-The Hindu Modi government cracked down on critics: report. U.S.-based human rights watchdog Freedom House has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of “driving India toward authoritarianism” with a “hamfisted lockdown”, scapegoating of Muslims, and a crackdown on critics, and downgraded India’s status from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’, in its annual report. “Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests...

-The Hindu With protests becoming catalysts for anti-authoritarian struggle, the air is ripe for new visions of rural emancipation Those familiar with the systematic attack on agriculture in South Asia over the last decades will not be surprised at the ongoing farmers’ protests in India. It could have been Pakistan, where farmers protesting for support prices were beaten up and arrested in Lahore only a month ago, or Sri Lanka, where shortages...

-Business Standard Dreze was part of academicians and activists who recently wrote to the Centre about the situation of the migrant workers Jean Dreze, a renowned Belgian-born Indian economist, says migrant workers are not feeling safe and that is why they are desperate to go back home. He tells Indivjal Dhasmana the Centre’s new order that labour should stay where it is will be difficult to implement. Dreze was part of academicians...

-The Indian Express In the short term, there will be flight to safety of people worried about a pandemic, as there is of capital during a financial crisis. When normalcy returns, the globalised Indian will fly away once again. As people return home from distant lands, global value chains get disrupted and cross-border movement comes to a grinding halt, new theories are being propounded about the end of globalisation and the return...

-The Indian Express A recent Democracy Index confirms the paradox of India being the world’s largest electoral wonder, but an increasingly flawed democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit recently published its 11th report on the “State of Democracy in the World in 2018” titled “Me Too? Political participation, protest and democracy”. The EIU has over seven decades of experience in studying the spectrum of democracies in the world. The index made news...