-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...

-The Hindu Inefficiencies in the Aadhaar project should not come in the way of welfare delivery The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, did the right thing by terming as serious the allegation by a petitioner that three crore ration cards were cancelled for not being linked with the Aadhaar database and that these were connected to reported starvation deaths in some States. The unique identification scheme has been in existence for more than...

-Scroll.in Modi government’s flagship Ujjwala scheme continues to hand out new gas connections without fixing the problem of unaffordability. At the start of every monsoon, Doli Kumari’s family refills their LPG cooking gas cylinder and uses it for three or four months. As the rains recede in their village of Tarauna Bhojpur in Bihar’s Araria district, the family switches back to burning wood for daily cooking. This monsoon, however, the family plans not...

-The Hindu The government can balance LPG subsidies and ensure clean fuel consumption in poorer households Subsidised LPG prices have increased by a massive 50% in this financial year alone, consistently capturing headlines. What would be the impact of this in sustaining the gains of the government’s flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)? Since 2016, PMUY has provided LPG connections to 8 million poor households to reduce women’s drudgery and indoor...

-The Indian Express Farmers participated in the protests at more than 5,000 locations across India, and similar demonstrations in larger numbers are expected to be held in New Delhi later this month. New Delhi: At least one million farmers across 20 states took to the streets on Thursday against the three recently passed agriculture laws and the proposed Electricity Amendment Bill, All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) leader Avik Saha told...