-Newsclick.in Major budgetary allocation cuts in crucial schemes for women, children and vulnerable sections are indicative of the government’s lopsided priorities. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget has helped reinforce one home truth -- that India is divided into the salaried section and a vast underbelly, including the middle class who have been edged into poverty due to job losses suffered during the COVID pandemic. Coming out of the pandemic’s ‘third wave’, issues of...

-Newsclick.in Primarily inhabited by the scheduled caste community, Bundelkhand is home to the most backward villages — where Yogi government's developmental schemes have not reached. Newsclick visits these villages to understand the electorate’s situation here. Banda (Uttar Pradesh): Village after villages wear a deserted look, with locks hanging on the doors of predominantly kutcha houses with bamboo, mud, thatch, straw and unburnt bricks walls and roofs made of straw or reeds, in...

-Newsclick.in The SC has issued notice to the Centre over public authorities failing to disclose information under the central RTI Act, which applies to the region since 2019. Despite the rhetorical emphasis on e-governance, public authorities have failed to make suo moto information disclosures on their official websites in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country. In 2013, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) directed all public authorities to...

-Newsclick.in India needs a larger government expenditure on transfers to the working people. For such larger expenditure, resources have to be raised through greatly increased taxation of the rich- a reversal of the perverse fiscal strategy the government has pursued so far. The Indian economy is currently caught in a vicious spiral of inflation, stagnation and a widening of the fiscal deficit. And this spiral is set to become even more vicious...

-Newsclick.in The latest discussion over the Codes, if true, clearly indicates a crucial shift in the position of the Central government. What does this shift mean for trade unions, which have given a call for two-day nationwide strike on February 23 and 24. New Delhi: On Wednesday, a major Indian business newspaper reported that the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment was considering introducing the four controversial Labour Codes in a staggered...