2M govt employees are worried, RBI stops printing ?2,000 notes, and more news

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Over 2 million government employees are up in arms over layoffs, poor wage hikes and delayed salaries, Business Insider reports. For BSNL’s 176,000 staffers, payday has come late for the last few months amid reports of a massive voluntary retirement scheme in the works. Air India’s 20,000-strong workforce faces uncertainty as the carrier goes on the block while thousands of Hindustan Aeronautics workers are protesting poor increments. Nearly 25,000 home guards have been sacked in Uttar Pradesh and 49,000 transport employees in Telangana are on strike over retirement age and salaries, among other issues. Join the conversation.

The Reserve Bank of India has stopped printing ?2,000 notes to prevent money laundering and address fakes, BusinessLine reports. An RTI query by the New Indian Express reveals the central bank hasn’t printed a single ?2,000-denomination note since April. Counterfeiting of the ?2,000 note jumped 22% y-o-y in 2018-19, even as the number of such notes in circulation declined, official data shows. Earlier this week, the National Intelligence Agency cited high-quality fake notes as one of six major emerging challenges.  Join the conversation.

India ranks third in the world – behind China and Russia – in surveillance of citizens, Quartz reports, citing a study by Comparitech. The country scores 2.4 out of 5 on the research firm's privacy index, which indicates a “systemic failure” to safeguard privacy. Aadhaar-related data breaches, the absence of data protection laws and the government’s demand for traceability of WhatsApp messages were among the factors contributing to India’s low score. Last year, the Centre granted 10 agencies the power to intercept, monitor and decrypt online messages and the right to access any information stored on any computer. Join the conversation.

Delhiites will have to shell out ?4,000 for violating the odd-even traffic rule during 4-15 November, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said. That’s double the penalty imposed when the scheme was implemented in January and April 2016. Among those exempted are women-only cars, vehicles ferrying schoolkids and two-wheelers, besides select high-ranking government officials and VIPs. But, unlike previously, private CNG vehicles won’t be outside the purview of the scheme. Earlier this week, concentration of particulate matter – PM2.5 and PM10 – shot to twice the safe limit in the NCR region, with air quality plunging to ‘very poor’ levels. Join the conversation.

Mumbai and Delhi are India’s costliest cities to eat out with the average cost for two people working out to ?1,280 and ?1,220, respectively, according to a Mint analysis of Zomato data. Bengaluru is relatively economical (?1,020) while Chennai (?630) is the cheapest, shows the study, which considered the top 1,000 restaurants in each city based on the number of reviews. At 17%, Bengaluru has the most restaurants with extremely good reviews (rated 4.5 or above). The most popular dine-out neighbourhoods? Delhi’s Connaught Place tops the list, followed by Bengaluru’s Indiranagar and Mumbai’s Bandra West. Join the conversation.

Idea of the day: Even in a data-driven society, intuition has a critical role, says writer Bruce Kasanoff.

“Data is neither impartial nor infallible; it is often the result of judgments and biases held by the gatherers of that data.”

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? Nirajita Banerjee, Dipti Jain and Mandar M Bakre