On Easter, April 9, 10,000 BJP workers are being assigned to visit the houses of 100,000 Christian families. Plans are afoot to visit the homes of Muslims on Eid.
Ahead of the Union Budget for 2023-24, Budget makers have welcomed the global consensus view that India will remain one of the bright spots in calendar year 2023. But there is some alarm over the grim global situation and how that might impact the Centre's projections and assessments for next financial year. The big global headwinds include a deep and sustained recession in the West, including India's biggest trading partners in North America and Europe, continuing volatility in commodity markets, and renewed Covid-19 fears, as lifting of strict curbs by China could potentially lead to a massive spread again.
Nearly 31 million Indians are unemployed and looking for jobs. While economic growth has been humming along, the pace of job creation has been poor. A revealing excerpt from Dev Kar's India: Still A Shackled Giant.
The Congress and JD-S have made much of Amit Shah's remarks about milk co-operatives. 'If the Opposition harps on the statement, it could add to the narrative that Gujarat was trying to take over Karnataka.'
The Indian services sector activity fell to a six-month low in September, as new business inflows rose at the slowest rates since March, amid inflationary pressures and competitive conditions, a monthly survey said. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index fell to 54.3 in September, from 57.2 in August, highlighting the weakest rate of expansion since March. For the fourteenth straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output. In Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) parlance, a print above 50 means expansion, while a score below 50 denotes contraction.
The commerce ministry is proposing a host of direct and indirect incentives such as deferral of import duties and exemption from export taxes to revamp Special Economic Zones through a new legislation, an official said. In the Union Budget this year, the government proposed to replace the existing law governing Special Economic Zones (SEZs) with a new legislation to enable states to become partners in 'Development of Enterprise and Service Hubs' (DESH). The official said the commerce ministry has sought views of different ministries, including finance, on the new bill.
Tejashwi Yadav on Friday called out Union Minister Giriraj Singh for sharing an "edited video" of an interview to suggest that the young Rashtriya Janata Dal leader was going back on his promise to create 10 lakh jobs in the state.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in poll-bound Karnataka on Friday sought to woo farmers, women and younger generation with a slew of welfare measures in its last budget in the current term, also earmarking Rs 1000 crore towards development and renovation of various temples and maths in the state.
'The China opportunity, the digital opportunity and the end of geography opportunity are the three pieces of luck India got due to Covid.'
The UK on Thursday (local time) closed Tier 1 Investor visa route to all new applicants from all nationalities with immediate effect over security concerns. Home Office took the action as the route failed to deliver for the UK people and gave opportunities for corrupt elites to access the UK. UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel took decisive action with immediate effect.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav on Friday addressed a joint political rally, the first since the two erstwhile rivals buried the hatchet and aligned nearly four months ago.
'It has been an ongoing process, talking to the relevant ministries about eliminating leakages and curbing non-core expenditure in various schemes.'
At the customary post-Budget media interactions, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her topmost bureaucrats touched upon a number of issues. The minister said the government taxing income from digital virtual assets did not give them legitimacy and that issue was being dealt separately in the planned cryptocurrency Bill. She also expressed confidence that the Budget targets were achievable.
'The inflection point that really happened in the sector was during the pandemic when buyers' perception changed towards consumption and that gave a trigger to pent-up demand with the increased affordability.'
Apple's three vendors in the country have hit the milestone of creating 30,000 new direct jobs since the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile devices kicked off in April 2021. Based on the government's estimate that one direct job in the electronics industry helps to generate three indirect ones, Apple's vendors, Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron, are close to creating 100,000 direct and indirect jobs. The direct jobs that the vendors have created account for a fourth of Apple's commitment to generate 60 per cent of the new direct jobs out of the 200,000 jobs targeted by the government under the PLI scheme within five years.
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
India's services sector lost momentum in July as demand was curtailed by competitive pressures, elevated inflation and unfavourable weather, a monthly survey said on Wednesday. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index fell from 59.2 in June to 55.5 in July, pointing to the slowest rate of growth in four months. For the 12th straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output. In Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction.
'The BJP's real weapons are Hindutva, organisation and finance.'
SBI was the top loser in the Sensex pack, shedding around 3 per cent, followed by Kotak Bank, IndusInd Bank, NTPC, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank. On the other hand, HUL, ITC, L&T, Bajaj Finserv and Tech Mahindra ended with gains.
The recommendation holds true for both indoors and outdoors, the CDC said.
