-The Hindu Invites political parties for discussion; Congress, RJD and NCP agree to participate so far As political parties prepare their election manifestos and promises, a group of civil society leaders and concerned citizens on Tuesday released a document, Reclaiming the Republic, which they hope will shape the political agenda in the run up to the Lok Sabha poll. The comprehensive list includes judicial and electoral reforms, repeal of laws which threaten personal...

Against the backdrop of the Finance Minister Shri Piyush Goyal announcing the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PMKSN) programme during his budget speech on 1st February, 2019, it becomes essential to differentiate between 12.56 crore operational holding households (enumerated, as per the Agriculture Census) and 13.33 crore ownership holding households (estimated, as per the 70th round National Sample Survey report no. 571) pertaining to size upto 2 hectares. In his budget...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-Livemint.com With barely a few months to go for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the question across political party lines is: what can really be done now, and quickly? New Delhi: When residents gather around the fire on foggy winter evenings in Rampura, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, the conversation often veers toward the declining fortunes in agriculture. Take 27-year-old Pushpendra Singh, who completed his master’s degree in commerce in 2016,...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...