-TheWire.in The new vision wants youth to figure out education and skills on their own but still expects them to be the drivers of economic progress. Piyush Goyal, presenting the interim budget, called it a road map for peoples’ development – a fitting description for an election year budget. Accordingly, it contained the expected sops to farmers (income support), to the middle class and home owners (increase in income tax and rental...

-The Hindu Invites political parties for discussion; Congress, RJD and NCP agree to participate so far As political parties prepare their election manifestos and promises, a group of civil society leaders and concerned citizens on Tuesday released a document, Reclaiming the Republic, which they hope will shape the political agenda in the run up to the Lok Sabha poll. The comprehensive list includes judicial and electoral reforms, repeal of laws which threaten personal...

-The Hindu The Interim Budget makes clear the class hierarchy in the Modi government’s scheme of populism Interim Budget 2019 has sought to make amends for all the wrongs of almost five years of the Narendra Modi government. For example, the debilitating impact of demonetisation on the informal sector that employs nearly 90% of the workforce had long been suspected on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The findings of the National Sample...

-ThePrint.in CPR report says healthcare centres don’t meet standards designed by health ministry in terms of infrastructure, manpower, medical equipment and drugs. New Delhi: Not a single rural healthcare centre in 15 Indian states meets the bare minimum quality standards — set by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare — such as establishing essential infrastructure, employing the minimum mandated manpower apart from buying required medical equipment and drugs. The findings are part...

-The Hindu There are few parallels anywhere else of the state itself producing statelessness in the manner that it is doing in Assam By requiring long-term residents of Assam to prove their citizenship by negotiating a thicket made up of bewildering and opaque rules and an uncaring bureaucracy, the Indian state has for the past two decades unleashed an unrelenting nightmare of wanton injustice on a massive swathe of its most vulnerable...