-The Hindu Even with closures, capex exceeded plan, says Expenditure Secretary Expenditure Secretary T.V. Somanathan said the government has been very careful and realistic in its expenditure and receipts projections for 2021-22, and that its push for capital expenditure is the largest ever over a two-year period. Excerpts: * You have called it an expansionary budget, but overall spending is just about ₹33,000 crore in 2021-22 over this year’s revised estimates (RE). Also,...

-Down to Earth blog The distress among small farmers in India is market-driven to a large extent in both ways — too much protection (minimum support price) or too little. The question of future of Indian agriculture has been around for some time now since the agrarian distress and crisis in the sector. It has become important in the context of the spate of recent reforms that include permitting private wholesale markets,...

-TheCitizen.in The losses outweigh the gains A report released on January 15 by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimates that India has the highest number of international migrants in the world. It found that last year 18 million Indians were living abroad, followed by Mexico 11 million, Russia 11 million, China 10 million, and Syria 8 million. It estimates that 10 million or 1 crore Indians emigrated abroad...

-The Indian Express Legal action against Scihub and Libgen frames problem of control and governance of Knowledge in a globalised world. The recent litigations against Scihub and Libgen by Elsevier, Wiley and ACS bring us to a moment of many realisations about control and governance of Knowledge in academia. In the latter half of the 20th century, globalisation led to the imperative of applying “global” standards to higher education. As global standards...

-TheWire.in Development administration is a specialised job. At present, bureaucrats are transferred from one department to another with little attention to whether they have Knowledge of agriculture or industries. The new year calls for a basic change in priorities – a need to focus on the development of rural areas. The current farmers’ agitation has thrown into sharp relief the failure of the government to understand the concerns of a large section...