{"id":1036156,"date":"2026-09-17T08:30:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1036156"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:47:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:17:28","slug":"niti-aayog-vc-defends-upi-merchant-fee-says-businesses-must-be-self-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/09\/17\/niti-aayog-vc-defends-upi-merchant-fee-says-businesses-must-be-self-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"NITI Aayog VC defends UPI merchant fee, says businesses must be self-sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Ashok Kumar Lahiri on Wednesday defended the government\u2019s decision to impose a merchant discount rate (MDR) on UPI transactions, saying businesses need to find ways to remain sustainable without depending on subsidies, according to PTI. <\/p>\n<p>Lahiri cited ancient Indian teacher and philosopher Chanakya, who had said a ruler should collect taxes from citizens like a bee collects honey from a flower \u2014 gently, gradually and without causing pain or damaging the petals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Ashok Kumar Lahiri on Wednesday defended the government\u2019s decision to impose a merchant discount rate (MDR) on UPI transactions, saying businesses need to find ways to remain sustainable without depending on subsidies, according to PTI. Lahiri cited ancient Indian teacher and philosopher Chanakya, who had said a ruler should collect taxes from citizens like a bee collects honey from a flower \u2014 gently, gradually and without causing pain or damaging the petals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1036156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2-the-economic-times","category-newspapers","category-the-economic-times"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036179,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036156\/revisions\/1036179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}