The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-PTI/ The Hindu Currently, basic customs duty on crude palm oil is 15%, while it is 45% for all other categories of palmolein. The government on Tuesday reduced basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%, which will help bring down the edible oil prices in the retail market. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) in a notification cut the basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%...

-IndiaSpend.com To fight hunger and distress due to the pandemic, India must universalise foodgrain distribution, expand the food basket in its rations scheme and provide cash transfers, activist Anjali Bhardwaj tells us in this interview Bengaluru: The pandemic-induced lockdowns have had a profound impact on livelihoods, affecting poor Indians' food intake, studies show. In October 2020, more than half the respondents of a Hunger Survey said their rice/wheat consumption had declined during...

-Newsclick.in Modi government has been mercilessly hiking up taxes on petrol and diesel to take money from the people and boost its resources. Since the prices of petroleum products were deregulated some years back and supposedly “linked” to markets, the central government has weaponised this to simply impose an indirect tax burden on the people. Take the four big metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. On an average, petrol prices have increased from...

-The Hindu Aid to be transferred to bank accounts The Centre has ordered State welfare boards for building and other construction workers (BOCW) not to distribute household and other articles to workers and instead stick to transferring monetary assistance into their bank accounts. The Labour and Employment Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it issued an order to States on Monday directing the boards not to distribute articles. The BOCW boards...