-TheWire.in The widespread victories of lesser-known candidates in Punjab reveals voters’ entrenched anger with traditional parties in the state – an anger which AAP was able to capitalise on. Chandigarh: Even as the election verdict in Punjab sent shock waves across the country and beyond, it was less known faces that stole the show by defeating the bigwigs in the state. One of the major upsets of the election was the massive defeat...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled Labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-TheWire.in As Rohingyas in India face rising Islamophobia, a strong tide of Hindu nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, the view that fires in refugees camps are due to accidents is rather unconvincing. Rohingya refugee camps in India witnessed four fires in 2021 alone, higher than any other year prior. Between 2016 and 2021, 12 mysterious fires broke out in Rohingya camps alone. Most of these conflagrations demonstrated a peculiar trend – they catalyse...

-Newsclick.in VENKATESH NAYAK analyses data from the Central Information Commission’s Annual Report for 2021-21 to demonstrate the frequency of rejecting RTI applications under various exemption clauses of the RTI Act used by different central public authorities and Union Territories, comparing the rejections numbers with the same for the previous year. WITH a 2.95 per cent dip in the number of applications under the Right to Information [RTI] Act filed across central public...

-Down to Earth Post mechanisation, for the first time there is innovation in farm equipment to revive bullocks and aid small farmers Simhachalam calls himself a ‘bullock entrepreneur’. Each agricultural season, this farmer from Andhra Pradesh’s Sangra village travels with his pair of bullocks to work on other people’s farms in nearby villages for a fee. Like most other parts of the country, bullocks in these tribal villages are traditionally used only for...