-The Indian Express The FM’s other ideas for agriculture, especially on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), which she repeated this year, need to be tested before it becomes a national policy. In her Budget speech, Nirmala Sitharaman spelled out sixteen measures to reboot agriculture and re-affirmed the Modi government’s resolve to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. Agriculture is categorized by her as “Aspirational India”. All these sixteen measures are broadly in the...
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Health sees minuscule increase; govt to privatise district hospitals -Sumi Sukanya Dutta
-The New Indian Express The proposal, mentioned in the Budget, has raised doubts. NEW DELHI: The idea to privatise district hospital — on which the Centre’s top think tank Niti Aayog is still trying to build consensus — was declared as the official policy of the Modi government on Saturday. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech, said that district hospitals will be attached with private medical colleges on public-private...
More »Deposit insurance cover raised to Rs.5 lakh
-The Hindu The first increase in 27 years assumes significance in the wake of the crisis at PMC Bank Mumbai: The government has decided to increase the insurance cover for bank deposits to ?5 lakh from ?1 lakh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. This is the first time since 1993 that the deposit insurance cover has been raised. The Finance Minister assured that there was a robust mechanism in...
More »Kannan Gopinathan, former IAS officer and anti-CAA-NRIC-NPR activist, interviewed by Revathi Siva Kumar (The Hindu)
-The Hindu For the first time, the Muslim community is asserting its religious identity as well as its Indian identity, says the IAS officer who quit office to protest the J&K lockdown Kannan Gopinathan, the former IAS officer, first caught the nation’s eye when he stepped down from the service to protest the lockdown in Jammu and Kashmir. He resigned as secretary, power department of the Union Territories of Daman and Diu,...
More »MGNREGA allocation slashed by Rs. 9,500 crore in the Union Budget 2020-21, allege Right to Work activists
-Press release by Peoples' Action for Employment Guarantee dated 1 February, 2020 The Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee is distressed to note the total lack of responsibility and sensitivity accorded by the Union Budget 2020-21 to the rural economy in General, and MGNREGA in particular. It is telling and obviously callous that the Budget estimate for this year at Rs. 61,500 crores is Rs. 9,500 crores less than the revised estimate...
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