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Mint has reviewed a copy of the letter.Many travellers at the Navi Mumbai airport also took to the social media platform X to complain about the lack of cellular connectivity at the airport over the last few days. The airport, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 October, began operations on 25 December, with the arrival of its first commercial flight.A NMIAL spokesperson, in response to Mint’s queries, said that it has not denied permission to the telecom services providers (TSPs) and is discussing the matter with them.“Owing to the delay by other TSPs, NMIA is providing free, high-speed Wi-Fi services reiterating its commitment to provide high-speed connectivity to all the passengers,” the spokesperson said.Queries emailed to operators’ lobby the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Tuesday evening did not elicit any response until press time.S.P.

Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected]’s trade policy in 2025 unfolded against a challenging global backdrop of high US tariffs, geopolitical uncertainty and slowing global demand.

₹100 to the dollar.Former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian argued this week in the Indian Express that ₹100 per dollar is a worthy new-year resolution for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), not least because China and East Asia have kept their currencies cheap to exploit foreign markets: “The markets are trying to do a desirable job that policymakers have been unable or unwilling to do.”Indian companies are savvy enough to hedge their currency exposure.We should do more to help our most labour-intensive industries: ‘Make in India’ needs to be rebranded as ‘Hand-Make in India.’ A much-needed pen-stroke reform, says Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar, is to “simply remove GST on handlooms; it needlessly increases the paperwork and end price.”I buy handloom or hand-dyed cotton and walk 400 metres from my apartment to a tailor who adeptly makes shirts out of Kerala mundu material and even delicate jamdani that looks like candyfloss.Consider renaming Ease of Doing Business as a more truthful ‘unease of doing business,’ thus focusing on reducing the complexity of dealing with the government.It is wonderful, of course, that we can pay our taxes online almost as easily as buying a book off Amazon, but our tax system is still too complex and does little to widen the tax base. In fact, the last budget arguably narrowed it by raising the income threshold for income tax.In a country as unequal as ours, we need an inheritance tax.

Mint analysis found.While the number of instances rose from 26 in 2023, 30 in 2024, to 38 in 2025, the size of the penalty shrank. These include fines on the public sector, private sector, foreign banks, small finance banks, and payments banks.These penalties totalled ₹25.5 crore in 2025, while the median amount was ₹55.7 lakh.

The year 2025 emerged as a pivotal year for household finances—marked by significant changes like a reduction in mandatory annuitization in the National Pension System (NPS), lower income tax rates, GST slab rationalization, and the introduction of new labour codes—laying the groundwork for how Indians will plan, save, and invest in 2026.For instance, the new tax regime has emerged as the obvious choice for most taxpayers following the increase in the rebate limit to ₹12 lakh. To make the old regime work, taxpayers would now need to claim deductions of over ₹8 lakh a year—a tough target given the ₹1.5 lakh cap under Section 80C and no change in the ₹50,000 standard deduction for years.

Times of India reported that Warburg was planning to sell its stake in a transaction that could value IndiaFirst at more than ₹10,000 crore.Set up in 2009, IndiaFirst offers a range of life insurance products, including term plans, savings and retirement solutions. Its initial shareholders were Bank of Baroda, Andhra Bank, now part of Union Bank of India, and Legal & General Middle East Ltd.In February 2019, Legal & General sold its stake to Carmel Point Investments India Pvt.

on the Nifty and the Bank Nifty by 120,022 contracts on Friday from 53,442 contracts on Wednesday, as per data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Markets were shut on Thursday for Christmas.FPIs increased their cumulative net short calls by 13,953 contracts from 2,422 contracts during this period, while retail and high-net-worth investors and domestic institutional investors were net buyers.Calls are generally sold when traders expect the markets to remain flat or correct.

India Ageing Report 2023 projects that the number of persons aged 60 years and above would double from 149 million in 2023 to over 347 million (25% of the population) by 2050. The dependency ratio would grow from 16% in 2020 to 34% by 2050.This has profound social, political and economic implications.

Pension System (NPS) to increase its wider acceptance among households, while the Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) took some tough calls to plug complete withdrawals of the provident fund. Here are the headline events of 2025 in the space that you should take note of.NPS is a defined contribution plan. The original product required an investment for a certain number of years, and on vesting or maturity, which coincides with the traditional retirement age of 60, you annuitise at least 40% of that corpus to buy a pension for life.

