-TheWire.in The making of the Union Budget has been a far too secretive and hidden exercise. Social sector expenditure and allocations related to policy announcements should be matters of open ongoing debate. On December 20, 2017, a group of 60 eminent economists sent an open letter to the finance minister stating: “We are writing to draw your attention to two urgent priorities for the forthcoming budget.” The first was to increase the central...

-Livemint.com Farmers need structural reforms, crop diversification and greater public investment rather than subsidies and price support Indian agriculture has been relatively untouched by the structural reforms that lifted incomes in other parts of the economy. Low farm productivity meant that governments tried to improve the lot of farmers through price policy. The problem is that engineering a shift in the terms of trade through higher support prices usually leads to generalized...

-SabrangIndia.in In Pratapgarh, a village that could be anywhere in the Hindi belt, a young man, Ravi, gets to know that his wife, Seema, is pregnant with a girl child, third time in a row. He wants her to get an abortion because he wants a male child. He forces Seema to accompany him to a doctor who agrees to conduct the abortion though the foetus is past the 20-week deadline...

-ThePrint.in While the US exemplifies the effect of discriminatory enforcement in an unequal society, a weak state and low conviction rates in India are complicit in the failure to stem the violence against marginalised groups. It is virtually an axiom in development circles to say that the rule of law is necessary for a country’s economic development and advancing accountability and justice. Proponents of the former emphasise the importance of rule of...

-Press release by All India Transgender and Intersex Collective The Constitution of India, framed under the guidance of Dr. BR Ambedkar, was built on the framework of equality, justice, liberty and secularism. It is only due to these ideals that communities of people forced into society's margins have won some legal rights and also gathered the courage to fight against social injustice. The fight still continues, especially because transgender persons, dalits,...