-The Hindu Finance Bill provides for rise of Rs.5/litre While the Budget has effected a hike in the duties and cess on petrol and diesel amounting to Rs.2 per litre, the government has given itself the leeway for a further increase of levies by Rs.5 per litre, Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said. While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced a Rs.1/litre increase in the Special Additional Duty (SAD) on petrol and diesel...

-Frontline.in The mergers of small primary schools with low enrolment rates with bigger ones may have saved money for the Jharkhand government, but it has wreaked havoc on the lives of children in remote areas who find it difficult to commute to their new schools. It is a little past seven in the morning, time for children to get ready for school. But for nine-year-old Phoolmati Kumari, in Tengrapathar village of Jharkhand’s...

-The Hindu The rhetoric in the Budget of accelerated, inclusive and sustainable development receives only limited financial backing The general election is over and a new government has been formed. But the campaign does not seem to end. More than an hour of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s maiden Budget speech was largely devoted to underlining what she claimed were the remarkable economic achievements of the previous government. Given that legacy, she presented...

-Down to Earth Nine states, which have fertility rates well below the replacement rate, will have an aged population by 2030s India’s population growth rate will decline faster than assumed, according to the Economic Survey 2018-19. In fact, the fertility rate in many states has reached the replacement rate. “India is set to witness a sharp slowdown in population growth in the next two decades,” analysed the Economic Survey. "The country will enjoy...

-Livemint.com India’s actual growth rate over the past few years may have been in the range of 5-5.5% over the past few years, according to a new study Last month, a research paper by the former chief economic adviser to the finance ministry, Arvind Subramanian, reignited the controversy surrounding India’s GDP calculations. In his paper, Subramanian suggested that India’s growth rate in recent years had been grossly overestimated --- a claim that...