-The Telegraph Christophe Jaffrelot says 'minorities are second class citizens', and authoritarianism risks reaching a 'point of no return' in the country London: A French scholar who has studied Narendra Modi’s politics and policies over the past 20 years has just published a 639-page book on the Prime Minister in which he predicts that India’s transformation into an ethnic democracy, “where minorities are second class citizens”, and authoritarianism risks reaching a “point...

-IDROnline.org While it claims to be a demand-based scheme with an elastic budget, NREGA’s failure to support the rural economy in 2021 indicates otherwise. A comparison of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) demand and supply of work between the first quarter of financial year (FY) 2020, when the national lockdown was in place and the first quarter of FY 2021 when the second wave was at its peak offers...

-Livemint.com This is the highest GDP growth that India has seen since the country started reporting quarterly GDP data for the quarter ended June 1996 The gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the period April to June 2021 came in at a record 20.1%. GDP is the measure of the economic size of a country during a particular period. This is the highest growth that India has seen since the country started reporting...

-The Telegraph The stimulator will use key epidemic-linked parameters to project the likelihood of a significant rise in daily new infections, allowing authorities time for preparatory steps India’s health research agency is set to release an online calculator to help states and districts project and prepare for fresh Covid-19 surges amid lingering uncertainty about the future course of the country’s epidemic. The calculator — or simulator — developed by the Indian Council of...

-Hindustan Times Afghanistan has been driving the dry fruit business in Khari Baoli, which is India’s biggest dry fruit market and home to some of the oldest dry fruit importers in the country. Surjeet Singh, a wholesale dry fruits trader, is watching the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan with great concern. “My business is completely dependent on Afghanistan; almost everything here is imported from there, ” says Singh, pointing to a range of dry...