Experts said a dip in consumption expenditure indicated an increasing prevalence of poverty in the country.

Sitharaman said the Bill has proposed giving a legal framework for fixed-term employment through which contract workers serving a fixed-tenure will get equal statutory social security benefits as regular workers in the same unit.

The findings of the report showed consumer spending falling for the first time in over four decades in 2017-18. The government has, however, termed it a "draft" report, reports Somesh Jha.

In the draft rules, among 681 listed professions, armed security guards, supervisors, surveyors, and carpenters (class I) are proposed to be treated as highly skilled professionals; electricians, tailors and drivers are skilled; cooks and cobblers as semi-skilled and dairy coolies, office peons and sweepers as unskilled.

After taking benefit of the scheme, jobs increased by around 11 mn in establishments that took loans.

Part of the dues has been pending since 1995-96 - the inception year of the Employees' Pension Scheme administered by the EPFO. The Centre also owes the EPFO more than Rs 1,000 crore towards the minimum pension scheme it had notified in September 2014.

The government would be ironing out issues related to the controversial 'bail-in' clause in the earlier Bill, explore hiking the deposit insurance cover of customers, and decide whether the resolution framework should apply to public sector banks.

PSBs have been requested to reach out to MSMEs to provide bill discounting to them against their dues since they suffer the most from shortage of cash.

PSB chiefs tried to argue that liquidity is in surplus in the system and the problem was related to lack of demand in the economy, instead of banks' reluctance to lend, but 'the FM said it is a perception issue that loan is not available, which we need to dispel,', reports Somesh Jha.

The NDA government will be following the footsteps of its predecessor, the UPA, which had introduced the concept of "loan mela" to boost credit by directing banks to lend to people through public meetings.

In the latest draft of the Code on Social Security Bill, 2019, the government has decided to stick to the current thresholds for providing social security benefits to workers by industry.

The government is set to ask PSBs to expeditiously introduce repo-rate linked products "to step up affordable credit".

The government wants to reduce the rate of contribution - part of the employee's share - for a class of workers depending upon age, income or gender, without changing the contribution from the employer's share.

Under the proposed mechanism, the finance ministry has said banks will notify customers when someone tries to deposit money in their accounts, a government official said.

The Bill states a worker will be paid twice his or her wage if he or she is allowed to work overtime. A majority of workers in India worked more than 48 hours in a week, which is higher than the International Labour Organisation's prescribed time-limit.

Garg had refused to sign on the report finalised by the former Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan-led committee reviewing the central bank's economic capital framework (ECF).

Single registration will be coupled with single licence, along with a single return, for executing projects for five years.

Under the New Code on Wages Bill 2019, employers will be required to give the minimum wages, notified by either the state or the Centre, to the unorganised sector, too.

After assuming power in 2014 with a full majority of its own, the BJP-led NDA government started an ambitious process of reforming labour laws in the form of codes aimed at making the framework less cumbersome with a variety of alterations. It had planned four codes each for industrial relations, wages, social security and welfare, and occupational safety, health and working conditions. To this end, 35 central labour laws were to be converted into four codes that would have had the virtue of streamlining labour relations. But none of the proposed code Bills could be converted into a law principally because neither trade unions nor industry representatives came on board. They hold the key to India's low-growth-high unemployment paradigm but the government may struggle to push them through this time as well. Somesh Jha explains why

'If there is a technical issue and the borrowers can resolve it within 30 days, you don't have to go through the bankruptcy court.' 'If the borrower is expecting a large disbursal of a facility or expecting a payment or receivables, in such cases it becomes practical to give a window for taking care of such circumstances. 'If banks had aggregated the assets and benefited with a long relationship with borrowers and now when assets get into a trouble, it is incumbent on banks to find resolution and take responsibility.'