-The Hindu Tamil Nadu tops with inducements worth ₹446.28 crore recovered. The Election Commission on Friday said it had seized cash, liquor, drugs, precious metals and other freebies worth ₹1,001.43 crore meant for distribution to voters in the ongoing Assembly elections. “Seizures crossed ₹1,000 crore for the first time in any Assembly electoral process,” the EC said in a statement. Of the total seizures as on Thursday in Assam, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West...

-IDROnline.org How did India’s Public Distribution System adapt during COVID-19 and what can other social protection schemes learn from it? Social Protection (SP) broadly refers to a set of policies and programmes aimed at protecting people against poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion throughout their life. Over the last 15 years, India has witnessed a growth in rights-based entitlements and systemic reforms to build a more inclusive SP system. These encompass the Mid-Day...

-The Hindu The political emphasis on welfare interventions is insufficient to address the emerging developmental issues in the State A major concern in contemporary Indian development is the widening socio-economic disparity across groups and regions. Even when regions perform relatively better in one developmental dimension, it does not often translate into all round development. For instance, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala might have attained better levels of human development but that has not...

-The Hindu To say that growth and inequality converge in terms of their effects on socio-economic outcomes is outrageous The Economic Survey 2021 (https://bit.ly/2OfqfVQ) does not seem to be a policy document derived straight from the empirical data of the economy or the social compulsions embedded in it. On the contrary, the Survey rings with policy postulates based on strong ideological overtones. Of interest would be Chapter 4, captioned ‘Inequality and Growth:...

-The Hindu The curious deference of the judiciary is part of the precariousness of the rights to freedom in India today Rioting in India’s capital city on a day reserved for the celebration of the Republic, was a new low in unravelling political concord. Within days of that trauma, points of entry into Delhi were barricaded with layers of concrete and steel, interwoven with vicious spools of concertina wire. Some locations had...