-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...

-Newsclick.in Income support should not lead to the State washing its hands of the poor after handing them a CERTain sum of money whose real value too would dwindle over time. With Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s announcement recently at Raipur that his party had taken a “historic decision” to introduce an income guarantee scheme for the poor, and with the general anticipation that the Narendra Modi government’s last budget will also announce...

-Hindustan Times The basic principle of the constitutional order on which the Indian State runs is there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion. By prioritising people from CERTain religions - primarily Hindus - and explicitly excluding one particular community - Muslims - the amendment appears to legitimise the idea that India is fundamentally a Hindu State. The Citizenship Amendment Bill — which provides for the grant of Indian citizenship...

-Scroll.in This is not just about low job creation but also about the worsening quality of jobs, says Himanshu, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. On Thursday, a political storm boiled over after Business Standard reported that, between 2017-’18, unemployment numbers in India reached a 45-year high. The newspaper based its report on a survey, conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, called the Periodic Labour Force Survey that the government had...

-ThePrint.in Rahul Gandhi’s announcement is CERTainly good politics, but does it make for good economics? Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s announcement on a minimum income guarantee for the poor, coming days before the Narendra Modi administration unveils its own income support plans in the interim budget, CERTainly makes for good politics. But does it make for good economics? With the stress on farmer incomes and rural wages reaching crisis proportions, efforts to loosen the...