-PTI Industry leaders met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi for three hours. Businesses on Thursday asked the government for a stimulus package of over Rs 1 trillion to restart investments and revive the economy. Industry leaders, who met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi for three hours, said the government will soon take action to boost economic growth. "The economy requires a critical intervention by introducing a stimulus package. We have...

-Livemint.com * An exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming book on the Assam Accord takes a critical look at the NRC crisis * The passage analyses the pros and cons of the debate over a work-permit formula to deal with the situation. One of the foremost thinkers to academically elaborate on the formula (of work permits in Assam) was author–journalist–rights activist Sanjoy Hazarika in Rites of Passage: Border Crossings, Imagined Homelands, India’s East and...

-Hindustan Times The changes empower the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so On August 8, 2019, the President assented to amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, introducing a set of changes to an already draconian law. The most fundamental of these changes empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so, leaving little to no recourse for them to protest...

-Scroll.in/ qz.com There are parallels between India’s economic situation today and the US experience of 2008. The Indian economy is facing one of its most challenging times in years, and policymakers are responding to the crisis through monetary measures, such as tweaking key interest rates. But how far can this go in reviving growth? On August 7, the Reserve Bank of India, in its bi-monthly monetary policy meeting, lowered its growth projection for...

-Down to Earth The court’s suggestions, like making MSP a legal right and increasing it to thrice the cost of production, are practical but need effort in implementation, say experts The Punjab and Haryana high court recently recommended that minimum support price (MSP) be made farmers’ legal right and it be set at three times the cost of production. But will these or a slew of other measures the court suggested address...