-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of Agrarian livelihoods that...

-Down to Earth The families depended on forest produce but have been moved far away from forest land The eviction of residents from 222 villages on the Godavari river basin for the Polavaram dam project tells the story of India’s tribal families fighting a losing battle for their land and forest rights.  On March 27, 2021, Bariya Nagaraj’s was among 72 families forcefully shifted from their home in Agraharam village in East Godavari...

-Newsclick.in The Narendra Modi government has carried the practice of making low budgetary allocations for MGNREGS to its limit. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS was introduced by the United Progressive Alliance-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left, which was supporting that government from outside. The scheme was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum...

-Scroll.in We must remember that there is no one such thing as ‘Indian agriculture’ whenever we discuss reforms. Multiple models need to be discussed. On Monday, Parliament cleared a bill to repeal the three farm laws that had gripped Indian politics for much of the past year. Passed in September 2020, the laws were meant to allow much greater play of corporate capital in Indian agriculture. However, the laws also sparked fears...

-The Hindu Does the JPC adopted bill fail to protect individuals against Government agencies? The story so far: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to examine India’s proposed data protection law, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, released its report on Monday. It contains a number of suggestions that could strengthen the final law, among others, a recognition that promotion of the digital economy cannot take precedence over the protection of citizen...