-The Indian Express Transgender Persons Bill has let down the community’s long struggle for self respect. The passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019, has caused great disapointment to the transgender community in India that had urged the Rajya Sabha to refer the Bill to a select committee. The Bill failed to incorporate crucial recommendations of the Parliament Standing Committee and several depositions by the transgender and intersex community....

-ThePrint.in Under the Modi government, the MGNREGS has suddenly become both an indicator of rural stagnation as well as the proposed solution to it. Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had told the Lok Sabha in July this year that the Narendra Modi government was “not in favour of continuing with” the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for long.  While MGNREGS’ target group is the rural poor, the Modi government’s...

-The Telegraph The government plans to frontload additional expenditures in the rural job scheme to boost demand in the rural economy New Delhi: Rural development schemes are likely to get more funds than allotted in the budget to boost consumption growth, which has fallen to a seven-year low in the villages. The Narendra Modi-government plans to frontload additional expenditure in the rural job scheme and highway construction projects to boost demand in the...

-TheWire.in Amongst all the criticism, the Centre has been tight-lipped about employment data post demonetisation. The issue of ‘unemployment’ is being widely discussed across India. The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data for 2017–2018 says that the unemployment rate hit 6.1%, the highest in 45 years. Even the opposition has intensified its criticism of the present government, which had promised to create 2 crore jobs each year. In a recent interview, in response...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...