-Kafila.org The last few months have seen an unusual public engagement around questions of SECularism, freedom of speech, sedition and the like, with furious debates everywhere from our campuses, streets and TV studios to the floor of Parliament. The budget session has been enlivened by scenes of high drama, with the leading lights of the Treasury benches bringing colour, sound and fury to their tutorials on patriotism and nationalism. While these high-decibel...

-Down to Earth Activists have been demanding that the land reforms Bill be brought in Parliament since 2012 Following a two-day protest by more than a thousand landless rural poor at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, activists claim Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured protestors that the government will bring the Bill supporting homestead land rights for them before the Parliament. Land rights activists, who met the prime minister at the...

-Business Standard Centre needs to have dialogue with the Opposition instead of letting politics come in the way; it needs to stoop to conquer Will the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government now use the Money Bills route to get Parliament — more to the point the Rajya Sabha where it does not have a majority — to clear legislation? The fact is, getting all Bills to be classified as Money Bills to circumvent...

-Livemint.com The government relies on for-profit big business to deliver public goods despite their inability to deliver Can we listen to the budget as an annual public statement by the government of its economic and social philosophy and intent? The centre abandoned five-year plans that earlier laid down a road map of where government policies are headed. The budget, then, is an important reality check of whether the government is literally...

-GovernanceNow.com   Jairam Ramesh questions Aadhaar’s role in plugging subsidy leakages    After snubbing the finance minister in Rajya Sabha, Jairam Ramesh of Congress questioned the government’s claim of saving Rs 14,000 crore by integrating Aadhaar for the LPG subsidy. Citing a report by International Institute of Sustainable Development, a London-based think tank, which seriously doubts the claim of savings accrued by DBT-LPG, Ramesh asked about the study on the basis of which...