-The Hindu Consumer demand started to decline before the pandemic and worsened after outbreak In September, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was anguished that industry was holding back from investing in manufacturing despite a significant cut in corporate tax rates in 2019. The slowdown in corporate investment did not happen because companies were making losses. In fact, private companies, boosted by considerable tax cuts, made windfall profits. A State Bank of India analysis shows...

-Hindustan Times The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) began in Beijing on October 16. While the run-up to the 20th congress has been dominated by talks of Xi Jinping getting elected as the highest leader for an unprecedented third consecutive time, the gathering will also have to confront serious and somewhat new questions as far as the Chinese economy is concerned. The 20th National Congress of the...

-The Hindu Being fiscally conservative resulted in a rise in extreme poverty, with there being no signs of any course correction A recent World Bank report, titled “Correcting Course”, captures the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global poverty. The number of people living in extreme poverty rose by seven crore million in 2020, as the global poverty rate rose from 8.4% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2020. This is the first...

The newly released World Bank report has estimated that the number of extremely poor people globally went up by nearly 71 million in the year 2020 as compared to 2019 — a 11 percent increase. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of poor swelled by around 56 million in India. It means that about 79 percent of the total people globally who slipped into poverty during the first year of...

-Press release by Satark Nagrik Sangathan dated October 11, 2022 Tomorrow (October 12, 2022) marks 17 years of implementation of the RTI Act in India. The law has empowered millions of people to seek information and hold the government accountable. Under the RTI law, information commissions are the final appellate authority and are mandated to safeguard and facilitate people’s fundamental right to information. Information commissions (ICs) have been set up at...