-Mongabay.com * Contamination of groundwater with chemicals like arsenic and fluoride is an important issue in several states of India. Even though government has schemes to address the problem not much has been achieved. * Authorities have been repeatedly told that efforts on war-footing are needed to protect millions of Indians from the contaminated groundwater but the work is yet to acquire the pace needed. * The Parliamentary standing committee on rural development...

-The Hindu Instead of addressing inequality, the 10% quota for economically weaker sections creates huge anxieties If the number of demands for implementing reforms is any guide, India’s reservation system is clearly in disarray. However, it is unlikely that the recently passed Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, 2019, creating a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS), will serve as anything more than a band-aid. Given the deep inequalities prevalent in access to...

-TheWire.in The national auditor believes that such methods allow the Centre to understate the true fiscal and revenue deficits in a given year. New Delhi: India’s national auditor has raised red flags over the Narendra Modi government’s propensity to borrow funds using “off-budget” methods, a practice that allows it to finance capital and revenue spending while maintaining deficit targets. The criticism comes from an audit report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, but is...

-TheWire.in In an interview with The Wire, former secretary to the government of India P.S. Krishnan says economically weaker sections require financial aid, not reservation. P.S. Krishnan, the former secretary to government of India, was one of the crucial people behind the enactment of several historic laws regarding social justice. The current Bill proposed by the government to provide reservation to economically weaker upper castes in jobs and education, he says, violates...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...