Chief Minister M.K. Stalin launched phase 2 of the Pudumai Penn scholarship scheme at the Hindu College near Avadi in Chennai on Wednesday. The scheme involves distribution of a scholarship amount of ₹1,000 per month to girls pursuing their higher studies after completing their schooling in government schools. The scholarship is provided …
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COW HUG DAY
Board of India (AWBI) wants to name February 14 as Cow Hug Day and has appealed to the public to embrace cows, claiming that it would bring “emotional richness” and increase “individual and collective happiness”. Dairy farmers, on the other hand, alleged that the Board did not even help them …
Read More »RBI LIFTS LOAN COSTS TO TAME INFLATION
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday raised the benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 6.5% as the RBI targets persistently high core or underlying inflation that it sees as a risk to the improving outlook for the economy. Observing that …
Read More »CAR T-CELL THERAPY
The three major forms of treatment for any cancer are surgery (removing the cancer), radiotherapy (delivering ionising radiation to the tumour), and systemic therapy (administering medicines that act on the tumour). Surgery and radiotherapy have been refined significantly over time whereas advances in systemic therapy have been unparalleled. A new …
Read More »THE UNION BUDGET AND THE ALLOCATION TO MINORITIES
The Union Budget for 2023-24 came with a reduction of 38% in funds for the Ministry of Minority Affairs. The fund crunch is likely to impact spheres of madrasas besides general school education, higher research and local development in areas of minority concentration. Which schemes are affected? The worst affected …
Read More »THE SAGA OF A ‘SPY’ BALLOON IN U.S. AIRSPACE
Last week, the U.S. shot down a Chinese ‘spy’ balloon, days after the surveillance device was first spotted over American airspace, bringing the dramatic saga to a climax and dealing yet another blow to the already strained diplomatic relation between the two sides. What happened? Reports of a massive white …
Read More »INDIA, RUSSIA DISCUSSION ON PAYMENT MECHANISM
With bilateral payments still not streamlined against the backdrop of Western sanctions, especially for defence deals, India and Russia are set to hold bilateral financial meetings under the framework of the Inter-Governmental Commission in the second half of February as part of ongoing efforts to iron out a mechanism, officials …
Read More »HEALTH SECTOR AND THE CONSEQUENCES
The stagnant allocations in the Budget for health, education and nutrition reminded me of the film The Last Czars. Emperor Nicholas asks his communist captors why he has been imprisoned despite loving Russia and being loyal to it. Budgets are boring documents if we look at them only in terms of financial …
Read More »FISCAL CONSOLIDATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE BUDGET
Growth is affected by the size of government expenditure and its revenue and capital components. Government expenditure is budgeted to grow at 7.5% while nominal GDP growth is estimated to fall from 15.4% in 2022-23 to 10.5% in 2023-24. Thus, the total expenditure relative to GDP is shown to fall …
Read More »PAKISTAN CRISIS
Pakistan is no stranger to crises, In fact, any reading of Pakistan’s history will inform the reader that right from 1947, it was the ‘refugee crisis’ that came into the picture immediately following Partition and Independence. As many as 14 million people crossed the West Pakistan/India border, with Pakistan having …
Read More »INDIA STANDS ON NET-ZERO BY 2070
Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Bhupender Yadav today addressed the Ministerial Session on ‘Adapting to an Uncertain Future: Reshaping of Global Partnerships’ at India Energy Week in Bengaluru. To reshape the global partnership, India has adopted a “whole-of-society” approach with governments engaging at national, sub-national and …
Read More »ONE DISTRICT ONE PRODUCT-DISTRICTS AS EXPORT HUBS
One District One Product-Districts as Export Hubs (ODOP-DEH) has mapped and tagged the overlapping products in Taj Hotels’ in-house luxury store, Khazana. The launch of this initiative was held in New Delhi today. On the occasion the ODOP-DEH launch and appreciated the variety of products on display, from across the …
Read More »PRIMARY AGRICULTURAL CREDIT SOCIETIES (PACS)
PACS are village level cooperative credit societies that serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure headed by the State Cooperative Banks (SCB) at the state level. Credit from the SCBs is transferred to the district central cooperative banks, or DCCBs, that operate at the district level. …
Read More »FIGHTER JETS AT NYOMA, LADAKH
India is now all set to kick off the upgrade of the critical Nyoma advance landing ground (ALG) in eastern Ladakh to ensure it can also handle fighter operations, in the backdrop of China having consolidated all its air bases and military positions during the continuing 33-month military confrontation along …
Read More »FORCED VIRGINITY TEST IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL: HC
The Delhi high court on Tuesday held that forced virginity test on persons in police or judicial custody is unconstitutional stating that strangely, though the word “virginity” may not have a definite scientific and medical definition, it has become a mark of purity of a woman. It is declared that …
Read More »NEW FUEL FOR RAILWAYS
Trains Powered With Hydrogen Fuel Cells Don’t Emit Noxious Gases, Not Even Carbon Dioxide. They Will Cut Down Global Diesel Consumption By Millions Of Litres A Day By the end of this year you could ride up to Shimla in an electric train. Only, it will be an electric train …
Read More »NISAR
Once launched into space, NISAR will provide critical information on Earth’s crust, ice sheets, and ecosystems, helping researchers better understand the causes and consequences of land surface changes. Jointly developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), an Earth-observation satellite, called NISAR …
Read More »CHATGPT – BARD
ChatGPT in many ways is being called the end of Google Search, given that conversational AI can give long, essay style and sometimes elegant answers to a user’s queries. Google has finally decided to answer the challenge and threat posed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The search …
Read More »BALLOONING OPTIONS TO SPY
The saga of the alleged Chinese spy balloon over the United States ended in an anticlimactic puff of smoke on February 4 after an American F-22 shot down the airship over coastal waters in the Atlantic Ocean. News of the Chinese airship went public on February 3. This was not …
Read More »TRAINING MODULE FOR INDIA’S HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT
Indian astronauts on India’s first human space flight mission Gaganyaan will undergo training with modules developed by IIT-Madras using extended reality (XR), which includes immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) would utilize the advanced technologies created at the newly-established eXperiential Technology …
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