-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...
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MSP was not 1.5 times the cost of production for most kharif crops during the last 6 agricultural years
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...
More »60 Economists Send Wake-Up Call to Arun Jaitley on Maternal Benefits
-TheWire.in "The central government’s contribution to old-age pensions...has stagnated at just Rs 200 per month since 2006. This is unfair." New Delhi: Sixty economists from across the country have written to finance minister Arun Jaitley, asking him to ensure that social security pensions and maternity benefits get adequate attention in the Union Budget 2019. They argue that they had made a similar “modest” request before the 2018 Budget, but it went unheeded. The...
More »Farm suicide as an indicator of agrarian crisis should be used with caution
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...
More »Without maternity benefits -Aditi Priya
-The Hindu The government’s maternity benefit programme must be implemented better and comply with the Food Security Act Yashoda Devi was five months pregnant with her third child when we met her in Jharkhand in June. She was in extreme pain. The doctor had told her that she was very weak and had advised her to improve her nutritional intake. But Ms. Devi did not have money to follow the doctor’s advice. Not...
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