India’s push for self-employment and micro-enterprise development has taken several forms over the decades, but the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Programme (ESDP) is among the more enduring efforts in this space.
When we speak of successful government initiatives of the past decade, popular missions like the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) usually dominates the conversation. Yet, quietly, another programme has been impacting the lives of the millions of India’s urban street vendors, who sustain the everyday economy of Indian cities.
The government's chief economic advisor, V Anantha Nageswaran, says he is not losing sleep over the falling rupee. We wish him long nights of peaceful rest and restoration. While the government and the RBl rest, the rupee will be hard at work, to give some respite to our exporters hit hard by Trumpian tariffs.
India and Brazil are natural partners in the low-carbon bioenergy transition. Brazil has decades of experience in large-scale biofuel deployment, most famously its sugarcane-based ethanol program and a mature flex-fuel vehicle market, while India has moved aggressively in recent years to scale ethanol blending and to develop policy frameworks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The two countries formalized energy and biofuel cooperation through a series of memoranda and joint statements: New Delhi's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and its Brazilian counterparts highlighted SAF and biofuel collaboration in a joint statement on 21 September 2024, and broader bioenergy MOUs and bilateral instruments between India and Brazil date back several years and were reiterated during high-level exchanges in 2024–2025.
In the 21st century, the Indo-Pacific has emerged as the epicentre of global geopolitics due to shifting power dynamics, competing naval claims, supply-chain competition, and increased defence postures. With the Indo-Pacific region lofty ambitions to become the world's strategic and economic centre of gravity, partnerships among like-minded democracies continue to grow in significance. In this regard, the India–Australia relationship has become a fundamental stabilising element in the broader Quad Security Dialogue (QUAD) context.
The rich make competitive noise, pollute the air, switch on their air purifiers and air conditioners, and leave the less well-off to choke, wheeze and sicken
Diwali is no longer the gentle festival of lamps, gifting, good food and shared celebration. Diwali is a now a raging battleground of class aggression, in which the rich compete to show they are one up on their neighbours, bursting more copious amounts of crackers and setting off ever more spectacular fireworks. They have their hours of fun, and withdraw indoors to feast and party in rooms where air purifiers and air conditioners do double duty to scrub the air of the filth they have just injected into it.
Bhutan, one of the most important countries from a Geostrategic angle, is located between Tibet and North-East India and also to the nearest points of the Chumbi Valley of Tibet, Sikkim and the Eastern borders at the same time the proximity of Bhutan from the Siliguri corridor which is the connecting point of the seven north eastern states of India is crucial for both India and Bhutan.