-Newsclick.in The people are thus facing increasingly hard times, but in the bland vision of the Modi government, there is no cognisance of it. However, that itself is ominous because when the balance of payments becomes unmanageable, the Modi government will run to the IMF to ask for a rescue package. No budget in recent memory has been presented at a time when the economy is in such dire straits: unemployment is...

-Newsclick.in Just 15% of wheat and 32% of rice was procured by the government at MSP rates. The rest was sold below MSP to traders. Uttar Pradesh (UP) produced 58.32 million tonnes of food grains in 2020-21, the highest among all states. It was nearly 19% or one-fifth of the country's production. Foodgrains include wheat and rice, the two major crops, and various coarse cereals and pulses. UP was the country’s leading...

-Newsclick.in With the increasing political climate of stifled dialogue and dissent, a denial of information sought in the legitimate interest of the public, imposing fines, and subsequent ambiguity in the face of procedural safeguards is not just disheartening, but also dangerous. It is the year 2022, almost 17 years since the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) has been passed. Albeit, in a functional democracy, the emerging field realities would have...

-Leaflet.in/ Newsclick.in In light of the recent PIL filed before the Supreme Court demanding social security for gig/platform workers, it is critical to pay attention to how the recent labor codes, which are paraded as being progressive, are a mere lip service to social security, including for gig/platform workers, writes Namrata. In September last year, the Indian Federation of App Based Transport Workers [IFAT], a workers’ organisation consisting largely of gig transport...

-The Hindu Negotiations are at a “critical and sensitive” stage in Geneva, say sources India runs the risk of being excluded from a proposal it co-authored at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, in 2020, to “temporarily waive” intellectual property rights (IPR) held, by primarily Western countries, on vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for covid-19. Geneva Health Files, a Switzerland-based newsletter portal that tracks developments in intellectual property, first reported on Friday that “a...