-Livemint.com * Trying to project lower interest rates as a panacea for everything isn’t the right way to go about it. The central government just played an April Fool’s joke on a large section of India’s middle class, which invests in Small Savings schemes. Late Wednesday evening, the government announced a substantial cut in interest rates on Small Savings schemes for the three months to June. The interest rates on Senior Citizen Savings Scheme...

-The Hindu This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on Small Savings schemes after switching to a quarterly interest rate setting system in April 2016. Hours after notifying significant cuts in Small Savings instruments’ returns for this quarter, the government has backtracked on these sharp cuts. This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on Small Savings schemes after...

-Press release by International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems dated 30th March, 2021 * New report sounds alarm on control of food tech, farming data, and corporate takeover of UN multilateral agencies. * Civil society  and social movements can fight back, boosting post-pandemic resilience, slashing agriculture’s GHG emissions by 75%, and shifting $4 trillion to sustainable food and farming. The future planned by agribusiness giants could accelerate environmental breakdown and jeopardize...

In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...

-TheWire.in The programme has been able to make a positive impact in the lives of around 3,000 tribal women by equipping them with skills in sewing, soft-toy making, clay art, embroidery, among others. Jaipur: When Deepa had to move to Kushalgarh, a small sub-divisional township in the southern part of Rajasthan, with her husband, she had little idea that it would alter her life substantially. Deepa’s husband, Narendra Biswas, who worked as a...