-Down to Earth Nirmala SITharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of farmers...

-The Hindu There are many parallels but also important differences between the current protests and the JP movement of the 70s, says this eminent historian A historian of modern India, Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton UniverSITy and author of the 2018 book Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point. He compares the current SITuation in the country to the turmoil of the 70s. Excerpts: * How would...

-Reporters without Borders Six months to the day after the Indian government blocked all communications in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August, after revoking its autonomy, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals what it is like for journalists trying to work in this territory in the wake of the federal government’s recent measures, which have had little real impact. Kashmiris had few illusions. A week after the supreme court...

-The Indian Express As the narrative moves on to CAA and a possible nation-wide NRC, the Assam list hangs in a limbo. So does the fate of children out of it. The Centre has assured the Supreme Court, Parliament that such children, whose parents are on the list, won’t be taken to detention centres. But that hasn’t lessened their dread, of being sent away to “a place called Bangladesh”. Bongaigaon, Morigaon (Assam):...

-Newsclick.in The latest education budget needs condemnation but got kudos. In recent times there has been growing discontent in univerSITies and colleges over rising fees and cost of education. The growing worries about access to higher education for students of modest means extend beyond this, to the steady privatisation of higher education. Already, according to the government’s own data, nearly 77% of the colleges, accounting for about two-thirds of the students, are...