-The Hindu Conversations between governments and citizens and among citizens themselves are crucial in a democracy A very instructive passage on the difference in norms of debate among ancient Indian scholars, on the one hand, and kings and their subjects, on the other is found in the ancient text, Milinda-pañha. It records an exchange between the Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) and the Buddhist monk N?gasena. When the king fails to understand a point...

-Newsclick.in Rather than spending more, government expenditure by July 2019 is less than what it was last year as share of annual budget, with key public welfare related ministries cutting most. India is facing an unprecedented slowdown of the economy with GDP growth slumping to 5% in the June quarter, agriculture growing by only 2% and manufacturing by a mere 0.6%. Private consumption expenditure – spending by families on consumption – has...

-The Indian Express India’s employment crisis calls for more government expenditure in education, adequate training. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his recent Independence Day speech, said, “We need to worry about population explosion”. These words stand in stark contrast to his previous references to India’s demographic dividend where the country’s population was seen as an asset. This shift reflects a new awareness, according to which demography brings a dividend only if...

-TheWire.in Instead of giving freebies to the affluent, Sitharaman should have announced additional government spending in MNREGA and plans for filling vacancies in government jobs. After holding out for seven weeks, following her maiden budget, Nirmala Sitharaman finally blinked. For about a month now, pink papers and business-friendly pundits had been CRYing foul about India Inc’s shrinking sales. But, since you can’t sell a sob story about the rich, it was spun to...

-Newsclick.in But the relevant data has been removed from the Census website within a month of release. It took over eight years for the Census office to release migration-related data collected back in 2011. And, within a month of its release, one particular dataset has been removed. That’s Table D-2 which gives the numbers for foreign immigrants. The official Census website now says, in a CRYptic footnote, that data on this aspect...