-TheWire.in The proposed amendments not only make approaching the information commission more cumbersome and legalistic but also defy the diktat of the Supreme Court. The RTI Act has undoubtedly been one of the most empowering legislations for Indians. According to estimates, four to six million information applications are filed every year, making the Indian RTI Act the world’s most extensively used transparency legislation. National assessments have shown that a large number of...

-VillageSquare.in People living in villages, who are migrating in large numbers to urban spaces in search of livelihoods, could be victims of our economic development or perhaps the dismal income growth of farm households is semi-deliberate to keep labor costs low Till about 1990 since Independence, our country followed what may be broadly termed an import-substitution strategy for economic growth. This meant high import duties and rigid non-tariff barriers on imports and...

-Economic and Political Weekly NFHS-4 data shows improvements in health status, yet serious concerns remain. Data on India’s health status ought to inform policy. Unfortunately, this does not always follow. After a gap of 10 years, data from the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) was released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Like the previous surveys of 2005–06, 1998–99 and 1992–93, NFHS-4 provides information on demographic,...

-Livemint.com The richest household’s assets are worth much more than that of all the others combined and the same conclusion holds if we take the distribution of rural assets We all know that Credit Suisse reckons that the richest 1% of Indians own 58.4% of the nation’s wealth, up from 36.8% in 2000. What is perhaps not so well-known is that, according to the Credit Suisse report, the bottom 70% of Indians...

-The Indian Express When announcing the decision on November 8, the government had said the then Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would cease to be legal tender and this would cleanse the system of black money. A Parliamentary panel has come down heavily on demonetisation, describing it as one that not just inconvenienced the poor but also affected the manufacturing sector. “It was an effort to combat corruption, tax evasion and...