While Employees State Insurance Corporation data shows job creation in February had dropped, Employees' Provident Fund Organisation said it had actually shown robust growth.
Yadav claimed that his boss Nitish Kumar, with whom he took oath the day before, has issued instructions to the officials concerned to accord "top priority" to job creation.
Thirteen years after their small car project was forced out of West Bengal following the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur, Industry and IT Minister Partha Chatterjee has said talks are on with the Tatas for big-ticket investments in the state. Underscoring job creation as the TMC government's top priority, Chatterjee also said incentives to companies will depend on ability to generate employment. He said the Mamata Banerjee dispensation wants two large manufacturing units to be set up by any prominent industrial house at the earliest. "We never had any enmity with the Tatas, neither we fought against them. "They are one of the most respected and biggest business houses of this country and also abroad. "You can't blame the Tatas (for the Singur fiasco).
'The classic thing we need as a country is the virtuous cycle where you have robust demand which leads to more capital spending which in turn leads to more job creation and more money in the hands of people.'
Wipro chairman Rishad Premji on Sunday said its leaders will start returning to office from Monday after 18 months of work from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "After 18 long months, our leaders @Wipro are coming back to the office starting tomorrow (twice a week). All fully vaccinated, all ready to go - safely and socially distanced," Premji said in a tweet. He also shared a video about the COVID-19-related safety protocols, including temperature checks and QR code scans, that have been put in place at the Wipro office.
Welcoming the latest round of stimulus announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, experts said the measures will support the economic recovery boosting demand, job creation and by providing funds to the MSME and stressed sectors. The fiscal impact of the stimulus is likely to be around 0.25-0.6 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal, they said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat is hoping to make a clean sweep in the Dalit and tribal-dominated Sabarkantha district comprising four Assembly constituencies even as unemployment has become a major issue that the ruling party hopes to negate with Hindutva and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma.
Tamil Nadu secured investments worth Rs 1.44 trillion on Monday by signing of memoranda of understanding (MoU) with 60 companies, laying of foundation stones and inauguration of new projects.
With the government putting strong emphasis on job creation, experts on Thursday said measures proposed in the union budget can help create 5-8 million jobs in next 3-4 years across various sectors.
New businesses have been secured from the public and private sectors, as well as domestic and international markets.
Services sector activities improved further and touched a five-month high in April driven by a surge in incoming new work orders that boosted business activity and supported a renewed increase in employment, according to a survey. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index jumped to 57.9 in April, from 53.6 in March, highlighting a sharp rate of expansion that was the fastest since last November amid mounting price pressures. For the ninth straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output.
'Nitish does not want to talk about development, unemployment, education, health infrastructure and poverty'
Two US lawmakers have introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that aims at granting an automatic right to H-4 visa holders to work in the country, a move which will benefit the spouses of thousands of foreigners, including Indians, and also address the labour shortage affecting American businesses. H-4 visas are issued to dependent spouses and children who accompany H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, and H-3 visa holders to the United States. Many H-4 visa holders are highly skilled people in their own right and previously had careers of their own or worked to support their families.
They said that massive public investment in infrastructure, social sectors and agriculture would generate employment and the Union Budget should give it a priority and allocate necessary funds for this.
The Karnataka Congress is a "united house" and it will fight the assembly polls next year on its own under a "collective leadership", party's state unit chief DK Shivakumar said on Thursday.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will kick start the customary pre-Budget consultation exercise with stakeholders from Wednesday by holding the first such meeting with experts of agriculture and agro-processing industry. She will be seeking inputs from various stakeholders, including industry bodies, farmer organisations and economists for reviving consumption and boosting growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The growth this year is expected to be in the double-digit during the current fiscal.
'By naming Tejashwi as the next CM candidate, he has put us in a dilemma.' 'Who will lead us in 2025?' 'What will happen to the party after 2025?'
Under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana announced by the Centre to incentivise formal sector job creation, all 'new employees', who were never a part of the EPF system in the past, and those who made an exit from employment during the Covid-19 pandemic from March 1, 2020, to September 30, 2020, will be eligible for the benefit.
In years past, we often approached the Budget expecting to see changes in direct and indirect taxes. Those days are behind us. The Budget of today seeks to expand the economy and keep it at the forefront of technology, observes Harsh Goenka.
The RJD leader said the coming to power of the Mahagathbandhan government with the JD-U, the RJD, the Congress and other parties uniting "augurs well for opposition unity".
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