-TheWire.in We must change the parameters we use to judge the "productivity" of parliament. My first few days in the Rajya Sabha were tumultuous enough to realise that classics like Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, the bible of Westminster, would really have to be ‘tropicalised’ a lot to adjust to the gross realities of the world’s largest and beleaguered democracy. The small endoscopic view of parliament’s functioning also leads to the belief that...

-The Hindu Business Line The Supreme Court adds that the panel cannot behave like a prosecution agency The Supreme Court on Thursday said Facebook ought to appear before the Delhi Legislative Assembly Committee of Peace and Harmony, enquiring into the circumstances leading to the February 2020 communal riots. Investigation of a socially complicated problem is within the domain of the legislature, the court noted. A judgement pronounced by Justice S.K. Kaul, however, said the...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu The revival of the NYAY scheme in Congress’s Kerala manifesto is a welcome step The Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) has become more relevant since it was first proposed two years back. By resurrecting it in its Kerala manifesto, the Congress has an opportunity to make the idea even more robust. Even the best policy proposals find it hard to survive an unsuccessful election campaign. So, it was unexpected to see a...