-The Telegraph Poverty research pioneer cites US, UK and EU experience; Niti Aayog vice-chairman disagrees, says there’s no guarantee ‘helicopter money’ will lead to spending Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has stepped up to the firing line by arguing the government should make bigger direct cash payments under the MGNREGA scheme to help people who have slid into poverty due to the pandemic. The government has already indicated it’s not keen on larger direct...

In his Mann ki Baat address to the nation on 30th May, 2021, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi appreciated the fact that the farmers received "more than the minimum support price (MSP) for mustard" pertaining to the rabi production. One can easily guess from this statement of the PM that the mustard growers in Haryana (and elsewhere) preferred to sell their produce to private traders in the open market instead...

-Newsclick.in Finance ministers from G7 countries have agreed on a deal to check tax avoidance by the biggest multinational conglomerations. How the G20 reacts to this accord and how these plans are implemented, remains to be seen. A recent report by ProPublica has revealed how multibillionaires from the US, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have managed to avoid paying federal taxes...

-The Hindu Phase 3 of the e-Courts project can harness technology for service delivery without increasing surveillance risks In popular perception, Indian courts are not associated first with the delivery of justice, but with long delays and difficulties for ordinary litigants. According to data released by the Supreme Court in the June 2020 newsletter of the e-Committee, 3.27 crore cases are pending before Indian courts, of which 85,000 have been pending for...

-Counterview.net A civil society statement, prepared for endorsement from workers’ organisations and concerned citizens by senior economists Amit Basole, Babu Mathews, Gautam Bhan, Jean Dreze, Rajendran Narayan and Ravi Srivastava after several rounds of discussion with trade unions, lawyers and grassroots organisation, has insisted that the Government of India come up with a national relief and recovery package immediately. “Without the direct support of such a package, simply unlocking the economy will...