Whether one likes it or not, services constitute the value-addition sector that the country has to build on, using its comparative advantage in infotech and related skills, suggests T N Ninan.
'The future looks quite bleak unless we ramp up testing and start vaccinating on a war footing.'
Inflation is expected to remain low in the near term, in part because of the further declines in energy prices.
A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad said the government is expected to remain cognisant of the situation and evaluate it closely and if it is found that the rate of infection is going up, they can always review their decision and impose curbs, depending upon the situation.
For states like West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, where migration is high, the return of workers could be as much an opportunity as a liability. All states have launched portals to register migrant workers; additional fields like nature of employment and remuneration in the past 2-3 years are being added to help in skill mapping.
Ten trade unions with a combined membership of 15 crore workers in public and private sector, including banks and insurance companies, are on a nationwide strike to protest against changes in the labour laws.
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
'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.
The 15% invested every month in equity would be allotted to subscribers in the form of units.
Moody's has forecast that China would be the only G-20 country to post growth this year.
There is talk of a fresh approach to a new labour code as well as reforming land acquisition laws in such a way as to be politically.
The NDA government was initially reticent about fleshing out its economic strategy for the future. But now that it has taken enough bold initiatives on the economic front it must have the confidence to tell us more about its approach going forward, says Abheek Barua.
Wall Street brokerage Goldman Sachs has lowered its estimate for India's economic growth to 11.1 per cent in fiscal year to March 31, 2022, as a number of cities and states announced lockdowns of varying intensities to check spread of coronavirus infections. India is suffering the world's worst outbreak of COVID-19 cases, with deaths crossing 2.22 lakh and new cases above 3.5 lakh daily. This has led to demand for imposition of nationwide strict lockdowns to stem the spread of the virus - a move that the Modi government has so far avoided after the economic devastation last year from a similar strategy.
The government was going in the "wrong direction" and it was "highly condemnable" that it did not discuss the proposed changes with trade unions and other stakeholders, says BMS, trade union arm of the RSS.
The industry's operating margins will narrow by 0.30- 0.80 per cent largely on an increase in local hires which the industry has been forced into due to the policy framework in its markets.
The Code on Social Security, 2020 gives a lot of comfort to gig firms which recognise cab drivers or food delivery executives as 'independent contractors' who directly do business with customers with the help of their digitised platforms.
"Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe, in both developed and developing economies. We have to move fast, decisively, and together. The right, urgent, measures, could make the difference between survival and collapse," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said on Tuesday. Worldwide, two billion people work in the informal sector (mostly in emerging and developing economies) and are particularly at risk, the report said, adding that the COVID-19 crisis is already affecting tens of millions of informal workers. "In India, Nigeria and Brazil, the number of workers in the informal economy affected by the lockdown and other containment measures is substantial," ILO said.
Similarities between NDA and UPA on some key policy issues are now becoming too stark to be ignored, says A K Bhattacharya.
S&P Global Ratings has forecast India's economy to shrink by 5 per cent in the current fiscal. It, however, has projected GDP growth to be 8.5 per cent in 2021-22 and 6.5 per cent in 2022-23.
Fitch Ratings on Thursday said the resurgence of COVID-19 infections may delay India's economic recovery, but won't derail it, as it kept the sovereign rating unchanged at 'BBB-' with a negative outlook. It projected a 12.8 per cent recovery in GDP in the fiscal year ending March 2022 (FY22), moderating to 5.8 per cent in FY23, from an estimated contraction of 7.5 per cent in 2020-21. Fitch had in June last year revised outlook for India to 'negative' from 'stable' on grounds that the coronavirus pandemic had significantly weakened the country's growth outlook and exposed the challenges associated with a high public debt burden.
'Whoever owns the best chip industry will be the Saudi Arabia of the era of data,' predicts Rajeev Srinivasan.
Macroeconomic management is usually a lot more comfortable with lower fiscal deficits. The sooner we get there, the better for the economy, says former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India Shankar Acharya.
By passing this bill, Congress is showing that the US will not turn a blind eye to the suffering of the oppressed, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said.
Rescinding its more than 13-year-old policy, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has said that the burden of proof in establishing eligibility is, at all times, on the petitioner.
'Seen in the context of world turmoil in face of the pandemic and the Chinese 'miracle' of being the only country in the world to control it, this is not merely a 'Sputnik' moment, but a 'Sputnik Plus' moment,' argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Election manifestos may have lost their earlier importance. But a closer look at them does reveal a lot about a political party's own assessment of where it went wrong and what its future policy directions will look like, says A K Bhattacharya.
34 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide on an average every day in 2014, reflecting the deepening agrarian distress in several parts of the country.
The commission suggested that a comprehensive plan should be devised to handle the issue of missing files which has become a "stumbling block" in implementing the RTI act.
It is premature to make the assumption that Biden's policy toward China will not be a break with Trump, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
We are in this mess as the machinery of the government in a market economy is broken. We need technically sound banking regulation, so that capital is not misallocated, and the landscape does not get littered with zombie firms kept alive through evergreening, says Ajay Shah.
Banking operations including cheque clearance across the country got affected on Monday as bankers under the aegis of the United Forum of Bank Unions have gone on a nationwide strike to protest against the proposed privatisation of two state-owned lenders.
Mani Ratnam is experimenting with a real-life historical in Ponniyin Selvan, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
She faced off against former disciple-turned-defector Suvendu Adhikari in a very different contest. It's not land acquisition, but an ego clash that has acquired, tragically, communal overtones, explains Kanika Datta.
In a drastic measure to stem any major disruption to the US economy as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark interest rate to almost zero and said it would buy USD700 billion in bonds. The covid-19 pandemic has sickened more than 156,000 people worldwide and left more than 5,800 dead. The death toll in the US stands at 68, while infections neared 3,700.
India has over 4,000 medium tanks, but not a single light tank. It remains to be seen whether the Ladakh face-off with China galvanises a change, observes Ajai Shukla.
Direct economic stimulus measures such as tax cuts for individuals and industry would have helped to prop up the Indian economy which was hit hard by the lockdowns across several states in India, say economists and corporate leaders. While the measures announced on Monday are focussed more on the supply side, these steps would take a lot of time to move the needle for the economy.
'A sustainable growth rate of 8 per cent is evidently some distance away,' says T N Ninan.
The United Kingdom votes on June 8. A quick guide to the post terror election.
The lack of a strong diversity policy on the part of companies, a limited pool of women candidates as well as socio-cultural factors contribute to their low numbers.
The government's decision to release the reports comes two days after over 200 scholars from across the globe issued a statement demanding release of all withheld reports produced by the NSO, including the household consumer expenditure survey that was junked.
