-The Hindu Loss of livelihoods has pushed poor families to opt for early marriages The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have proved to be new drivers of child marriages in rural Madhya Pradesh with several reports of such ceremonies from different parts of the State during the ongoing marriage season. “I am a widow and I don’t have any kind of social SECurity. Marriage is the only safe option for my daughters,” said...

-The Hindu The SJM resolution repeatedly referred to the Reliance Industries’ foray into the retail SECtor and warned that local kirana stores would be transformed into fulfilment centres for Jio Mart. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on December 13 demanded that the government not allow a “nexus” of multinational companies and large Indian business houses such as Reliance Industries to dominate the retail industry in the country as it would lead to...

-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-TheWire.in Engaging with the agrarian question must necessarily mean questioning the development model that is hungry for land but spits out the people that live on it. Over the last few weeks, images of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh engaged in pitched battles against the police, and by extension the state, have caught the nation’s attention as it forced the government into unconditional talks with a broad coalition of farmers’...

-Newsclick.in The agitating farmers have time and again voiced apprehensions about losing their land. Will the implementation of the Farm Laws enforce such a change? On December 8, more than 50 lakh people were estimated to have observed a countrywide Bharat Bandh at around 20,000 protest sites, in as many as 22 states in India. The farmers were joined in their agitation by mass organisations, trade bodies, SECtoral federations, and about 24...