-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-TheWire.in The Modi government’s attempts to reshape the economy lie entirely in the financial realm; they come on the back of concerted efforts to strip workers of legal protection in not just the informal sector, but also the formal. The Narendra Modi government has made two major interventions in the economic sphere, demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), with the ostensible aim of expanding the formal sector at the expense...

-The Economic Times After Gujarat returned the ruling BJP with a slim margin, the chorus of the establishment was "jo jeeta wohi sikandar" (He who wins is the king). It seemed apt, considering that the party retained Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, bunking anti-incumbency of 22 years. But opposition wags responded with "jo sikha wohi sikandar", he who learns will be king, in 2019, in the next general elections. Rural Gujarat,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Sangh parivar affiliates Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh have urged the government to address joblessness and agrarian distress in the budget, sounding an alert before the 2019 general election campaign. The Manch, the Sangh's economic wing, has suggested the government shift focus and provide incentives to indigenous small-scale industries to generate more jobs. Farmer arm Bharatiya Kisan Sangh has advocated measures to make agricultural remunerative and demanded...

-The Indian Express The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress in a market where fresh hiring opportunities are increasingly limited. TEXTILE to capital goods, banking to I-T, start-ups to energy, the economy’s downward spiral is leaving a trail of job losses across both old and new economy sectors. In the near absence of consolidated employment numbers, disaggregated data collated from across these sectors by The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress...