-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing Inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-Livemint.com A failure to protect incomes could widen the gap between have-nots and haves and thus hurt growth When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keynes is believed to have said almost a century ago. Responding to the economic after-shocks of the covid pandemic, governments and central banks have been living by this maxim. In the UK and US, supposedly fiscally conservative governments have spent with abandon to prop...

-The Hindu Public works could provide valuable support to the urban poor, especially if women get most of the jobs The COVID-19 crisis has drawn attention to the insecurities that haunt the lives of the urban poor. Generally, they are less insecure than the rural poor, partly because fallback work is easier to find in urban areas — if only pulling a rickshaw or selling snacks. Still, the urban poor are exposed...

-The Indian Express If we truly want to ensure the livelihoods of our farmers and provide safe, healthy, nutritious food for our consumers, it is imperative to make policies that go beyond the productivity trope and populist posturing. Proponents of the three new farm laws have claimed that they will engender competition in agricultural markets and will give farmers a choice to sell wherever they like. The opponents of these laws, including...

-Newsclick.in Two taxes – inheritance and wealth -- alone, levied only on the top 1% of the population, would be enough to fetch Rs.14.67 lakh crore. It is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one’s progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists’ incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the acquisition of...