-Networkideas.org In recent times, the clamour for formalising economic activity, or shrinking its unorganised component and expanding the organised, has been heard from diverse sources. There are those who want formalisation to occur because the unorganised sector is seen as being largely outside the direct and indirect tax net, depriving the government of much needed resources. Hence, for example, one feature seen as favouring the Goods and Services Tax regime is...

-TheWire.in Most of the ‘reforms’ that are being introduced to address poor delivery of social services are silent on the issue of inadequate human resources, among other shortfalls in capacity. The poor performance of the public sector especially in education, health and other social services has been the subject of a lot of debates in the last few decades. The dominant narrative has attributed implementation failures to corruption, lack of accountability, poor...

-Mumbai Mirror The Maharashtra government’s claims about the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana (CSMSSY), a farmers’ loan waiver scheme, have fallen flat as only around half the money – Rs 16,498 crore – has been disbursed to 39.78 lakh farmers out of the state’s 80 lakh farmers. In June 2017, the Devendra Fadnavis government had announced Rs 34,000 crore for 80 lakh farmers. However, the latest data released by the...

-Newsclick.in An indifferent Modi government promises to eliminate hunger not before 2030. Celebrations were barely over in New Delhi on the news that the 2017-18 agricultural year had yielded a record harvest of both foodgrains (284.83 million tonnes) and fruits and vegetables (307 million tonnes) when another bit of news trickled in last week, largely ignored by the government. This was that India stood at rank 103 in the Global Hunger Index...

-TheWire.in While the PM proclaimed in 2014 that ‘Maa Ganga had called him’ and spent the next four years spending close to Rs 5,000 crore publicising himself and advertising his intentions, the other man led a life of near-obscurity working away year after year for the cause of a cleaner Ganga. The act of public fasting has been so completely reduced to political gimmickry in recent times that it barely registers in...