From the Newsroom: Protesting farmers say ‘ghar wapsi’ only after ‘laws wapsi'

In your evening news brief, From the Newsroom, No breakthrough in Centre-farmers talks; IHS Markit says Indian economy is likely to rebound with an 8.9% growth in the fiscal year beginning April 2021, and UK approves Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine.

Here is the top news of January 8, 2021:

Another round of talks between the government and protesting farmers made no headway.

This was the eight round of such an exercise.

The farmers have stood their ground and have told the government to repeal the new farm laws. Using the words “ghar wapsi”, they said that their "ghar wapsi" from protest sites will happen only after "law wapsi".

Earlier, some BJP leaders have used the phrase “Ghar Wapsi” which has connotations of once-BJP legislators coming back to the party and conversion of religion of members of religious minorities.

Coming back to the farmers’ issue, the government also remained resolute and insisted that talks must be limited to contentious clauses and ruled out a complete withdrawal of Acts.

PTI sources informed the news agency that the next meeting is likely to take place on January 15 , keeping in mind a scheduled hearing of Supreme Court on January 11.

After the National Statistical Organisation predicted that the economy will contract 7.7% in the current financial year ending in March, yesterday; IHS Markit has today come out with a note saying that the Indian economy is likely to rebound with an 8.9% growth in the fiscal year beginning April 2021 after economic activity showed significant improvement in the last quarter.

The note admitted that the economy suffered a severe recession in 2020 and added that the worst contraction occurred during the period from March until August, with the economy aving shown a strong rebound in economic activity since September.

The GDP contracted by a record 23.9% in the April-June quarter following the lockdown and the contraction came down to 7.5% in the September quarter.

In international news, Britain's medical regulator has approved Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine.

The UK health ministry said that it has agreed to purchase an additional 10 million doses of the shot.

This is the UK third approved Coavid-19 vaccine— one by Pfizer/BioNTech's shot and one developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca already being rolled out.

Source: PTI/ Reuters