The World Bank has warned India that its growth prospects are weakened by high fiscal deficits and slow reforms, and the country needs to accelerate poverty reduction efforts.
The current spell of weak monsoon over the country is likely to continue for the next five days, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the government wrote to Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha conveying it's decision and seeking their consent for receving the workers, official sources said.
'Farmers have been sent notices in which the government is threatening that if you will join the movement, then we will impound your ancestral properties.' 'We will seal your bank accounts.' 'We will revoke the passports of your kids.'
The four labour codes will not come into effect from April 1 as states are yet to finalise the relevant rules, which means that there will be no change in take home pay of employees and provident fund liability of companies for now. Once the wages code comes into force, there will be significant changes in the way basic pay and provident fund of employees are calculated. The labour ministry had envisaged implementing the four codes on industrial relations, wages, social security and occupational health safety & working conditions from April 1, 2021. The ministry had even finalised the rules under the four codes.
'They are trying to destroy the culture and trying to impose Manu Dharma through Hindi'
In a first, the Centre will start selling tomatoes at discounted rates in retail markets in the national capital and few other cities from Friday to provide relief to the consumers as the price of the kitchen staple is ruling high at over Rs 200 per kilogram in some parts of the country.
According to an official statement, in a letter to Goyal, Pawar said that the migrant workers, stranded in different parts of Maharashtra, may step out in big numbers to return to their states when the train services resume after the lockdown is lifted. This can lead to law and order problem (with workers coming out in big numbers), he added. To avoid this, the railway ministry should run special trains, he demanded.
Elevated food price-led inflation could become a sore point for markets, which they seem to be ignoring at current levels, observe analysts. Retail inflation in India - as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) - came in at a three-month high of 6.52 per cent in January 2023, compared with 5.72 per cent in December and 5.88 per cent in November 2022. The inflation print for February, according to Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda, will be critical for the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy committee.
Operations at the Delhi airport remained normal. However, three flights were returned or diverted to the Delhi airport due to bad weather in Chandigarh, Varanasi and Lucknow on Tuesday night.
Anxious to return home after the spate of killings targeting minorities, non-locals and other civilians in the Valley, about 50 migrant labourers, many of them from Bihar, arrived at the Nowgam railway station late on Monday night from nearby Budgam district where they worked in brick kilns.
'The market has picked up for commercial vehicles. We are very close to pre-pandemic levels.'
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
The four labour codes are unlikely to be implemented this fiscal in view of slow progress on the drafting of rules by the states and also for political reasons like elections in Uttar Pradesh, a source said. The implementation of these laws assumes significance because once these are implemented there would be reduction in take-home pay of employees and firms have to bear higher provident fund liability. "The ministry of labour is ready with the rules under the four labour codes. But the states have been slow in drafting and finalising those under new codes.
Rain deficiency in eastern and western Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Gangetic West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya is 20-46 per cent less than normal as of June 17.
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
BPO, which is growing at 12 per cent annually in the country, is expected to touch $50 billion by 2020 from the present $21 billion.
In a riposte to former Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Gadkari's recent overtures to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, the Shiv Sena on Friday decided to field its candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi for the Lok Sabha elections.
MV Ganga Vilas will begin its journey from Varanasi and sail around 3,200 km in 51 days to reach Dibrugarh in Assam via Bangladesh, traversing across 27 river systems in the two countries, it said.
The NCP chief said that representatives of minority communities had conveyed they would not mind if his party joined hands with the Shiv Sena, but the BJP must be kept away from power in Maharashtra.
Actor-politician Kamal Haasan on Wednesday said discussions were on for his party Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM)'s political alliance and stressed it would support any bloc that would 'selflessly' think about the nation but desist from being part of 'feudal politics'.
Telecom industry body COAI has approached the information technology ministry for removal of fake and misleading messages from social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter linking spread of COVID-19 to 5G technology. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, said the claims linking 5G with coronavirus are baseless as 5G networks have not yet been installed in the country and even 5G trials are yet to be started by the telecom operators. In a letter dated May 15 to MeitY additional secretary Rajendra Kumar, COAI director general S P Kochhar said: "To safeguard the national interest, we request your good office to kindly instruct all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Watsapp, Twitter, etc, to remove all such posts and misleading campaigns from their platforms on an urgent basis." People have been sharing audio and video messages on social media platforms in which 5G towers are being blamed for rise in casualties across the country even though none of the companies have installed 5G technology anywhere in India.
The 'restore old pension' campaign is being spearheaded by the National Movement for Old Pension Scheme (NMOPS), a federation with over 13 lakh government employees as its members.
Army chief General Bipin Rawat had visited Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday to review the operational preparedness of the troops deployed in the state.
Replying to the debate in Lok Sabha on Motion of Thanks to President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the Parliament, Modi said the Congress' 'arrogance' has not gone away despite multiple electoral defeats and its 'misdeeds' seem to indicate that it has made up its mind not to come to power for the next 100 years.
'As long as Amul was coming in with products it was not a problem because it was something value added and with a shelf life.' 'When it gets into the local market by procuring locally, it cuts into the market-share of local cooperatives.'
First tranche of central funding of Rs 200-cr each to come in FY16 for those who meet all criteria.
High loan-to-value and high-yield buckets have reported higher delinquencies
Gadchiroli, located over 900 km from Mumbai in the state's Vidarbha region and having a population of around 12 lakh, has not reported a single COVID-19 case yet. The authorities are mindful that if at all any COVID-19 case comes to light in the district, it will come from outside and hence, they have enhanced efforts and are closely monitoring migrant workers entering the territory.
Nepal has alerted India of possible flash floods in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh after massive landslides, likely triggered by recent devastating earthquakes, blocked Kali Gandaki river in western Nepal, creating a huge artificial lake.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided it would not adopt the path of appeasement and vote bank politics.
The grand old party faces the onerous task of rebuilding its moribund organisation, which is struggling to overcome a leadership crisis and regain credibility with the voters.
A landslide dammed river started flowing normally after sweeping away debris that had blocked it.
New Delhi's timing couldn't have been worse, both for India's fledgling electric vehicle (EV) sector and prospective electric bike buyers. It was hard to miss the perfect storm brewing for India's EV industry since early 2022. On one hand, you had several accidents involving battery fires that unnerved consumers; on the other, uncertainty had crept in over subsidies.
Top Congress leaders are learnt to be discussing the current political situation.
Even though the overall death rate of children under the age of one in India has decreased by 7 per cent, the number from rural India is disturbing.
The over five-year-long search to find Geeta's family led to Parbhani in Maharashtra, where she is now being trained in sign language by Pahal, an NGO working for the hearing and speech impaired.
Several migrants in Bengaluru were desperate to return home as they were out of job and money.
Tata Power will target 10,000 micro grids across India, for which it has formed a company, TP Renewable Microgrid.