The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...
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Will the Right to Information Act Become the Right to Denial of Information Act? -Shailesh Gandhi
-Newsclick.in One of the best transparency laws promulgated by Parliament is now threatened by judicial decisions and interpretations which are not in consonance with the law and would weaken it. If more importance is given to exemptions and widening the Act’s scope, it would be a sad regression for democracy, writes former Central Information Commissioner SHAILESH GANDHI. The Supreme Court of India has consistently held from 1975 to 2005 that the Right...
More »Akshaya Patra governance under lens as 4 high-profile trustees quit in 2020, NGO denies link -Rohini Swamy
-ThePrint.in 4 trustees are ex-Infosys chief financial officers Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan, ChrysCapital co-founder Raj Kondur, and Abhay Jain, adviser to Manipal Education & Medical Group. Bengaluru: NGO Akshaya Patra Foundation (APF) has seen four high-profile trustees resign since February — three within the last month — amid speculation of misgivings within the organisation over governance issues. The four trustees are former Infosys chief financial officers Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan, ChrysCapital...
More »MGNREGA : A case for rural regeneration -Debmalya Nandy
-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...
More »Lacking in transparency -Suvrat Raju
-The Hindu Citizens must keep themselves informed and push the government to adopt scientific and people-oriented policies The lockdown of the country has had a devastating social impact. A recent survey of internal migrant workers found that 42% did not even have a day’s worth of rations left. The situation in the agricultural sector is also grim. Soon after the lockdown commenced, the Prime Minister apologised for the misery that his decision had...
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