-The Hindu Seek 20% recount in border districts, extension of July 31 deadline for final list New Delhi: The Centre and the State of Assam on Tuesday made an urgent mention before the Chief Justice of India for an extension of the deadline for the final publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) from July 31, 2019, to a “future date”. In identical but separate applications, they urged the Supreme Court for...

-The Hindu Stress on trained cleaners, protective gear New Delhi: Concerned by the incidents of workers dying while cleaning sewers and septic tanks, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has asked all States and Union Territories to set up emergency response sanitation units (ERSU), which would include trained cleaners wearing protective gear. In letters to all Chief Secretaries on July 12, Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra wrote: “The...

-National Herald Agriculture, food and trade policy expert Devinder Sharma writes: “My understanding is that only agriculture can reboot the economy, sustain millions of livelihoods, and reduce global warming.” At a time when Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz says that neo-liberalism is ‘dead and buried’, and the world as a result is increasingly grappling with the gigantic problems of rising unemployment, gnawing inequality and climatic change reaching a tripping point, agriculture alone has...

-The Hindu Local firms will be at a disadvantage if big tech companies are given plum roles Since early last year, WhatsApp has busily piloted its payment system in India. WhatsApp Pay relies on the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system to facilitate inter-bank transactions. Regulatory approval that would allow its nation-wide introduction is stuck on one point: the Indian government has asked WhatsApp to localise all data processing related to...

-The Hindu It is inescapable from the arithmetic that revenue expenditures and tax revenues are in need of serious corrections Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman began a new practice in the Union Budget, presented on July 5, when she relegated the numbers, or the budgeting, to the fine print, in a break with tradition; they are usually presented as a part of the speech on the floor of the House in Parliament. What are...