The Union Budget 2020-21, which was presented by the Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman on 1st February, 2020 has failed to impress civil society activists and farmers' rights groups (click here  and here). Through their press releases and notes, members of CSOs were demanding as well as suggesting the Union Government for hiking the budgetary allocation for schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Pradhan Mantri...

-The Hindu Low allocations and specific policy statements point to greater privatisation and withdrawal of the state Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman began her speech by saying that the Union Budget was “woven around three prominent themes” — aspirational India, economic development for all and building a caring society. Achieving any of these would require extraordinary efforts on the social sector front starting with allocating additional resources for health, education, nutrition, employment...

-The Hindu Business Line Mumbai: The dairy and animal husbandry sectors are again under focus in the Union budget with the Modi Government setting the ambitious target of doubling milk processing capacity to 108 million tonnes by 2025. Dairy giant such as Amul views the target as a window of opportunity for the dairying sectors and income enhancement for the farmers. R S Sodhi , MD of Amul, told BusinessLine that steps such...

-The Hindu For the first time, the Muslim community is asserting its religious identity as well as its Indian identity, says the IAS officer who quit office to protest the J&K lockdown Kannan Gopinathan, the former IAS officer, first caught the nation’s eye when he stepped down from the service to protest the lockdown in Jammu and Kashmir. He resigned as secretary, power department of the Union Territories of Daman and Diu,...

-The Hindu ‘Barefoot College’s archives bear testimony to Ms. Lindsay’s methodical and painstaking work’ Manya Jayaram Lindsay, younger sister of social activist Aruna Roy, died in Hitchin, U.K., after suffering from cancer in recent years. She had set up the preventive and curative health structure at the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC), Tilonia — widely known as the Barefoot College — and studied indigenous people in the U.S. and Australia, and...