KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

The average value of assets (AVA) of the top ten percent of urban households in India is more than seven thousand five hundred times greater than what the bottom ten percent owns. The AVA of the top decile was Rs. 1.5 crores, while the lowest decile owned an average of Rs. 2,000 of assets. The data is part of the All India Debt and Investment Survey - 2019, the survey for...

-The Hindu Why did senior officials of the apex banking regulator meet the MD and CEOs of public and certain private sector banks? What are the possible reasons for low deposit growth? What is the net status of non-performing assets? Has credit growth risen when compared to the year-ago period? The story so far: The Governor, Deputy Governor and a few other senior officials of apex banking regulator, the Reserve Bank of...

-The Telegraph In a remarkable development, for the first time in 20 years, currency in circulation (CIC) declined during Diwali week. With the increased acceptance of digital payments in the country, over-reliance on cash is slowly fading away. Over the years, the Indian cash-led economy has now changed to a smart-phone led payment economy, says a research note.   In the report, Dr Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic adviser of State Bank...

-The Telegraph Over two dozen petitions have challenged the legal and constitutional validity of DeMo A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice Abdul Nazeer will on Wednesday start hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes in November 2016. Over two dozen petitions have challenged the legal and constitutional validity of the demonetisation and the short window offered to citizens to exchange the demonetised notes. A three-judge...