India has witnessed an impressive jump in financial inclusion of women, with 53% of the female population now having bank accounts as compared to a mere 15% a decade ago, according to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
The data also show that violence against married women has come down. The percentage of women facing marital violence has dropped from 37.2% to 28.8%. The survey also shows only 3.3% such women faced violence during pregnancy.
(Source: The Times of India)
More than 10,000 members of the Jat community are likely to hold a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Thursday to press for their demand for reservation in jobs and educational institutions.
The proposed rally is viewed as part of the pro-reservation group’s strategy to exert pressure on the Centre.
Besides a rally at Jantar Mantar, the Capital’s designated protest site, the group threatened that Jat farmers will stop the supply of milk to New Delhi. The Capital’s major milk vends source their product mostly from the neighbouring state.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
President Donald Trump began his landmark first address to a joint session of US Congress on Tuesday by condemning unequivocally the killing of Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas last week as well as all such hate-attacks recently.
The White House had seemed slow to respond to the Kansas shooting at first, but came hard and strong at the issue in the last two days with a spokeswoman calling it a “racially motivated attack” earlier Tuesday.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
A day after the latest data revealed that the economy clocked a faster-than-expected growth of 7 percent despite demonetisation in the third quarter of the financial year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked economists and political rivals who had questioned the note ban, saying
Making political hay of data released by the Central Statistics Office and taking a swipe at economists — some like Harvard professor and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen called demonetisation a “despotic action that has struck at the root of economy based on trust” while Manmohan Singh who went to Oxford described it as “organised loot and legalised plunder” — Modi told election rallies in Maharajganj and Deoria that “on the one hand, there are intellectuals who speak in the name of Harvard University, and on the other, a poor mother’s son is trying to change the economic policy of the country”.
(Source: Indian Express)
Indian technologists do not appear slowcoaches behind Uber and Google in the global race to develop self-driving cars, with three top schools harnessing engineering talent to build solutions for the rugged and chaotic roads in the South Asian nation.
"We are developing technology for driverless cars keeping the Indian market in mind, in contrast to the global tech majors who are building and testing technologies in the Western market," IIT Kharagpur's Debashish Chakravarty, head of the autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) project, told ET.
(Source: Economic Times)
Refusing to back off in the political slugfest over "nationalism", junior home minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday tweeted a video of a serving Army jawan criticising those who allegedly batted for terrorists like Afzal Guru and Maoists while the armed forces put their lives on the line.
Rijiju hit out at BJP's opponents using the jawan's video in which he criticised ‘anti-India slogans’ at the protests.
(Source: The Times of India)
India’s leading private banks said on Wednesday they will charge a minimum of Rs 150 for cash deposits and withdrawals after four free transactions in a month, reviving charges that were kept in abeyance briefly after the government scrapped high-value notes in November.
HDFC and ICICI sources said the fees will be applicable to transactions outside of home branches. Both banks define home branch differently; HDFC defines it as the branch where an account was opened while ICICI defines it as any branch within the city of the account.
There was no clarity on whether the charges will be applicable to ATM withdrawals.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
The government is unlikely to be able to clean the Ganga by 2018, a target set by Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti.
Key reasons, according to sources in the Water Ministry, include “unreasonable” directions by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) questioning the operating capacity of sewage treatment plants in Uttar Pradesh and a delay in clearances by state governments to execute projects.
According to a senior official, work at developing the sewage treatment plants (STPs) in Uttar Pradesh had stopped because different expert groups, tasked by the court to estimate the sewage in the drains, had conflicting figures.
(Source: The Hindu)
Seven months after water was released into a largely dry channel that was dug up to revive the “lost” Saraswati, the Haryana Sarasvati Heritage Development Board (HSHDB) has decided to rename the Indus Valley civilisation as the Saraswati river civilisation since the “river is no more a myth, its existence is a reality”.
This is one of several recommendations that the HSHDB will send to the government — the Board is chaired by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar — following the successful conclusion of the Saraswati Mahotsav in January.
The Board, which spells Saraswati as Sarasvati, has drawn up this recommendation:
(Source: Indian Express)
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