-TheWire.in Sunita now fears losing her job as the parents of the school children allege that her appointment was in violation of norms, which the authorities deny. Dehradun: On November 25, Sunita, a Dalit woman, secured a job as Bhojan Mata, a cook, at a local government school in Sukhidhang village of the Champawat district, Uttarakhand. Even though the monthly salary paid to her is a meagre Rs 3,000 a month, the...

-NetworkIdeas.org The very day, December 11, when the Indian finance ministry spuriously claimed a robust recovery in the post-pandemic Indian economy, newspapers carried news of an acceleration in the US inflation rate. The inflation rate in November 2021 over November of the preceding year had been 6.8 per cent in the US, which was higher than the corresponding rate in any month over the previous 40 years; in particular, petrol prices...

-The Telegraph Given hospitalisation trends in the West, we may not see extreme pressures on hospitals as during second wave, say experts Indian health officials are monitoring Covid-19 hospitalisation rates in South Africa and Europe to try and predict how omicron-fuelled surges might impact the demand for critical care beds in India. The early signals appear to uncouple deaths from infection spikes. The daily new cases in South Africa, Denmark, Norway and the...

-Down to Earth Judgement against Pepsico potato variety sets precedent for all seed and food and beverages corporations not to transgress farmers’ seed rights and freedoms in India, experts say The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Authority December 3, 2021 revoked a PVP (plant variety protection) certificate granted to PepsiCo India Holding (PIH) on a potato variety (FL-2027) on multiple grounds.  This means that Pepsico’s Intellectual Property Right (IPR) granted...

-The Hindu Public choice refers to an economic approach towards the study of politics. American Nobel laureate James Buchanan, a prominent member of the Virginia school of political economy, characterised the public choice approach to politics as the study of “politics without romance.” Public choice theorists assume that politicians and bureaucrats who run the government of a country are self-interested individuals who primarily look after their own selfish interests. This is in...