-The Indian Express It is the rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers. These below-one-hectare cultivators...

-The Indian Express Speaking to The Indian Express on her way to Chandigarh to meet an advocate at the High Court, Nodeep Kaur's sister Rajvir said, “We have started the process. The allegations against my sister are false.” Gurgaon/ New Delhi: Four days after a Sessions Court in Sonipat denied bail to Nodeep Kaur (23), a Dalit labour rights activist and member of the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan in Sonipat who has been...

-Firstpost.com The biggest hoodwink is the starved Poshan Abhiyan 2.0, which though merges the Supplementary Nutrition Programme and the Poshan Abhiyan, has been allocated an amount less than what was prescribed for Anganwadi services in 2020 In a post-truth world, the plain cold statistics in the fine print of the Union Budget 2021 often reveal more than the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech. The budget for NREGA labourers has been slashed despite...

-OutlookIndia.com Missing in common images of the 'kisan', not counted by economists, not found on property papers. Recent events put the focus on the silent workforce of our farms. This is India’s shameful secret, as it is the world’s. The ‘formal’ economy—where human toil and its fruits are counted and put on graphs—has always had an area of darkness. A very large area that it pretends doesn’t exist. “Women hold up half...

-TheWire.in Ideally, the government should increase the work entitlement for MGNREGA to at least 150 days, double the budget and put in place an urban employment guarantee act. Let’s start with those who did well over the last 10 months. The Sensex index crossed the 50,000 benchmark for the first time on January 21, 2021, with a whopping 70% increase since April 2020. The Oxfam inequality report, just released, gives an idea of...