-The Hindu If concurrent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were to be a reality, it would go against the political diversity essential for addressing the social diversity of India. Though spoken about for quite a few years, simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies seem to be fast on their way to becoming a matter of national concern. This proposal is not only being discussed in the television studio, but...
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Plucking the low-hanging fruit of agricultural subsidy reform -Pravesh Sharma
-The Indian Express The Centre is pushing and many states are implementing Direct Benefit Transfers – and encountering little political opposition The entire focus on ushering in a direct benefit transfer (DBT) regime for delivering subsidies to the targeted populations has so far centered around cooking gas, and to some extent, on isolated pilot experiments with food subsidy. Agriculture subsidies, especially on inputs other than fertilisers, have largely escaped attention in...
More »Centre should do away with sterilisation camps in 3 yrs: SC
-PTI Supreme Court today directed the Centre to do away with sterilisation camps within three years and strengthen the primary healthcare centre system, saying "it is time that women and men are treated with respect and dignity and not as mere statistics in the sterilisation programme". The verdict was delivered when the court was dealing with a PIL which had brought to light the mismanagement of sterilisation camps which had led to the...
More »NCRB goofs up on number of arrests under cyber law Sec 66A -Aloke Tikku
-Hindustan Times The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) conceded on Friday that its crime statistics for 2014 and 2015 had misreported cases registered under Section 66A, a cyber law under the Information Technology Act that was scrapped by the Supreme Court last year. The NCRB’s ‘Crime in India’ report released last month had put the number of people arrested under Section 66A at 3,137 in 2015 and 2423 in 2014. This implied...
More »Retaining MGNREGA's core -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...
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