 22.5 per cent, a level that ranks India tenth from the bottom in the world, present yet another indicator that India is unlikely to reap the dividend. Kenya, Ethiopia and Mali score comfortably higher. Iraq and Iran have rates of female participation in

Rahul Jacob: For want of working women

In the mid 1990s, while reporting an article on the opening up of industries like telecoms to private competition, I visited the "Public Grievances" office of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) in New Delhi. A queue of oppressed looking people snaked out the door. Some had waited years to transfer a connection from one address to another, others had phones that had not worked for months. At the entrance sat a severe looking woman with a sign on her desk that read, "No enquiries please." My editor at Fortune in New York found it hard to believe that even government monopolies could be this cruel.In the past couple of weeks, I have discovered a form of time travel. This sort of service still exists, but its principal exponents are blue-chip Indian companies who have vast customer service departments whose employees are in spirit and deed like the woman at the entrance to MTNL. Send a query or write a complaint and they respond with jargon copied out of American training manuals. When I ple

Rahul Jacob: The private public sector

Jung Chang's biography makes the compelling case that China's modernisation started long before Sun Yat-sen or Mao with an extraordinary concubine who became Empress in the nineteenth century

China's original dragon lady

The price of 22-carat gold also stumbled Rs 10, with ten grams of the yellow metal selling at Rs 72,290

Gold

Parliament winter session 2024 Live updates: Stay with us for all the news updates from the ongoing Lok Sabha session

Parliament, New Parliament

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma laid the foundation stone for the Jorhat town water supply scheme and also launched a series of transformative initiatives, aimed at fostering growth and progress in Jorhat district.CM Sarma, addressed the "long-standing issue faced by the people of Jorhat," to facilitate safe drinking water to the people."The Drink from Tap (DFT) project will involve a financial outlay of Rs. 220 crore which will ensure clean and uninterrupted 24X7 water supply by leveraging advanced technology and modern infrastructure," read a statement from the Chief Minister's Office.These initiatives span across various sectors, including Education, Industries  &  Commerce and Public Enterprises, Revenue and Disaster Management, and Finance, and aims to underline Assam Government's commitment to the overall development of the state and the well-being of its people."It may be noted that this event marks a significant phase in the government's "12 Days of Development" ..

Himanta Biswa Sarma, Himanta Biswa, Himanta

A federal appeals court has left in place a mid-January deadline in a federal law requiring TikTok to be sold or face a ban in the United States, rejecting a request made by the company to halt enforcement until the Supreme Court reviews its challenge of the statute.
Attorneys for TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
It is unclear if the nation's highest court will take up the case, though some legal experts have said they expect the justices to weigh in due to the types of novel questions it raises about social media, national security and the First Amendment.
TikTok is also looking for a potential lifeline from President-elect Donald Trump, who promised to save the short-form video platform during the presidential campaign.
Attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance had requested the injunction after a panel of three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the US government and rejecte

Tiktok

US President-elect Donald Trump has called for the "shooting down" of the mystery drones that have been appearing in various parts of the country.
These drones were first spotted in New Jersey a few days ago and are now being seen in other areas as well.
The federal government and the White House have so far maintained that these do not pose any national security threat and nor there is any evidence of a foreign hand in it. The appearance of the mystery drones, however, continues to be the subject of investigation.
"Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country. Can this really be happening without our government's knowledge? I don't think so," Trump said on Friday in a post on Truth Social, a social media platform owned by him.
"Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT," he said with his personal signature at the end of the post.
The White House on Thursday said there was no evidence yet that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public 

Donald Trump, Trump

Latest news updates: Catch all the latest news updates from around the world here

RIL, Reliance, Reliance Industries

Markets Highlights: Friday ended in favour of the bulls, as 41 out of 50 constituent stocks ended in the green, led by Bharti Airtel, ITC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Hindustan Unilever, and UltraTech Cement

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NMIIA operates an industrial area located in Mumbai, India's financial hub and the capital of the western state of Maharashtra.

