-The Hindu Business Line The best way to celebrate Ambedkar As we celebrate BR Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary, it is important to remember that his vision of economic equality for dalits is still a distant dream. He had told the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949: “We are entering an era of political equality. But economically and socially we remain a deeply unequal society. Unless we resolve this contradiction, inequality will destroy...

-The Indian Express That’s what the Aadhaar Act is. It was rightly categorised as a money bill and is wrongly expected to double up as a privacy statute With the billionth Aadhaar number being issued, the Aadhaar project is well on its way to becoming the centrepiece for governance in India irrespective of which government is in power. To that extent, critical engagement with the Aadhaar act is an essential exercise...

Amidst the prevailing gloominess over agrarian crisis, a recently released report says that the growth rate of agricultural output in both India and China were the same during 2008-2013. The agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of both these countries on an average grew at 3.3 percent per annum during that period. The latest available data from the 2016 Global Food Policy Report, however, indicates that the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka...

  Social audit is an important tool not just to ensure transparency and accountability in the MGNREGS, but also for successful running of the programme. The MIS (Management Information System) data provided by the website www.nrega.nic.in reveals that at the national-level roughly one-third of all districts were covered under social audit during the financial year 2015-16, as on 26 March, 2016. The top 5 states during 2015-16 (FY) in terms of the...

-Business Standard Petroleum ministry went through the list of consumers in affluent areas to find only 3% earning over Rs 10 lakh/year had surrendered their cooking gas subsidy The government is monitoring people earning over Rs 10 lakh a year who have not given up their cooking gas subsidy. Income tax data was being examined in affluent areas, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Business Standard. This year's Economic Survey said Rs 1 lakh...