-The Hindu Following several compaints, the govt. has asked hotels/restaurants to prominently display that the service charge in the bill is voluntary. You, as a consumer, have the discretion to not pay ‘service charges’ added to your bill by any hotel/restaurant, according to the government. In a statement issued on Monday, the consumer affairs department asked the state governments to advise the hotels/restaurants to prominently display that “the service charges are discretionary /...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-The Indian Express For farmers, the main source of their woes is a bumper crop. If 2015 was the year of arhar (pigeon-pea) – retail prices of the milled dal scaled Rs 180-200 per kg levels in October and contributed hugely to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in the Bihar Assembly polls – 2016 is set to close with the humble legume virtually disappearing from the public radar. The new crop, which has...

-Hindustan Times The government’s decision to scrap high-value currency has sent wholesale vegetable prices crashing to rock-bottom levels, bringing misery to millions of farmers hoping for good returns for their produce after two successive drought years. Onions sold for just Re 1 per kilogram in wholesale markets at Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and Mandsaur this week while tomatoes cost less than Rs 2 per kg in Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh. A kilogram of cauliflower...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Insurance firms often lack a heart when dealing with claims, the chief of India's apex consumer protection body said on Saturday. Justice D K Jain, president of the National consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), also cited examples of surveyors doing their best to delay or deny compensation. "Insurance companies should have a heart. I feel they lack it," said Justice Jain at an event on National...