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Taking clues from finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s last year’s budget speech on the government’s intention to privatise a few PSU banks, media reports appeared last week on the government’s intention to introduce a Bill during the coming monsoon session to privatise them and relax the cap on foreign equity holdings I banks. In this connection various legal, social, economic and the other far-reaching implications of privatisation of PSU banks need to be examined.

Uddhav Thackeray’s challenge to the man who replaced him, Eknath Shinde, to hold fresh elections in Maharashtra hasn’t elicited response, and likely would not because the Shinde-Fadnavis dispensation cannot for all the money in the BJP’s war-chest hazard a guess on which alliance will win the civic body elections, which is where the next test of strength will be on display.

The impact of the ongoing Russia—Ukraine war on energy and commodity prices has caused great global economic turmoil. Some countries are facing food shortage and all oil-importing countries have been adversely affected. The invasion has come at an unfortunate time for India. Just when we all dealt with our double balance sheet problem and our corporate and financial sector balance sheets started to rise, the war affected the capital investment cycle in India. It is important to recognize that inflation in India is not the result of increased aggregate demand — capacity utilization is still, on average, around 70% — but because of higher energy prices and supply chain disruptions. Thus, interest rate hikes cannot curb it.

It was an open secret that the oil companies have been minting money on account of the rising crude prices, although they have been dishing out doctored numbers to show losses. Now that the government has decided to enforce a windfall tax on the companies for the undue profits that have accrued to them, this has been officially acknowledged.

India finds itself in an unenviable position. Choosing an option has become ever more difficult. Financial sector crisis continues and the country has been suffering from negative shocks to credit growth which pushes up the macro vulnerability and increases downside risks to the growth in GDP. However, as the economy recovers from the pandemic, it needs a strong GDP growth at much higher level and will need to be sustained over the near and medium term to achieve many of its development goals. But higher GDP cannot be achieved without higher credit growth, and the whole situation becomes cyclical, a vicious one.

Chennai: Sarvesh Balappa (Axor Sparks Racing), an engineering student from Hubballi, took the pole position in the Novice (Stock 165cc) category as the second round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship commenced at the Madras International Circuit, here on Friday.

New Delhi: The Union Government on Friday launched revised schemes of Cash Awards, National Welfare and Pension to sportspersons, Web Portal for Schemes of Department of Sports (dbtyas-sports.gov.in) and National Sports Development Fund website (nsdf.yas.gov.in) here today.

The drive to establish one-party authoritarian rule was clearly expressed by the union home minister, Amit Shah, at the national executive meeting of the BJP held in Hyderabad on July 2-3. Moving the political resolution, Amit Shah said that the next 30-40 years will be the era of the BJP in India. It is a small mercy that he did not talk about BJP rule for the next thousand years in the style of the Third Reich.

It is not yet clear whether the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words would prove to be prophetic that Draupadi Murmu’s candidacy could become unifying factor in bringing together all parties, but one thing is certain that Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi have started the process of coming closer and reshaping their relations which was on sharp decline barely a couple of months back.

Social protection for rural workers in ‘remains a dream’ though 80 per cent of the poor of the world live in rural areas. Inadequate safety at work, low wage, lack of stability and security, and excessive working hours are the grinding stones for them in which women and young workers are the hardest hit by severe decent work deficit.