-The Indian Express A voice in the dark: Agnes Kharshiing remains undeterred as she awaits a response to her latest RTI application with the Urban Affairs department about land acquired for an upcoming medical college in Shillong. New Delhi: I didn’t know of Madalyn Murray O’ Hair until a feature film on her life, The Most Hated Woman in America dropped on Netflix. She was irreverent; she had a mind of...
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Now India's official statistics will be suspect
-The Telegraph Refusal to face up to economic problems will tarnish India’s reputation as an economy and a Democracy The Narendra Modi-led government has done it again. The Centre has scrapped the all-India survey on household consumption expenditure conducted by the then National Sample Survey Office. A few months ago, the government had refused to make public the official survey conducted on employment in India. There was considerable pressure exerted by economists...
More »The opacity around electoral bonds -Trilochan Sastry
-The Hindu If big money entirely funds elections in a secretive way, Democracy as we know it will not exist The recent disclosures that the Election Commission (EC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had expressed reservations about the Electoral Bonds scheme highlight the importance of this issue. In 2017, the then RBI Governor wrote to the then Finance Minister that “allowing any entity other than the central bank to issue...
More »The threat to the idea of a public university -Avijit Pathak
-The Hindu Education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the select elite Even though Jawaharlal Nehru University, where I teach, is in turmoil because of an incompetent administration incapable of communicating with the students and teachers, the larger crisis confronting the idea of a public university needs to be understood. From Jamia Millia Islamia to Jadavpur University, from Visva-Bharati University to Aligarh Muslim University, and from the University of Hyderabad...
More »Civil society group welcomes failure to sign RCEP; calls it 'bad deal for Democracy' -Joe C Mathew
-Business Today RCEP trade deal: The group said that the Indian govt should not agree to the RCEP even in future as it will be a 'bad deal for Democracy, for farmers, workers, will subvert our sovereign laws and compromise India's industrialisation potential'. Forum for Trade Justice, a pan-civil society network has welcomed the failure of the 16 negotiating countries to reach a consensus over the conclusion of the world's largest free...
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