-The Hindu The Modi government is determined to dismantle the two-pronged welfare paradigm. It is now an established fact that one area where the Narendra Modi administration has acted with a sense of purpose, urgency and resolve is in slashing social expenditure. Be it education, health, agriculture, livelihood security, food security, panchayati raj institutions, drinking water or the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes sub-plan, central government funds earmarked for social protection have been cut. The...
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The distant goal of cooperative federalism -Balveer Arora
-The Hindu For working India’s federal system, one has to go beyond brute parliamentary majorities and grapple with the multilevel government-opposition matrix, which is the architecture of Centre-State power-sharing Apart from the promise of providing a Congress-free India, the most frequent leitmotif of Mr. Modi’s electoral campaign was that he would usher in a new era for Indian federalism. Based on the idea that a state leader’s vision from below could transform...
More »Modi government: one year of dismantling the welfare state -Harsh Mander
-Hindustan Times A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth. A declared pro-corporate agenda, such as the land acquisition ordinance, proved politically messy and costly. Therefore, the government resorted instead for an enfeebling of the welfare architecture of the country through a combination of fiscal withdrawals, ignoring even legally mandated obligations. But this attracted...
More »MP lessons for bumper agricultural growth -Tushaar Shah and Pankaj Kela
-The Financial Express Smart irrigation management steps, including harnessing social sector schemes for irrigation works, did the trick The spate of recent farmer suicides has once again drawn the country’s attention to the deepening agrarian crisis. Media is abuzz with opinions and expert advice on how to provide succour to the farming community. Oft-repeated among these is the demand to increase public investment in irrigation. However, we need to remember that, since 1990, public...
More »Taking a comprehensive view of quakes -CP Rajendran
-The Hindu The tragic Nepal quake is an opportunity to learn and understand the threats of great temblors. The Nepal earthquake of April 25 is the largest in the Himalayan region since the 1934 quake which measured 8.2 on the Richter scale and destroyed not only parts of central Nepal but also the plains of northern Bihar in India. Mahatma Gandhi, shaken by the Bihar tragedy, wrote in the Harijan that the...
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