Government's "bonanza" offer is not a significant announcement to celebrate

Newspapers on Thursday had widely celebrated the governments 'festival bonanza' offer as a stimulus to revive the economy. However, senior journalist, Anindyo Chakravarty on a virtual interview, shared his opinion and claims that the announced bonus has already been given every year and that there was nothing significant about this for newspapers to celebrate.

The Indian Railways had announced that it will pay out productivity linked bonus worth 78 days' wages to its 11.58 lakh non-gazetted railway employees for FY 2019-20. The announcement comes a day after the Centre announced Rs 3,737-crore bonus to over 30 lakh central government employees. The government has announced the second "stimulus" to encourage the central government employees to spend during the upcoming festival season and add to demand in the economy.

He also criticised media organisations for not doing basic research before making such news as headlines.

" This is paid every year, and in fact, it is delayed this year. If only these media organisations had read their own inside pages, they might have found a passing mention of railway employees threatening to go on strike because the government had not announced the bonus yet." says Aunindyo.

" He also pointed out that there seems to be a concentrated effort in creating a 'feel- good" ever since the IMF projected that India's GDP is going to contract and is going to be among the worst-performing in this year. There is nothing wrong in that as long as you are really spending the money," he further added.