Blog Posts by India Today

by Dhiraj Nayyar

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is a worried man. The fate of India's economy is at stake as he is about to present UPA'S last Budget before the next General Election. Also at stake is his reputation. According to senior officials, Chidambaram is desperate to salvage his reputation as a first rate minister that was tarnished in the 2G scam. At a meeting of the GOM on telecom in January, he revealed his mind when he told his colleagues, "Too many reputations have been lost in telecom."

Budget 2013, the only Budget he will present in UPA 2, is a perfect platform for Chidambaram to regain his reputation. According to officials, he is almost completely focused on one number: the fiscal deficit. His challenge is to present a credible plan to reduce the deficit to 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2013-14, down from a high of 5.9 per cent in 2011-12. To achieve that single goal, he is even willing to do what was once unthinkable for him: hiking direct tax rates.

Chidambaram is in a

Read More »from Budget 2013: UPA wants the rich to pay

Sleep is more closely connected to a student's productivity than we realise. Spending all night pouring over your textbooks is detrimental to your overall learning process. "Sleep recharges both your body and your mind set. One's mind can only cope with an hour or two of intense learning at most. Overworking is extremely counter-productive and many students do not realise that," says Dr. Kamna Chibber, head of Clinical Psychology at Fortis Hospital, Delhi.

Just as the number of hours we sleep determines how much rest we get, the way we sleep determines how well rested we are when we wake up. According to sleep therapist Dr. Rubin Naiman the position we sleep in and the time we wake up at can help us feel more refreshed and energetic. Sleeping on four pillows with a textbook on your chest will leave you feeling drained no matter how many hours you rest. Luckily, there are many sleep gadgets available in the market today that can help you achieve a more balanced sleeping pattern so that

Read More »from Money can now buy you some sound sleep

On a bone-chilling winter morning, Balwant Singh, 60, is reclining in a chair and monitoring work at his sandstone tiles unit on the outskirts of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. The former dacoit, nephew of Paan Singh Tomar whose descent from international athletics to the world of banditry was poignantly captured in a recent Bollywood film, surrendered in 1982-a year after his uncle was taken out in a police encounter. Once a wanted man with a Rs 50,000 bounty on his head, Balwant is now running a business with an annual turnover of Rs 30 lakh. "No one would choose to be a dacoit. Who wants to leave his family to get into the jungle?" he says. "If I had a source of living or some land or employment, I wouldn't have rebelled."

Balwant isn't the only one reaping the dividends of peace. Mohar Singh, 82, who carried a reward of Rs 3 lakh on his head before surrendering in 1972, is now a prosperous landowner with a dairy farm. In 1995, the mustachioed former bandit even won the Mahagaon Nagar Read More »from Chambal prospers as bandits turn businessmen

By Asit Jolly

December 13, 2011. 0740 hours: Indigo Airlines Flight 6E-554, carrying a full load of passengers and crew, takes off with ease from runway 28 at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. It is an unusually bright winter morning. Visibility holds at a comfortable 2 km-plus. Its powerful twin turbofan engines at full throttle, the Airbus A320-200 climbs to 39,000 ft. The captain sets course for Jammu. In the cabin, seat belt signs are turned off and the passengers-excited families on pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi, Army officers returning from annual leave, civil servants carrying files to the winter durbar-settle down to the familiar humdrum of the one-hour-and-ten-minute flight.

But there is tension on the flight deck. The Instrument Landing System (ILS) at Jammu is non-functional and the length of the runway is considerably reduced due to repairs: Less than 1,700 m of the 2,054-m-long military airstrip is available for landing. Visibility is failing and already below the

Read More »from Are these India's most dangerous airports?

By Dhiraj Nayyar and Shravya Jain

The economic slowdown is no longer a mere conversational statistic. It is now hitting the middle class where it hurts most: In jobs. Two surveys, conducted by apex industry chambers FICCI and ASSOCHAM, released in the first week of September, confirm what head hunters and job portals have noticed for months: India Inc's pessimism about its business prospects, evident now for more than a year, has finally translated into a cut in hiring.

Between April and June 2012, the prospects of finding a job across a range of the most employment-intensive sectors-like information technology (IT), financial services, telecom and hospitality-in the economy fell dramatically compared with the first three months of 2012. With recession abroad, and policy paralysis at home, the nightmare for young job seekers looks unlikely to end. The assocham survey indicates where jobs will be lost, both in industry and geographical terms. Overall, in the 32 sectors surveyed, there is

Read More »from Data reveals India's alarming job squeeze

By Damayanti Datta

If you are a high-pressure executive, beware of your amygdala. That almond-shaped fear centre deep inside your brain gets jittery every time you log 60-plus hours a week, face 24x7 demands, unpredictable work-flows, endless jet lags, flexible global hours, late nights or sleeplessness. It puts your brain on alert and triggers off 1,400 biochemical changes down your body. Adrenal glands pump out stress hormones, sympathetic nerves go into an overdrive, your heart beats faster, blood pressure rises and your digestive system shuts down. Before you know, your body shifts into a state of perpetual anxiety.

Corporate warriors of the new economy already have plenty on their platter to worry about the amygdala. Yet as the global recession fills most people with fear about the future, scientists send out warnings about the amygdala's ability to "hijack" the brain and the body: Stress can burn you out, make you sick, or even kill you. With India Inc losing a series of star

Read More »from How healthy is India Inc?

By Rajesh Kurup

Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry, 82, is the world's most reclusive billionaire. For a man with an estimated wealth of almost $10 billion (Rs 55,000 crore), he is surprisingly invisible, rarely seen or heard in the public space. One of India's most successful and powerful businessmen, he controls a construction empire that operates across India, West Asia and Africa. He, along with his sons, also controls an 18.5 per cent stake in Tata Sons, the holding company of the $100 billion (Rs 550,000 crore) Tata Group, making the Mistrys the largest individual shareholders in India's most diversified business conglomerate. He is called, with a mixture of awe and curiosity, the Phantom at Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group, in Mumbai. His younger son, Cyrus Mistry, 43, will control the group when Chairman Ratan Tata exits in December.

Construction magnate Pallonji is an Irish citizen, by virtue of marriage to an Irish woman, but he lives mostly in India, in his sea-facing

Read More »from A quiet billionaire

By Sowmya Aji

 A below-par monsoon is likely to set alarm bells ringing in the UPA 2 Government, already reeling under the impact of an economic downturn. Besides affecting the kharif sowing, which is certain to have a bearing on the production of rice, oilseeds and pulses, the delay in rain has the potential of pulling down both the economy and the country's economic sentiment. India's total rice production in 2011-12 was 103 million tonnes.

If the monsoon continues to play truant through July, this year's figure could dip by at least 10 million tonnes, predicts former Union agriculture secretary P.K. Basu. It's not just agrarian India that's taking a hit. As of July 1, only 16 per cent area of the country has received normal rain. Urban India is reeling from extreme temperatures and frequent power cuts. Delhi, for instance, recorded its worst summer in 33 years with average maximum temperature in May-June at a dizzying 41.57 degree C.

Everyone blames the monsoon for India's water Read More »from India's water crisis may turn even more serious