-Press release by CUTS International dated 5th July, 2021 In a study done by CUTS International under its 4-years old project -- ProOrganic, almost 97.4 percent of consumers were found to be aware of the fact that chemical input-based food products are harmful for health compared to 86 percent of the same set of consumers way back in 2017. Similarly, the percentage of farmers doing organic farming has gone up to...
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Here's What We Know About COVID's Impact on India's Workers – and What We Can Do About it -Rosa Abraham and Amit Basole
-TheWire.in The pandemic disproportionately impacted women and young workers. A school bus driver is struggling to make ends meet driving a tempo for hire, purchased with an informal loan; a five-star chef is volunteering for an NGO preparing cooked meals for distribution in the slums of Bangalore; and an MCA degree-holder is working as a door-to-door water purifier technician. These and many more such anecdotes give us a glimpse into the disruption...
More »Govt cuts import duty on crude palm oil to lower retail edible oil prices
-PTI/ The Hindu Currently, basic customs duty on crude palm oil is 15%, while it is 45% for all other categories of palmolein. The government on Tuesday reduced basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%, which will help bring down the edible oil prices in the retail market. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) in a notification cut the basic customs duty on crude palm oil to 10%...
More »India’s vaccine policy needs clarity -K Sujatha Rao
-The Hindu In seeking to pursue conflicting objectives, the policy architecture is complex and difficult to implement Contrary to popular perception, public policies are made without full knowledge or facts. More often than not, they embody assumptions arising from experience, an understanding of history, and present conditions. Considering the vast sea of unknowns surrounding COVID-19, it would be understandable to place a greater reliance on historical experience. Instead, India’s vaccine policy appears...
More »The Great Petro Robbery - Subodh Varma
-Newsclick.in Modi government has been mercilessly hiking up taxes on petrol and diesel to take money from the people and boost its resources. Since the prices of petroleum products were deregulated some years back and supposedly “linked” to markets, the central government has weaponised this to simply impose an indirect tax burden on the people. Take the four big metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. On an average, petrol prices have increased from...
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