-The Hindu The number of FIRs registered against personnel is few and far between, show new data from NCRB New Delhi: India may not have enough safeguards to protect its citizens from human rights violations by the police, official data suggest. As many as 35,831 cases were registered against the police with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2015-16, a figure that experts say is highly under-reported. And only 94 first information...
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Labour's love's lost -TT Ram Mohan
-The Hindu The proposed labour reforms seek to weaken worker protection at a time when the Indian economy is not creating enough jobs, and the right kind of jobs. On September 2, 10 trade unions in India organised what was said to be one of the largest labour strikes in history. An estimated 120 million workers took part. The unions were protesting against the government’s unwillingness to grant a 12-point charter of...
More »Dark clouds over the PDS -Jean Dreze
-The Hindu The imposition of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication in the Public Distribution System threatens to disrupt recent progress with PDS reforms. It also deprives millions of people of essential food entitlements. India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) has improved steadily during the last 10 years. The system used to be most ineffective and corruption-ridden, with leakages of around 50 per cent at the national level, going up to 80 or 90 per cent...
More »The great GDP fudge -Jairam Ramesh
-The Indian Express Same data, opposite conclusions, Dr Subramanian? “I am puzzled by the new GDP growth numbers. This is mystifying because these numbers, especially the acceleration, are at odds with other features of the macro economy. Import of goods declined. typically growth booms are accompanied by surges in imports not declines… similarly, real gross capital formation declined”. This was the chief economic advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian in an interview to the...
More »Retaining MGNREGA's core -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...
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