Conservancy workers of Madurai Corporation stage sit-in protest; five rounds of talks with officials inconclusive, says CITU
Around 1,200 workers staged a protest from the morning and as a result, garbage lifting exercise was largely affected in the city, the agitators claimed and added that they would not rest until the private contract firm's order was cancelled.
The workers said that they were yet to get the incentive of ₹15,000 promised during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agitators said that the daily wage earners were promised ₹784 per day by the government. However, it has not been implemented. Similarly, the government should give one month's salary as bonus to the workers in view of Deepavali.
CITU trade union leader Balasubramanian said that they had held five rounds of talks from the morning with the officials and they were hopeful of reaching an agreement. 'Commissioner Chitra Vijayan and her officials listened to us patiently and we expect a favourable response by tonight,' he added.
In the event of not reaching any agreement, the striking workers said that they would continue with their sit-in protest. However, a senior official of the Madurai Corporation said that they have informed the police and the workers may be detained. The CITU leader said that in the event of not arriving at a solution, the agitators would court arrest. 'The strike will intensify on Tuesday', he noted.
Meanwhile, officials said that demands like regularisation of daily wagers as permanent employees involved the approval of the government. Issues like pay parity and providing gadgets for workers by the contract firm can be met with without much delay.
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India Today
2 hours ago
- India Today
What India's credit ladder climb means and how to boost it further
On August 14, a short bulletin from S&P Global set the Indian markets abuzz. The credit rating agency had lifted India's sovereign rating from BBB- to BBB, ending an 18-year-long wait since the last such the crowded lexicon of financial jargon, this shift might sound incremental, but in the tightly codified world of sovereign credit, it is the difference between being barely in the club of investment-grade economies and having a slightly more comfortable seat at the developments happened as New Delhi is fiercely negotiating trade deals with Washington DC and Brussels, the Donald Trump administration has slapped 50 per cent additional tariffs, impacting Indian exports to the United States, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is talking about unlocking the Swadeshi 2.0 version of economic credit rating improvement came as an applaud. The rupee strengthened, bond yields eased and a chorus of congratulatory statements rolled in from the finance ministry and industry bodies. In total, the S&P upgrade could unlock $30-50 billion (or more) of fresh capital into India's bond markets alone—both passive and active—within a 12-18 month window. Coupled with improved yields and investor sentiment, this could lower borrowing costs for both sovereign and corporate borrowers, deepen the bond market and reinforce India's credibility in global capital markets. Yet, behind the instant reactions lay a more interesting story—why now, and where next?S&P's decision was not the product of a single data point but a slow accumulation of signals over the past three years. One was the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) resolute defence of its inflation target. After the Covid pandemic years of price volatility and a bruising spell of food and fuel spikes, the central bank tightened policy and then resisted the temptation to cut which had looked stubbornly sticky, drifted back towards the midpoint of the 2-6 per cent range, averaging about 4.6 per cent in FY25, its most benign reading in six years. In S&P's language, this was 'anchoring expectations'—a phrase that may sound bland but carries enormous weight in the models that decide sovereign second signal was fiscal. Since 2021, the government has stuck to a publicly declared glide path to reduce its deficit, despite election cycles and expenditure pressures. The FY26 target of 4.4 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a credible marker of intent for a country emerging from the pandemic's fiscal deep importantly, the quality of spending has shifted. S&P took note that more public money is being channelled into infrastructure—roads, rail, ports and digital networks—rather than into ballooning subsidies. This is the sort of spending that rating analysts are willing to overlook in deficit arithmetic because it has the potential to boost productivity and expand the tax for all the optimism, BBB is only the bottom rung of investment grade. It signals moderate credit risk, a step above speculative territory, but still far from the As and AAs that bring the lowest borrowing costs and the broadest investor access. India is in the same bracket as Greece and just a notch below Italy and Portugal. To climb further, the country will have to turn these early wins into an unbroken agencies want to see the debt-to-GDP ratio, now hovering above 80 per cent, move decisively downward. They want inflation to stay boring, as central bankers say neither too high to invite panic nor too low to suggest stagnation. They want external buffers thick enough to weather oil price spikes, trade disruptions or sudden stops in capital means keeping foreign exchange reserves comfortably in the $680-700 billion range or higher, even as the RBI steps in to calm the currency during bouts of volatility. It means lifting exports of higher-value goods—electronics, pharmaceuticals, renewables supply chains—so that the current account deficit narrows without throttling domestic demand. It means deepening the corporate bond market so that infrastructure can be financed without leaning so heavily on state-owned banks and the sovereign more difficult reforms will play out away from the capital. State governments remain weak links in the sovereign story, with power distribution companies bleeding cash, tariff reforms stuck in political stalemate and capital expenditure often the first casualty of revenue stress. Since S&P assesses 'general government' debt and deficits—combining the Centre and the states—these subnational lapses drag the whole rating down. Cleaning up state-level finances, particularly in the electricity sector, would be a visible marker of structural balance-sheets, though healthier than a decade ago, still require vigilance. Non-performing assets are lower, but credit growth is heavily skewed towards retail loans, with investment credit lagging. A deeper, more liquid bond market could reduce the dependence on bank funding and provide alternative channels for long-term infrastructure finance. S&P and its peers are explicit: countries with diversified financial systems are more resilient and thus more India can deliver two or three consecutive years of meeting or beating its deficit targets, trimming the debt ratio, holding inflation steady and preserving reserves, another upgrade—to BBB+—by the latter half of the decade is realistic. That would make India more attractive to global pension and insurance funds bound by stricter investment mandates, lowering the cost of capital across the economy. The next leap, into the A category, is harder and will demand deeper reforms in land, labour, and logistics—areas