-The Indian Express The anti-incumbency Banerjee faces is as much about local-level corruption and competing ideologies as it is about stalled industrialisation, weak credit growth, a near-freeze in new jobs, low infrastructure development and agriculture spend. AS West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee fights perhaps her most significant electoral battle, framing her contest is not just BJP vs Trinamool politics — but the state’s economics as well. The anti-incumbency Banerjee faces is as...

-Hindustan Times Studies that measure the contribution of MGNREGS towards improving the adaptive capacity of the beneficiary households have remained few and far between. While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been a valuable employment tool and safety net, as seen in the migrant crisis, its role in building ecosystems resilient to the climate crisis is being increasingly recognised. There is now an urgent need to bring upfront...

-Livemint.com * Trying to project lower interest rates as a panacea for everything isn’t the right way to go about it. The central government just played an April Fool’s joke on a large section of India’s middle class, which invests in small savings schemes. Late Wednesday evening, the government announced a substantial cut in interest rates on small savings schemes for the three months to June. The interest rates on Senior Citizen Savings Scheme...

-The Hindu This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on small savings schemes after switching to a quarterly interest rate setting system in April 2016. Hours after notifying significant cuts in small savings instruments’ returns for this quarter, the government has backtracked on these sharp cuts. This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on small savings schemes after...

-The Hindu/ PTI It is the steepest contraction in the last six months The output of eight core sectors declined by 4.6% in February, the steepest contraction in the last six months, which, experts said, could drag the overall industrial production in the month into the negative territory. All the key segments, including coal, crude oil, natural gas, and refinery products, witnessed a decline in production, according to the official data released on...