-Newsclick.in The government’s brazen class bias is crystal clear, as it gives away national assets built with public money to its favourite capitalists, together with tax breaks. Junior Minister for Rural Development in the Central government, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, ruled out in Parliament any increase in the amount of monthly pension given by the Centre to the elderly under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP). The amount currently being given to each...

-The Hindu India’s failure to put in place a sound schooling system is exacting a heavy price Word has it that there are two schools of thought among Indian development economists — one advocating growth and the other redistribution. This perception is quite misleading. For one thing, growth and redistribution are not the only means of making the world a better place. To illustrate, civil liberties have much to contribute to the...

-The Hindu The archivist and activist on curating the oral history of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and its importance as a movement of the marginalised As an activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), Nandini Oza lived and worked among the people affected by the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) for over a decade. Having participated in the movement and documented its oral history through the voices of its leaders, she felt it...

The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-TheWire.in R. Ramakumar, a professor at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has said the Narendra Modi government simply can’t meet its target of vaccinating every adult by the end of the year. According to him, this is both because the supply of vaccines will be nowhere near sufficient and, second, because the vaccination rate can’t rise to the level required to meet the target. He listed eight...