-The Hindu The FM deserves credit for keeping the capital expenditure steady amid receipts shortfall; but her plan does not meet market expectations of sweeping reforms The Finance Minister’s job is a greatly coveted one but no politician would want to be in Nirmala Sitharaman’s shoes today. The Indian economy has slowed to a 5% crawl. The financial system is under considerable stress. Assumptions about tax revenues have gone awry. The clamour...

-The Hindu For the first time, the Muslim community is asserting its religious identity as well as its Indian identity, says the IAS officer who quit office to protest the J&K lockdown Kannan Gopinathan, the former IAS officer, first caught the nation’s eye when he stepped down from the service to protest the lockdown in Jammu and Kashmir. He resigned as secretary, power department of the Union Territories of Daman and Diu,...

-The Hindu ‘Barefoot College’s archives bear testimony to Ms. Lindsay’s methodical and painstaking work’ Manya Jayaram Lindsay, younger sister of social activist Aruna Roy, died in Hitchin, U.K., after suffering from cancer in recent years. She had set up the preventive and curative health structure at the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC), Tilonia — widely known as the Barefoot College — and studied indigenous people in the U.S. and Australia, and...

-Down to Earth This comes even as rural India is suffering its worst unemployment crisis in 45 years The Union government slashed budgetary allocation for its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act (MGNREGA) in the Budget 2020-21, at a time when rural India is facing all sorts of crises including rising food bills and highest unemployment in the last five decades MGNREGA guarantees at least 100 days of employment to adults...

-Press released by All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) dated 1st February, 2020 Delhi, February 1st 2020: Budget fails to increase rural demand and purchasing power which would have boosted the economy - instead, the Budget only boosts the profits of big corporates and MNCs, said AIKSCC. When the crying need in India’s economy is to increase the demand and purchasing power in rural areas, and hence rural incomes, the...