-The Hindu The protesting farmers need sincerity and Accountability from the Centre, not edification In light of protests against the new farm laws, the Centre has attempted to educate farmers — a form of instrumental reasoning based on exchange of superior information and data — to convince them of the merits of its reform agenda. Since it is presumed that complex matters of economic policy are beyond the intellectual capacities of agrarians,...

-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...

-Newsclick.in An assessment by the Environics trust and the Mineral Inheritors Rights Association shows that not even a single company qualifies the fit and proper person test often used by international agencies as a benchmark for a place in the bidding process of natural resources. For the first time in five decades, India’s coal reserves are up for grabs to private sector bidders. The auction for 38 coal blocks is currently underway....

-Economic and Political Weekly Every successive reform in labour laws fails to plug the loopholes. The passage of the three labour code bills by Parliament —the Industrial Relations Code (IRC) Bill, 2020, the Code on Social Security (CSS) Bill, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (OSHWCC) Bill, 2020—and the Code on Wages (CW) Bill enacted in 2019 is the first major milestone in labour market reforms in over...

-TheNewsMinute.com In the season of ‘no data available’ TNM lists an exhaustive number of things that the Union Government claims it has no data on. After the Union Government’s response of ‘no data available’ to several questions in the parliament, the way in which the country’s official statistics and data is being managed has come into question.  While it has become fodder for many memes, the dearth of data, either due to...