-The Hindu Unlike the rest of India, Kerala has maintained the same level of daily testing despite a reduction in number of cases From mid-February, a spike in daily new cases was reported from a few States including Maharashtra. For days on end, the Health Ministry kept repeating the message that Kerala too was “witnessing an upsurge of daily new cases”. Even as recently as March 6, the Health Ministry wrongly implicated...

-PTI/ The Hindu Consumption drag likely,says UBS unit Households have lost a whopping ₹13 lakh crore of their incomes from the pandemic-induced job losses, according to a report that also warns of the economy losing momentum by mid-2021 on a likely slowdown in consumption demand that has propped the economy in recent months. ‘Could slow by mid-2021’ Describing the growth momentum seen in the second and third quarters of FY21 as a positive surprise,...

-Newslaundry.com Newslaundry spoke to journalists named in a group of ministers’ report on ‘government communication’. Here’s what they have to say. In June 2020, the Narendra Modi government reached out to “prominent persons from the media field” to help identify strategies to effectively communicate “10 big narratives of the government”. The initiative, led by a group of union ministers who were “guided” by the prime minister, summarised recommendations in a report that...

-The Hindu Says think tank has not even got country’s map correct Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman lashed out at the U.S. think tank Freedom House — which has downgraded India’s status from “free” to “partly free” — accusing the body of not even getting the “Indian map” correct. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry on behalf of the government also issued a statement calling the report “misleading, incorrect and misplaced”. Speaking to reporters at...

-The Indian Express The March 4 letter said that FCI, Zonal Office (N), Noida, has directed that land records are a must for wheat procurement in RMS 2021-22. Jalandhar: The Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) Punjab office on Thursday wrote to the director of food, civil supplies and consumer affairs seeking land records of farmers so as to make direct online payment of Minimum Support Price (MSP) to their bank accounts from...