A sharp rise in exports in November, aided by a low base, helped pull India sharply ahead of other emerging market (EM) peers, as shown by the latest Mint's Emerging Market Tracker, even as the rupee and stock market performance remained weak. India, with a composite score of 71, was way ahead in the race.

The government is likely to announce a manufacturing-focused incentive scheme under the Drone Shakti initiative in the Union budget for 2026-27 to accelerate the indigenous production of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a Moneycontrol report. The proposed scheme is expected to run for five years and align with the period of the Sixteenth Finance Commission, the report said.Here are three drone stocks that stand to benefit should an announcement materialize.

New-age electric bus manufacturers have stormed India’s biggest tender, picking up nearly 80% of the 10,900 e-buses on offer as part of the ₹10,900-crore PM E-Drive scheme, leaving legacy players with little to show for their efforts.Flush with recent investments, companies like PMI Electro Mobility and Eka Mobility offered aggressive, lucrative pricing, securing contracts for 5,210 and 3,485 e-buses, respectively.Among other manufacturers, only Olectra Greentech—an established electric bus manufacturer and a subsidiary of Hyderabad-based EPC company Megha Engineering—managed a partial win, bagging 1,785 e-buses.Bigger names such as Tata Motors and VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV) were caught off guard when the results, revealed on Wednesday, showed they had not won a single contract, according to three executives directly aware of the development. Chennai-based Ashok Leyland missed the tender entirely due to a technical glitch and has approached the Delhi High Court.Government officials and industry executives spoke on the condition of anonymity as the results are so far only known to the bidders and haven’t been made public.

$100 and 120 million at a $500-550 million valuation. The latter, which first raised $2 million in May, is in talks to raise another round of funding, according to news website Moneycontrol.com.While more of these companies are likely to appear in 2026 and secure funding, they remain largely similar, with investors focused primarily on the size and disruptive potential of the market.In a business burdened by high customer acquisition costs, the core challenge lies in cracking unit economics.

Mint explains what the government’s NOC actually signifies, and why these approvals are unlikely, by themselves, to change the current structure of India’s aviation market any time soon.No. An NOC does not allow an airline to fly, sell tickets, or commence operations. It merely permits a company to begin the formal process of setting up an airline.Air Kerala illustrates the gap between approval and execution.

rare earth magnets, a key input for sectors ranging from defence and electronics to renewable energy and electric vehicles.Mint unpacks the committee's recommendations and India's ambitions for rare earth magnets.Critical mineral security assumes significance amid geopolitical uncertainties and trade wars as nations try to leverage their resources to disrupt supply chains.China’s export ban on rare earth magnets in April 2025, which disrupted manufacturing supply chains globally, resulted from an escalating trade war, with the world’s second-largest economy retaliating to steep US tariffs.Beijing used its dominance in the sector–60% of the world’s rare earth mining and 90% of the world’s processing capacity–as a tool to disrupt supply chains, pushing manufacturers across the globe into a frenzy.The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in its Sustainable Development Goals Pulse 2025 report in July this year, noted that minerals required for the energy transition – copper, zinc, germanium, tin, and nickel, among others – faced higher export restrictions compared to other traded critical minerals. “This trend reflects rising geopolitical sensitivities and growing domestic value chain ambitions in producing countries,” the report noted.The International Energy Agency narrowed and simplified this sentiment, focusing on how critical minerals are shaping the energy transition.

tax department is accurate in most cases and that the return should therefore be revised. This assumption, however, is flawed.The problem is not one of intent or aggressive enforcement.

The author is associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and visiting fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mutual funds are pushing back against the Indian market regulator’s proposal to introduce a fee linked to good performance, citing the difficulty of calculating these amounts.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. PNB Housing Finance Ltd has come full circle. Ajai Kumar Shukla took charge as managing director and chief executive officer on 18 December, bringing closure to the leadership vacuum created by the sudden resignation of Girish Kousgi on 31 July, an episode that had rattled investors.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Kajaria Ceramics’ recent disclosure of fraud is a sentiment dampener as it raises corporate governance issues. During the rollout of a new vendor onboarding system, Kajaria found an embezzlement of around ₹20 crore.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Payments banks are an odd hybrid—part bank, part wallet, part financial marketplace. They accept deposits like banks, but unlike full-service lenders, they are not allowed to lend.