-TheWeek.in Well-off are doing fine; stagflation confined to middle and lower-middle classes Kaushik Basu, former chief economic adviser to the government and former chief economist of the World Bank, is currently teaching at Cornell University in the US. In an exclusive interaction, he talks about the current challenges before the Indian economy and its future growth prospects. Excerpts: Q/ Is the Indian economy moving in the right direction? A/ The performance of the Indian...

-The Hindu The Government needs to stop India’s avalanching slide into a grossly divided society, made worse by the pandemic On January 17, 2022, Oxfam International presented its annual global “Inequality Report”. Titled Inequality Kills, the report calculated and presented the quantum growth in wealth of a minuscule few, and the simultaneous impoverishment of millions of working people. During the novel coronavirus pandemic, the report reveals, more than half the world’s new...

-The Statesman NIKHIL DEY is one of the founding members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). Since 1990, he has been a full-time MKSS activist and a member of the organisation’s decision-making collective. A leading social activist, Dey has always been involved in grassroots struggles for land and payment of minimum wages. He has also been part of the organisation’s involvement in some groundbreaking campaigns such as people’s Right to Information...

-Counterview.net Even as calling Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget “historic”, top international NGO Oxfam, pointing towards “some gaps” in it, “especially while addressing inequalities on the lines of caste, class, gender and occupation”, has regretted that the budget “does not address the urgent spending needs in the social sector, especially in health and education.” In a statement, Oxfam India quotes CEO stating that “the Union Budget 2021 has failed to address inequality...

-The Hindu Fighting inequality must be at the heart of our economic rescue and recovery efforts One of the most incisive and hard-hitting comments on the real import of the COVID-19 crisis came from none other than the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. He said: “COVID-19 has been likened to an x-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built. It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere:...