It is increasingly clear that Rajasthan, under the leadership of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, will lead the country in terms of policy reform.
The cost of not vaccinating the entire population quickly will be far higher than bearing the entire cost of vaccination, points out Prosenjit Datta.
Parliamentary standing committee on labour, led by Biju Janata Dal MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, has said in its report that it is unjustifiable for owners to pay workers' wages during natural calamities.
For large numbers of employees in the government system, the month-end salary cheque is no longer guaranteed. So the days of the government and State-owned enterprises wanting to be ideal employers are over, observes T N Ninan.
According to reports, public transport and banking services remain partly disrupted for the second day in some states.
India's services sector activity expanded at a slower pace in December as rates of growth in sales eased to a three-month low and staff hiring came to a halt amid weak business optimism, a monthly survey said on Wednesday. The seasonally adjusted India Services Business Activity Index fell from 53.7 in November to 52.3 in December. The index was above the critical 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for the third month in a row during December, but pointed to the slowest pace of expansion in the three-month sequence.
The State Department has proposed not to issue temporary business visas for H-1B speciality occupations which allowed several companies to send their technology professionals for a short stay to complete jobs on site in the US, a move which could affect hundreds of Indians. The proposal, if finalised, will eliminate any misconception that the "B-1 in lieu of H policy" provides an alternative avenue for foreign professionals to enter the US to perform skilled labour that allows, and potentially even encourages them and their employers to circumvent the restrictions and requirements relating to the H non-immigrant classification established by Congress to protect the US workers, the State Department said.
Seeking to reach out to the fishing community in poll-bound Kerala, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday interacted with the fishermen at Thangassery beach in the district.
Trade deficit during the month narrowed to USD 14.54 billion from USD 15.3 billion in January 2020. It was USD 15.44 billion in December 2020.
Punjab faces many mortal threats. For most of these the people of Punjab are themselves responsible. And unless they take a brutal hard look within, their future generations have to be resigned to continue living with this constant slide, warns Shekhar Gupta.
Union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday announced that a high-level committee will be constituted to probe into the leakage of toxic gas at SAIL's Bhilai Plant in Chhattisgarh in which six people were killed and about 30 others injured.
Given the many policy areas where the Centre and the states have not been seeing eye to eye in the last few years, it is time the Modi government convenes a meeting of the Inter-State Council, recommends A K Bhattacharya.
'The large scale and widespread shrinking of the labour force in November, the peaking of unemployment in October and the fall in lead indicators in October and November point towards a worsening of the slowdown of the Indian economy in the third quarter of 2019-20,' says Mahesh Vyas.
The unions term the introduction of fixed-term employment as a 'modern labour slavery system' introduced through the 'back door'.
The government clarified that the majority of industrial establishments had reported nil production, and cautioned that the numbers should not be compared with those of previous months. "It is not appropriate to compare the IIP of April 2020 with that of earlier months, and users may like to observe the changes in the IIP in the following months," said the ministry of statistics & programme implementation.
iPhone SE 2020 is one of the popular phones like Apple 11, which is the biggest seller in the domestic market.
Days after keeping India's rating at lowest investment grade for 13th year in a row, the rating agency in a webinar said despite the contraction in GDP this year, the country continues to be an outperformer among the peer groups.
'We don't expect any immediate impact on salaried jobs.'
Since existing laws do not cover Covid-19, any compensation in this regard has to be left to the discretion of companies.
Foreign Direct Investment flows to India in 2021 were 26 per cent lower, mainly because large M&A deals recorded in 2020 were not repeated, the UN trade body has said.
The proclamation that comes into effect on June 24, is expected to impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1.
The IMF on Tuesday projected an impressive 12.5 per cent growth rate for India in 2021, stronger than that of China, the only major economy to have a positive growth rate last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington-based global financial institution, in its annual World Economic Outlook ahead of the annual Spring meeting with the World Bank, said the Indian economy is expected to grow by 6.9 per cent in 2022. Notably in 2020, India's economy contracted by a record eight per cent, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said as it projected an impressive 12.5 per cent growth rate for the country in 2021.
