-Newsclick.in Increase in Muslim population is not due to immigrants but because of higher birth rate, which is driven by poverty and illiteracy. Assam’s Muslim population was recorded as about 34% of the state’s total population in 2011 Census. It was about 31% in 2001 and over 28% in 1991. That’s not much of an increase. Yet insidious political propaganda about rising Muslim population has swamped the minds of people, both...

-Newsclick.in Leaking EPFO enrolment numbers, and tall tales about trucks and buses, and doctors and engineers, marked PM Modi’s deceptive claims on jobs in his Lok Sabha speech. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive" wrote Sir Walter Scott two centuries ago. The Modi govt.’s attempt to create data on non-existent jobs confirms this truth. Since last year, an increasingly cornered govt. has been marshalling all...

  A document of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) dated 25th June, 2018 says that the number of members subscribing to the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) scheme gives one an idea of the level of employment in the formal sector viz. mostly employment in establishments employing 20 or more persons (though EPF is applicable for certain organisations, which employ less than 20 persons, subject to certain conditions and...

-Newsclick.in Activists have questioned the process of terming individuals as ‘doubtful’, alleging that some people are simply framed Social and psychological trauma and mental and emotional insecurity are reportedly on the rise in many parts of the rural as well as the urban Assam where updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is going on a war footing in order to publish its second and final draft by July 30. Authorities...

-Newsclick.in “According to media reports, the proposed amendments seek to fundamentally weaken the institution of the information commissions by allowing the central and state governments to decide salaries of commissioners,” says NCPRI Press Release. Among the bills listed under the ‘Legislative Business’ to be carried out during the monsoon session of Lok Sabha,which will be held from July 18 to August 10, is ‘The Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2018’. Although included...