-The Telegraph The Central Statistics Office reported today that economic growth sank to a three-year low at 5.7 per cent, striking at the core of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise of achchhe din. The sharp slowdown is a result of the two biggest disruptive measures taken by the Modi government: demonetisation and the goods and services tax. The double whammy has badly crimped factory output and squeezed the services sector. The GDP growth...

-The Indian Express A report, prepared by a Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) committee states that wages under the rural employment guarantee scheme were last aligned to minimum wages in 2009, and that “there is no compelling reason to align MGNREGA and states minimum wages again”. New Delhi: THE PANEL for revision of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has recommended in its final report that there...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation: The “pipeline” demonetised collections, according to these officials, include banned notes lying with citizens in Nepal as deliberations between the RBI and the Nepal Rashtra Bank (NRB) for the exchange of such notes did not fructify. New Delhi: On a day when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the data for collected demonetised currency, top RBI officials told The Indian Express that the figure could creep closer...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday said that Rs 15.28 lakh crore --or 99% of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore demonetised by withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes on November 8, 2016 --has been deposited with banks. The disclosure dashes hopes of the government earning a windfall by extinguishing trillions of rupees worth demonetised currency that has not been returned. In its annual report, the...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation: On digital transactions, too, RBI data shows that the volume of electronic payments, after peaking in December 2016 at 957.50 million transactions compared with 671.49 million in November, has been on a decline. New Delhi: When it launched the currency withdrawal in November, the NDA government had outlined four key objectives of the demonetisation exercise: detection of black money, elimination of fake currency, squeezing funds available for...