Large dams that cause environmental degradation and large-scale displacement, among other things, have been opposed in India by civil society organisations (CSOs), such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). A recently published study by the United Nations University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with other partner organisations reveals that tens of thousands of existing large...

-Hindustan Times The concentration of political and economic power has made democratic contestation challenging. Citizens are finding other methods Fearing that India’s controversial proposed farm laws will disproportionately benefit a few corporate magnates, farmers have made Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance storefronts and Reliance Jio infrastructure the sites of major protest over the past few months. While Ambani has insisted that his company has no plans to enter corporate farming, his purported political networks...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...

-Newsclick.in The government must analyse its existing data collection exercises, rationalise them and improve the inefficient statistical administration. It is good news that the Labour Bureau will revive its establishments-based Quarterly Employment Surveys or QES, using a larger sample. Since the Periodic Labour Force Surveys or PLFS collects data from households, the proposed quarterly survey of jobs will collect data from establishments. But it is advisable to review the multiple existing employment...

-Hindustan Times The average PE (price earnings) multiple of Sensex companies , which measures the price of a stock as a multiple of its earnings per share, has risen to 31.49 in the current month, the highest since 1998-99 . The BSE Sensex, India’s benchmark stock market index, reached an all-time high of 44,825 on Wednesday, November 25. There is reason to believe that speculation and external tailwinds, rather than strong fundamentals,...