A week after violence broke out at its Narasapura facility in Karnataka, contract manufacturer Wistron on Saturday said it has fired its vice-president who was heading India operations even as iPhone maker Apple placed the Taiwanese firm on probation. Wistron, which assembles the latest version of the iPhone SE at the violence-hit plant, admitted that there were faults in its wage payment processes. A section of workers at Wistron Corporation's facility in Narasapura Industrial Area in Kolar district near Bengaluru went on rampage last week over non-payment of their wages.
India's services activity expanded at the fastest rate in a year during February, while employment fell further and companies noted the sharpest rise in overall expenses, a monthly survey said on Wednesday. The seasonally adjusted India Services Business Activity Index rose from 52.8 in January to 55.3 in February, pointing to the sharpest rate of expansion in output in a year amid improved demand and more favourable market conditions. The index was above the critical 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for the fifth month in a row during February as the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines led to an improvement in business confidence towards growth prospects.
Ahead of the 2022 assembly elections, Churchill Alemao 'merged' the NCP with the TMC. The 'merger' took place when Mamata Banerjee was in Mumbai talking to NCP supreme leader Sharad Pawar on how to forge Opposition unity!
A senior official in the central labour commissioner's office said the efforts of the government were to resolve the cases amicably and not to press for legal action against employers. "Everyone is going through tough times. We could initiate legal action if we want but that's not the idea. We want to address the issues amicably," the official said.
Drawn in by fuzzy promises about unleashing the entrepreneur in each of us and the benefits of being one's own boss, people find themselves instead oppressed by an algorithm, notes Rahul Jacob.
'We completed Rs 17 trillion worth of projects in the first term and currently Rs 9 trillion worth of contracts are under construction.'
Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday promised an array of initiatives in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls like bringing a strong Jan Lokpal Bill, installing CCTV cameras in court rooms and bringing down the age to contest elections to 21 from 25.
The shipping business is like the heaving sea -- it's up and down, observes Shyam G Menon.
The economy faces more downside risks now as economic disruptions arising from the second wave are likely to stabilise only from July, warned the Swiss brokerage USB Securities. Last month, the brokerage had cut its GDP forecast by 150 bps to 10 per cent for FY22, which though is much higher than the consensus projections by others with some pegging it at as low as 8 per cent. Though adverse impacts on sequential growth is less severe than in the June 2020 quarter when it plunged by 23.9 per cent, as lockdowns are more targeted and localised and households and businesses have adjusted to the new normal now, still, it is increasingly possible that normalcy returns only by July as against our baseline assumption of June.
The government's second round of stimulus will spur consumer spending in the near term but support to economic growth will be minimal, Moody's Investors Service said.
Rajasthan has taken the lead on structural reforms which could help India attract business and employ a fast-growing workforce.
At a time when finding out who is paying for labourers' train tickets is a task for Sherlock Holmes, Hemant Soren's Jharkhand government has flown in stranded workers from Ladakh, and is probably the only state that has tried to give 'migrant workers' a modicum of respect, observes Debashish Chatterjee.
With a surge in coronavirus cases in Delhi and its neighbouring cities, migrant workers and daily wagers fear another round of lockdown could push them into a severe financial crisis from which they might never recover.
Business activity has fallen by a fourth of the pre-COVID levels due to lockdowns imposed by states to contain the spread of the second wave of COVID-19, Japanese brokerage Nomura said on Tuesday. However, it said the falling activity levels will have a muted economic impact and maintained its growth estimates for the year, saying the lockdowns present "downside risks". As of April 25, the Nomura India Business Resumption Index (NIBRI) registered its steepest weekly fall in over a year of 8.5 percentage points to 75.9, which is 24 percentage points below pre-pandemic normal, the brokerage said in a statement.
A Goldman Sachs report said, in the past also, major crisis have led to a sharp increase in outsourcing and even offshoring particularly to India , thanks to lower wages for technology developers as compared to developed economies, and an increasing annual base of engineering graduates.
Wistron, which earlier pegged the losses at Rs 437 crore, later notified the Taiwan stock exchange that the total losses were around Rs 50 crore.
A joint forum of central trade unions has given a call for a nationwide strike on March 28 and 29 to protest against the government policies affecting workers, farmers, and people.
If India wants to become a globally competitive manufacturing hub, it will have to rethink the notion that the traditional SMEs will form the manufacturing backbone, argues Prosenjit Datta.
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