-Livemint.com Low incomes and poor farm-gate prices capture the reality of relentless distress in our hinterland National accounts data released last month estimated that the economy has contracted by 7.5% in the second quarter of 2020-21 compared to last year. For many, this was a sign of recovery, given expectations that India’s gross domestic product (GDP) would contract by around 10%. It is, no doubt, an improvement from the 23.9% GDP decline...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Will class politics replace caste politics in India? -Rahul Verma and Ankita Barthwal
-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...
More »Harsh Kerala law brings 5yr jail for content ‘that could insult’ people, media under lens too -Rohini Swamy
-ThePrint.in Kerala Governor Saturday signed ordinance seeking amendment to Kerala Police Act to control online bullying and virtual abuse of women, children. Bengaluru: Kerala journalists are viewing the Kerala Police Act Amendment ordinance as a new attempt to gag the media, saying the new legality gives the state legal grounds to object to reports the ruling party may deem unfavourable. Governor Arif Mohammed Khan Saturday signed the ordinance seeking an amendment to the...
More »Nearly 20% of rural school children had no textbooks due to COVID-19 impact, finds ASER survey
-The Hindu In the week of the survey in September, about one in three rural children had done no learning activity at all. About 20% of rural children have no textbooks at home, according to the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) survey conducted in September, the sixth month of school closures due to COVID-19 across the country. In Andhra Pradesh, less than 35% of children had textbooks, and only 60% had...
More »Jean Drèze on why Amartya Sen is the original ‘argumentative Indian par excellence’
-Scroll.in ‘Abstract as they may seem, his essential ideas are a springboard for public action’: Jean Drèze’s foreword to Lawrence Hamilton’s ‘How To Read Amartya Sen’. Amartya Sen is better known as an economist than as a philosopher, but he is both and more, like Adam Smith – someone he admires and who happens to share his initials. It is, quite often, his grounding in philosophy that enables him to question the...
More »