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Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget has played truant with the gold trade, which is in the throes of a crisis for what the finance minister has not done rather than any act of commission in her last full-fledged budget of her current tenure.

ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations has sought latest data and information from the government of India regarding the concerns raised by national and international trade unions regarding violation of international labour standards’ obligations.

New Delhi: Defending champions Gujarat Titans will take on Chennai Super Kings in the opener of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) at Ahmedabad on 31 March.

New Delhi: Pacer Mohd. Shami (4/60) spinners R.Ashwin (3/57) and Ravinder Jadeja (3/68) restricted Australia to 263 in their first innings and in reply India were 21 without loss at stumps on the opening day of the second cricket test at Arun Jaitely Stadium here on Friday.

New Delhi: As expected Chetan Sharma on Friday morning resigned as chairman of BCCI’s senior selection committee following a sting operation conducted by a TV news channel.

On the occasion of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s visit recently to Mexico, that country’s leader, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, (AMLO) raised the possibility of many nations cooperating to oppose the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

Just as we were getting disabused of misplaced notions like the one about earth being flat comes this assertion that the first man on the planet was native to the subcontinent! It is being spread that “Abul Bashar Sayyed Adam” appeared on Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka by a miracle of God Almighty, and Sri Lanka is an extension of mainland India.

The newsfeeds from the US seem to be completely insane. First, an F22 Raptor, the most expensive US military aircraft, is used to shoot down a Chinese balloon over the Atlantic ocean. Three more "unidentified flying objects" – definitely not balloons are shot down in three days, two over the US and one over Canada. On being asked whether they could be of extraterrestrial origin, the General Glen Van Herck, in charge of the US North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), said in his press conference: "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything" (Italics mine).

The 2023-24 Union budget has allocated Rs10 lakh crore (121.0 billion US dollar) as capital expenditure for 2023-24. Nearly one-fourth of the capital outlay will be spent on constructing new roads and highways and another quarter on railways for running new high-speed trains (like Vande Bharat) and laying new tracks and 10 per cent to state governments as loans for spending on infrastructure projects. Total budget allocations amount to nearly three percent of GDP for infrastructure building. The huge public expenditure may not kick start the economy, generate new jobs, and promote demand as promised by the finance minister but becomes another neoliberal economic bonanza to benefit the super-rich.

With a prospect of India’s economic growth rate to decelerate from 7 per cent in 2022-23 to about 5.5 per cent with further downside risks, reigning in inflation in the country seems to be difficult in 2023-24 or beyond amidst global uncertainties and economic downturn.