-The Hindu Top COVID-19 vaccination official responded to query on mismatch with Health Ministry’s number of 135 crore doses. A May 13 estimate, by one of India’s top officials overseeing the pandemic response, that India would have 216 crore doses of vaccines from August-December was based on an “optimistic, aspirational assessment” and based on what vaccine manufacturers had conveyed to the government. VK Paul, Chairman, National Empowered Group on Vaccine at a press briefing...
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NAPM welcomes the SC judgment on rations for all migrants & time-bound registration of unorganized sector workers
-Press release by National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) dated 2nd July, 2021 The sudden and unplanned lockdown imposed by the union government in March 2020 in the wake of pandemic had caused immense hardship to the informal sector workers. After much criticism and concern on its inaction, Supreme Court on 26.05.2020 took suo moto cognizance of “problems and miseries of the migrant labourers”. Later, several persons associated with people’s organisations...
More »Minimum Support Prices in India: Distilling the Facts -Prankur Gupta, Reetika Khera, and Sudha Narayanan
--Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, JANUARY-JUNE, 2021 Abstract: In recent years in India, minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement, especially of paddy and wheat, have been discussed widely, but these discussions have often drawn on evidence that is dated and incomplete. Consequently, such discussions have clouded the facts, resulting in a large number of factoids. According to these popular misconceptions, very few farmers (6 per cent only) benefit...
More »Govt cuts import duty on crude palm oil to lower retail edible oil prices
-PTI/ The Hindu Currently, basic customs duty on crude palm oil is 15%, while it is 45% for all other categories of palmolein. The government on Tuesday reduced basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%, which will help bring down the edible oil prices in the retail market. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) in a notification cut the basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%...
More »RTI data: IITs not following reservation rules for faculty -Priyanka Sahoo
-Hindustan Times None of the 22 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have more than six teachers belonging to the Scheduled Tribes (ST) community, while 18 of them have 10 or less candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SC) category on their faculty rolls. Seven IITs had 10 or less faculty members from the other backward classes (OBC) community. The data was revealed by 22 of the 23 IITs in response to a query...
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