-The Indian Express Rather than encouraging workers to return by securing wages and improving working conditions, the Amendments introduced by the states are removing basic labour law protections. In the wake of the migrant crisis, several states have amended existing labour laws, either suspending them altogether or increasing working hours. The Prime Minister’s address on May 12 also indicated legal changes in the offing, which will doubtless include Amendments to labour laws....

-The Indian Express Out of the 11 announcements, three concern governance and administrative reforms, including Amendment of the Essential Commodities Act (ECA), 1955, and agriculture marketing reforms through a Central law. New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Friday announced 11 measures for the agriculture sector as part of the third trench of the government’s Rs 20 lakh crore Covid-19 relief package. However, most of these measures are either in place already...

-The Indian Express Third tranche of COVID-19 economic package: Not only can farmers sell to anyone and anywhere, but traders and processors, too, will be able to freely buy, stock and move any quantity of agri-produce within the country. Barely seven months after imposing limits on the maximum quantity of onion any wholesaler or retailer could keep, the Narendra Modi government on Friday announced what may turn out to be a defining...

-The Hindu Kerala and Karnataka have shown how democratic decentralisation has worked in their favour Mahatma Gandhi envisioned that a free India would rest on a foundation of gram panchayats, village republics that governed locally and epitomised Swaraj in practice. B.R. Ambedkar was sceptical; he described the caste-ridden, unequal village society as a cesspool. Yet, he was not unequivocally against decentralisation. Locally relevant initiatives The 73rd Constitutional Amendment mandates the constitution of panchayats at...

-Newsclick.in Release of the draft during a lockdown, which seeks to fundamentally changes India’s environmental regulations, shows BJP government’s utter disdain for public opinion. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had released a Draft Notification on Environment Impact Assessment 2020 (EIA Notification 2020) on March 12, 2020, on the eve of the world’s largest nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had called for responses in the next...