Reliance

Stock market crash: The Indian stock market crashed heavily on Friday, with the BSE's Sensex dropping 1,207 points or 1.48 per cent to its intraday low of 80,082

bear market, stocks, sensex, nifty, loss, growth, crash, index

Allu Arjun was arrested over a stampede at the Pushpa 2 premiere in Hyderabad, which led to a woman's death and her son's hospitalisation

Allu Arjun

Markets Live: Markets in India are likely to remain cautious, tracking the lower overnight close on Wall Street ahead of key inflation data there

Indian markets

Humanitarian aid to North Gaza, where Israel launched a ground offensive on October 6, has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, the United Nations has said. That has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity or health care, according to the world body.
In the north, Israel has continued its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya with Palestinians living there largely denied aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said on Tuesday. Recently, it said, about 5,500 people were forcibly displaced from three schools in Beit Lahiya to Gaza City.
Adding to the food crisis, only four UN-supported bakeries are currently operating throughout the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza City, OCHA said.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon that civilians trying to survive i

United Nations

Two months after Adobe announced a browser-based tool that could generate videos from prompts or images using generative artificial intelligence, the product remains in limited testing

Adobe

The AAP Tuesday accused the BJP of having an "anti-Jat mindset" while citing the "delay" in the swearing-in of Raghuvinder Shokeen as a minister in the Delhi government.
Shokeen's appointment as minister, to replace Kailash Gahlot who quit AAP and joined the BJP, was announced by the ruling party last month.
In a joint press conference, AAP leaders questioned the "delay" in the swearing-in of Shokeen, an MLA from the Jat-dominated Nangloi constituency in the city.
"The BJP's anti-Jat mindset has been exposed," AAP's chief national spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar charged.
Even 20 days after his nomination, Shokeen has still not been sworn in as a cabinet minister, she said.
"The AAP government on November 18 sent the file to appoint MLA Raghuvinder Shokeen as a Cabinet minister but it hasn't been approved yet," Kakkar claimed.
Questioning the "delay", another AAP leader Anurag Dhandha said, "Does the BJP not want a Jat leader to become a minister?"
The file for the appointment of a 

Arvind Kejriwal, Arvind, Kejriwal, Sumesh Shokeen

Regional Transport Office (RTO) officials on Tuesday said they suspect that a "human error" and "lack of proper training" led to the horrific accident in Mumbai's Kurla, where a BEST bus fatally knocked down seven persons and injured 42 others.
Soon after the incident occurred on Monday night, an investigation team of the Wadala RTO found that the brakes of the electric bus of Olectra-make were operating well.
The e-bus operated by the civic-run Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking rammed into pedestrians and vehicles at around 9.30 pm on Monday on the S G Barve Marg in Kurla (West). Sanjay More (54), who was at the wheel of the ill-fated bus, was later arrested.
A team of the Wadala RTO reached the spot a couple of hours after the incident. The RTO team led by motor vehicle inspector Bharat Jadhav completed the inspection of the bus at the BEST's Kurla depot this morning.  BEST administration, with the help of Mumbai police, shifted the bus from the acciden

Bus Crash, Mumbai Bus Crash, Mumbai Bus rammed, Mumbai Accident, Bus Accident

Highlighting the historical presence of Hindus in Bangladesh, stating, "We are vanished from Afghanistan. We are vanished from Pakistan. This is the high time. If we are not saved now, we will be

Protest, Delhi Protest, Bangladesh Protest, Hindu Protest

Despite the growth slowdown, a rate cut-cycle is unlikely to start anytime soon

Policy

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology alleges that the essay, titled 'On Pacifism', could be interpreted as encouraging violent protests on campus

MIT University

Sitharaman said that intergenerational debt is mounting on countries, and it is important for the government and industry to work together to manage debt at the national and sub-national levels

Nirmala Sitharaman, Nirmala

In the absence of meaningful private investment and job creation, India is slipping back into its pre-Covid-19 rut, and its economic czars are once again publicly refusing to acknowledge the slowdown

Rahul Jacob

Rahul Jacob

Page 9 - Rahul Jacob

Rahul Jacob: India's failing grades

Rahul Jacob: Our rights, whose responsibility?

Rahul Jacob: It's the debt, stupid

Rahul Jacob: A distracted Republic

Rahul Jacob: Maid to order?

Rahul Jacob: Can we speak for the world's poor?

Monumental showstoppers

Rahul Jacob: For want of working women

Rahul Jacob: The private public sector

China's original dragon lady

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Gold falls Rs 10, silver down Rs 100; yellow metal trading at Rs 78,860

Parliament session LIVE: RS adjourned till Monday over no-confidence notice against Dhankar

Assam CM lays foundation for 220 crore Jorhat town water supply scheme

US Court denies TikTok's plea to halt potential ban until SC review

Donald Trump calls for shooting down mystery drones spotted across US

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Highlights: Reliance Industries buys 74% stake in Navi Mumbai IIA for $192 mn

Market Close Highlights: Fab Friday! Sensex ends 843pts up, soars 2050pts from low; Nifty at 24,768

Reliance Industries buys 74% stake in Navi Mumbai IIA for $192 mn

Sensex plunges 1200pts, Nifty below 24200; Why stock markets crashed today?

Allu Arjun arrested over woman's death in stampede at Pushpa 2 premiere