-The Hindu The ruling party is doing its best to establish that being critical of its government is tantamount to being anti-national. It is not just the inconvenient person or collective being intimidated; the Constitution is under attack. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” — George Orwell The controlled voice of Ravish Kumar on a blackened screen and his stark report on NDTV India on February 19...

-Hindustan Times In the 1970s Deng Xiaoping explained that China’s one-child policy was being introduced to ensure “the fruits of economic growth are not devoured by population growth”. Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s rationale for officially abandoning the policy was the reverse: To ensure economic growth is not wrecked by population decrease. But it is probably too late to change China’s demographic future. China’s population has begun to age — and age...

-Al Jazeera Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to narrow the gap between Indian elites and the rest of the population India has experienced a significant economic growth spurt in recent decades. After seeing annual growth of 3 percent in the years after independence in 1947, the rate began to double, reaching a rate of around 6 percent per year after 1980. However, the distribution of growth proceeds has been very uneven...

-Outlook New Delhi: Stating that the data thrown up by the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) had blown the myth of inclusive growth, CPI(M) today asked the government to drop "fraudulent policies" and put in place a universal PDS system and also strengthen the rural job scheme. The party said that the figures coming out of the survey point towards the need for reversing the economic policies followed until now. "Data from SECC...

-The Hindu Two years after vociferously arguing for an expansion of the provisions of the National Food Security Act, the BJP in government is bleeding it with a thousand cuts, both fiscal and otherwise When Parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, it had already become one of the most debated pieces of legislation in decades. Those for and against it had fought it out across yards of space...