-Hindustan Times HT learns that the meeting, attended by several secretaries of the government, saw the minister emphasising the need to focus on positive news. Around 300 top officials of the central government participated in a workshop titled Effective Communications, conducted by Abhishek Singh, the CEO of MyGov, a government platform for citizen engagement, aimed at helping them “create a positive image of the government”, manage “perception through effectively highlighting positive stories...

-The Hindu The Indirect Tax collections were 27% higher than that in March 2020. The gross GST collections in March hit a record of ₹1,23,902 crore, the Union Finance Ministry said on Thursday. This is the sixth month in a row that GST revenues have remained above ₹1 lakh crore. “The GST collections for March have created a record; it has never been so high. We have crossed the record collections by a...

Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...

-Livemint.com * Central and state taxes make up for 60% of the retail selling price of petrol and over 54% of diesel * On 20 February, petrol price was hiked by record 39 paise per litre and diesel by 37 paise a litre Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das called for reduced Indirect Taxes on petrol and diesel to contain the fuel prices at a reasonable level. Petrol and diesel prices in...

-The Telegraph The slump in the GDP and the pain ahead The -23.9 per cent shrinkage in the April-June GDP is not a surprise as nearly half the period witnessed a national lockdown. It’s also not surprising that this loss is the world’s steepest for India’s lockdown was the most stringent and the accompanying fiscal policy response the weakest. But the quarter per cent slump did surprise most analysts who have since...