-Business Standard/ TheWire.in Under cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state government says exempting businesses from these laws will boost investment. But experts term the move an attack on fundamental rights. New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh government has approved an ordinance exempting businesses from the purview of almost all labour laws for the next three years in a bid to provide a fillip to investments affected by the novel coronavirus in the...

-The Indian Express Mani Shankar Aiyar writes: Planning for withstanding the ingress of COVID-19 requires the full deployment of the mechanisms for district planning envisaged in Article 243 ZD involving all three tiers of the panchayats and the municipalities brought together in the district planning committee An unintended but welcome consequence of the struggle against COVID-19 is that the “confrontational federalism” that has characterised the Centre’s relations with the states, especially those...

-The Hindu The economic crisis can be overcome only by raising the consumption of and investment for the poor Impoverishment among English workers during the early years of the Industrial Revolution had prompted Leicester framework knitters to frame this resolution in 1817: “… if liberal Wages were given to the Mechanics in general throughout the Country, the Home Consumption of our Manufactures would be immediately more than doubled, and consequently every hand...

Although no journalist was murdered in the country last year as opposed to six such murders in 2018, it would be wrong to say that press freedom has never been violated, says the recently released report by Reporters without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières - RSF) -- a media watchdog organisation that works for freedom of expression and information. The report says that India's performance in 2020 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI)...

-The Hindu In the middle of the pandemic, the FCI holds the key to warding off a looming crisis of hunger and starvation For several years now, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has drawn attention for all the wrong reasons. Set up under the Food Corporations Act 1964, in its first decade, the FCI was at the forefront of India’s quest of self-sufficiency in rice and wheat following the Green Revolution,...