-Press release by Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand dated 6th April, 2020 The government of Jharkhand has announced, as part of its relief measures, that eligible households left out of the public distribution system (PDS) would receive 10 kg of foodgrain if they have applied for a ration card. An impression has been created that this would be 10 kg per month. In fact, none of this is happening. Instead, mukhiyas (gram...

-NDTV "Social Unity amid Physical Distancing" is the slogan of Kerala in the war against COVID-19. It was coined after some elements began to use measures for social distancing to justify caste pollution distance norms. Kerala is harnessing its abundant social capital to overcome the limited fiscal space in which state governments are forced to operate in quasi-federal India. Led by a state government with commitment and the actualization of synergies...

-Newsclick.in Reviving the economy requires, apart from social peace, a powerful fiscal intervention going well beyond what neo-liberalism allows. Changes in estimation methods have of late made statistics on the Indian economy increasingly bewildering; besides, whenever the statistics show the performance of the economy in a poor light, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government simply suppresses them. Nothing, however, can suppress the fact that the Indian economy is sliding into a serious...

-Down to Earth Govt agencies have procured hardly 11 per cent of targeted procurement of paddy since November 15 last year Small and marginal farmers in Bihar are unhappy and worried by the state government’s poor procurement of paddy. The slow speed of paddy procurement that started in Bihar on November 15, 2019, has forced farmers to sell their crop to traders and agents of rice mills, according to reports from districts. The government’s...

-The Hindu Citizens should not be asked to provide the same information more than once to government agencies In June 2014, the Modi government set out to change how the government worked. At that time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in a meeting of Union Secretaries about “reforming the public service delivery system and bridging the governance deficit” by introducing “self-certification” in place of “affidavits”. That event revealed his enthusiasm and commitment...