where political economy often overwhelms economic now, the August upgrade is a reward for consistency. The Narendra Modi government has resisted populist temptations to derail the fiscal path, even in a politically charged environment. The RBI has kept its inflation target in sight and avoided sudden, credibility-sapping moves. Markets have taken note, foreign investors are circling back, and the agencies are acknowledging that India is less of a credit risk than it ratings are forward-looking. They are less a reward for what has been done than a bet on what will be sustained. The next few budgets, the next few inflation prints, the next set of reserve numbers—they will all feed into the decision on whether this August's announcement becomes the first in a chain of upgrades or a solitary uptick in a long symbolism of the date—a day before Independence Day—was not lost on the political establishment. Ministers spoke of global recognition of India's economic management, of validation for Viksit Bharat 2047, of a vote of confidence from the world's financial arbiters. In truth, the upgrade is neither a coronation nor a charity. It is a judgement grounded in data that India's macroeconomic fundamentals have improved enough to merit a slightly higher rating. It comes with the unspoken clause that this can be reversed if the fundamentals ratings are often dismissed as lagging indicators, and it's true that markets can sometimes price risk more quickly than agencies adjust their grades. But in the architecture of global capital, these grades matter. They determine the pool of potential investors in Indian debt, influence the cost of borrowing for both government and corporate issuers, and shape perceptions among multilateral lenders. They are, in effect, a passport stamp in the world's credit has just received a cleaner stamp than it had for nearly two decades. The immigration officer, so to speak, has waved it through into a slightly better lounge. But the premium seats are still ahead and the path to them is strewn with the unglamorous work of fiscal housekeeping, monetary discipline, export upgrading and institutional reform. If the country can stay that course, the next time S&P pronounces its creditworthiness, it might not just be an upgrade worth a headline—it could be a step into a new league to India Today Magazine- Ends
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
Diamonds worth Rs 25 crore stolen from Surat firm, police on look out for ex-security guard
Diamonds worth over Rs 25 crore were stolen from a Surat-based firm by unidentified thieves, who broke open a metal safe and decamped with the precious gems, the police said. According to police, the incident took place between August 15 and 17 at D K Sons at Kapodara area of Surat, during which CCTV cameras at the building were vandalised and the video recorder was taken away in an attempt to destroy evidence. Since the company had declared a three-day holiday in view of Independence Day and Janmashatmi, neither employees nor security guards were present at the unit when the diamonds were stolen, police said. Kapodara police registered a theft case based on a complaint filed by DK Sons owner Devendra Chaudhary. Speaking to The Indian Express, Surat Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 1) Alok Kumar said they were on the lookout for a former security guard at the diamond firm, who was fired a month ago for suspicious activities. 'We have found a couple of cigarette butts, empty pouches of gutkha and tobacco. A security guard who worked at D K Sons was fired by the firm owner, Chaudhary, a month ago, after the latter used to bring his friends to the factory and chat with them. The former security guard is one of our prime suspects, and his mobile phone was found to be active in Jharkhand. We are also questioning other staff in the diamond factory,' Kumar said. 'The safe box was quite warm, so we suspect that the theft might have taken place last night (Sunday). The Crime Branch is also involved in the probe and we are in contact with police officials of other states. The miscreants used a gas cutter to break the three layers of the metal safe and stole polished and rough diamonds,' Kumar added. Police said that the diamond factory is run in a four-storey building, owned by Chaudhary. In his complaint, Chaudhary said that he had left the building on the afternoon of August 15 after keeping all the polished and rough diamonds in the metal safe on the fourth floor. He learnt about the theft on Monday morning when he found the lock of the main gate broken and diamonds were missing from the metal safe. He immediately called the police. Top police officials visited the spot along with forensic officials and the dog squad. Checking CCTV cameras of the nearby area, police found three to four youths alighting from an auto-rickshaw carrying a gas cutter. According to industry sources, Chaudhary is involved in diamond manufacturing and auctioning activities. He was scheduled to hold diamond auctions at his firm in the coming four days, and for that, he had stocked the diamonds in the safe. In his statements to police, Chaudhary said that the annual turnover of his firm is around Rs. 300 crore. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were over 1,500 employees, and presently there are around 20 diamond polishers. He has reduced the diamond production and has been focusing on the auctioning.
The Hindu
3 hours ago
- The Hindu
Conservancy workers of Madurai Corporation stage sit-in protest; five rounds of talks with officials inconclusive, says CITU
Demanding the Madurai Corporation to implement their genuine demands, including implementation of the High Court Bench order to regularise the jobs of 389 daily wagers as permanent employees, the CITU affiliated workers staged a sit-in protest at the Anna Maaligai, the headquarters of the civic body on Monday. Around 1,200 workers staged a protest from the morning and as a result, garbage lifting exercise was largely affected in the city, the agitators claimed and added that they would not rest until the private contract firm's order was cancelled. The workers said that they were yet to get the incentive of ₹15,000 promised during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agitators said that the daily wage earners were promised ₹784 per day by the government. However, it has not been implemented. Similarly, the government should give one month's salary as bonus to the workers in view of Deepavali. CITU trade union leader Balasubramanian said that they had held five rounds of talks from the morning with the officials and they were hopeful of reaching an agreement. 'Commissioner Chitra Vijayan and her officials listened to us patiently and we expect a favourable response by tonight,' he added. In the event of not reaching any agreement, the striking workers said that they would continue with their sit-in protest. However, a senior official of the Madurai Corporation said that they have informed the police and the workers may be detained. The CITU leader said that in the event of not arriving at a solution, the agitators would court arrest. 'The strike will intensify on Tuesday', he noted. Meanwhile, officials said that demands like regularisation of daily wagers as permanent employees involved the approval of the government. Issues like pay parity and providing gadgets for workers by the contract firm can be met with without much delay.
