The government on Monday announced a one-time Rs 10,000 interest-free festival advance to all its officers and employees as part of plans to increase consumer spending to spur demand in the economy.
Softening the demonetisation blow, the Budget for 2017-18 on Wednesday halved the tax to 5 per cent on incomes up to Rs 500,000 but proposed a new surcharge of 10 per cent on incomes between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore and raised duties on cigarettes and pan masala while stepping up allocations for infrastructure, rural, agriculture and social sectors.
A digital economy can only work with uninterrupted electricity supply. So, states now face the unpleasant task of telling their citizens that electricity rates need to be hiked. Subhomoy Bhattacharjee reports.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.
'Breaking down silos and ensuring a more integrated governance process is just as important to performance.' 'It has been a major priority in the last six years, especially in national security,' External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar points out when delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture-2020: India and the Post-Covid World.
When he speaks of them, it is either in denial or to highlight successes that are only part of a larger story that is worrisome in its totality, observes T N Ninan.
Experts hail 2014 as the worst year for banks.
'UBI is a tricky subject.' 'Our worry is the government could get rid of UPA's social welfare schemes targeted at the poor.'
'We don't expect any immediate impact on salaried jobs.'
Smart cities are really about clustering smart people and institutions.
Exchanges believe its legal status may now change, with the government pushing for digitised transactions.
According to a communication by the ministry to the heads of PSBs, it will be a bottom-up consultative process from the branch level onwards which will involve discussions at the branch or regional level, state level and national level.
'During Amit Shah's recent visit to Kerala, the strategy of concentrating the attacks on the CM on false charges was clear enough.'
Firms in which IP is critical, such as pharma and research and knowledge-based organisations, were taking the lead in seeking cyber covers to protect their computer systems from hack attacks
Here's the full text of President's address with a word cloud.
We are certainly for digitisation. I do not have opinion about demonetisation. I still don't, says Bill Gates.
The S&P BSE Sensex dropped 207 points to end at 25,230.
The Union health minister said of the total active COVID-19 cases in the country, 1.5 per cent are on oxygen support and 2.34 per cent are in ICUs.
To the question on what comes first, clean up or growth, Rajan said the answer is unambiguously 'Clean up!'
Little attention is being paid to keep roads, bridges and flyovers in good shape
Fresh guidelines were issued by the government on Wednesday for enforcing the second phase of the coronavirus lockdown, with the Union home ministry barring all kinds of public transport and prohibiting opening of public places during this period.
Maharashtra is in the beginning of a second COVID-19 wave, a central team report has said, highlighting that there is very limited active effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts, and there is no adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour among people in rural and urban areas in the state.
'India's march towards being a $5 trillion economy continues, notwithstanding momentary setbacks.' 'India is at an inflexion point and most economists believe this growth super-cycle will extend for over four decades.'
Although Walmart-Flipkart wholesale game-plan is to target about a $150 billion market out of a total pie of $700 billion in the country, the consolidation marks the end of the multi-brand dream of the American retail giant.
"The bilaterals amidst the multilateral. PM @narendramodi meets Premier Li Kequiang of China for first engagement," External Affairs Ministry Spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted.
Addressing the party workers and people of Bihar through a virtual rally, he attacked the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal saying the growth rate of the state was just 3.9 per cent when the party was in power, but it rose to 11.3 per cent under the NDA.
We will find it difficult to exceed an average of 5 per cent growth in the medium term, warns Shankar Acharya, the former chief economic adviser.
The publisher had approached the high court on November 12 challenging the October 30 order of the urban development ministry, ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises in the press enclave at ITO by November 15.
The publisher had approached the high court on Monday challenging the October 30 order of the urban development ministry, ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises in the press enclave at ITO in Delhi.
'We are in touch independently with leading players, and they are denying it as well.' 'The Indian digital footprint is rising, creating new opportunities.'
The country's near-term outlook hinged on a benign inflation trajectory, uptick in industrial activity and falling crude oil prices
There is a case for analysing the fiscal deficit, separately for expenditure and investment.
To begin with, there would be the immediate integration of various technology stacks. This would create more business for global consulting and IT services entities such as KPMG, PwC, EY, Accenture and IBM, among others. Indian service providers - Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro, for instance - would also cash in.
Among other things, taking note of complaints against several Chinese e-commerce players such as Shein, Ali Express etc for sending shipments as 'gifts' to customers in India and avoiding duties, the government has now mandated that all e-commerce sites and apps must have a registered business entity. This will be the importer on record and subject to customs rules, report Subhayan Chakraborty, Neha Alawadhi and Karan Choudhury.
India needs to follow countries such as Singapore who have and are further bolstering their cyber security apparatus.
The global COVID-19 situation, rollout of vaccines, geopolitical trends, Union Budget and economic recovery would be the major factors driving investor sentiments in 2021 after a tumultuous year which saw both 'the worst of times and the best of times' for the stock market, said analysts. What a year 2020 turned out to be! From witnessing gigantic losses to record-shattering gains, investors went on a roller-coaster ride amid the coronavirus pandemic and massive stimulus measures. Markets closed 2020 with remarkable gains of around 16 per cent, but will the winning ways continue in 2021 as well?
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Though the party's pre-poll promises include increasing the focus on technology, this isn't a new idea.
Nirmala Sitharaman's maiden Budget has not disappointed but vision and details, particularly for the revival of agriculture, are missing.
Jaishankar criticised the UNHRC for its criticism on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir,
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