-Newsclick.in The cheer and celebrations all around following the PM's announcement, however, do not improve the farmers’ situation or ease their struggles. On the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti, Prime Minister Modi announced his government’s decision to repeal the three farm laws that were to impact the lives and livelihoods of people -- especially the very small and marginal farmers and the common people i.e. the consumers of farm produce.  This is...

-The Telegraph The cut was announced a day after the declaration of by-election results in 29 Assembly seats and 3 Lok Sabha seats, wherein BJP suffered setback in some states The Narendra Modi government has finally buckled under pressure from consumers, voters and the Opposition and slashed excise duties on petrol by Rs 5 a litre and on diesel by Rs 10 a litre. From Thursday in Calcutta, the price of petrol will...

-The Hindu Caste demographics do not have the deterministic effect on electoral outcomes that is often assumed As a new round of State Elections approaches in India, political parties are crafting their electoral strategies. A large part of this exercise consists of constituency mapping, or gathering data about caste and community demographics, information about the local balance of power between groups, and the identification of local caste leaders, with the aim of...

-Hindustan Times The BJP leadership has explicitly instructed the cadre to reinforce that the ongoing farm protests are “motivated” and an attempt to “destabilise” the country, a party functionary claimed The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has redoubled efforts to distance the farmer protests from the farm issues ahead of elections in states such as Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where the demand from a section of farmers’ for repealing the farm laws enacted...

-Scroll.in The cast of characters readers will meet is staggering, and necessary, to understand the complex relationship between democracy and some the poorest people. Very few books on poverty in India are as nuanced as Indrajit Roy’s Politics of the poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India. From its very first page, Roy has his readers agog when he informs them that “the world is richer than it has been at any time...