-Press release by NREGA Watch (Jharkhand) dated 2nd February, 2019 Thousands of NREGA workers across Jharkhand spilled to the streets today to express their anger at the continued denial of their entitlements. In over 30 blocks of the state, workers raised their voice against the abysmal wage rate, acute shortage of work, increasing delays in payment of wages, and violation of several other rights. They also demanded work and submitted grievances...

-The Economic Times The world’s oldest networked infrastructure, money, is increasingly dematerialising and fusing with the world’s latest networked infrastructure, the Internet. As the network effects compound, disruptive acceleration hurtle us towards financial utopia, or dystopia. Our fate depends on what we get right and what we get wrong with the law, code and architecture, and the market. The Internet, unfortunately, has completely transformed from how it was first architected. From a...

-Press note from Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand   Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow, died of hunger and exhaustion on 25 December in Sonpurwa village of Majhiaon block of Garhwa district (Jharkhand). She lived with her son Ghura Vishwakarma, daughter-in-law Usha Devi and their three children in a dilapidated kutcha house. The family has a hand-to-mouth existence and is routinely unable to access adequate nutrition. Surviving the day on only a meal...

-The Indian Express As the government tries to allay swirling apprehensions, The Indian Express explains the background, aims and rationale of the proposed new FRDI law. Some provisions of The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, popularly referred to as the FRDI Bill, which was tabled in Parliament this August, have given rise to concerns over protection for bank deposits in the proposed law. An online petition against the Bill — “Do not...

In a country where inter-departmental coordination hardly takes place in the government, a joint exercise undertaken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is bearing fruits. The NCRB has started coordinating with the RBI for collection and sharing of Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) data. The new tables, which have been introduced in the NCRB's annual publication on crime, reveal that although the...