-The New Indian Express As polling season concludes across the country, The Sunday Standard puts an ear to the ground and listens in to the expectations that India has from its next government NEW DELHI: Agrarian irony cries out in Punjab, the food bowl of the country, with farmers’ indebtedness only growing in recent years.    The agrarian irony is marked by overproduction in the face of inadequate price, with lopsided institutional credit,...

-The Indian Express To fulfil the constitutional requirement, reservation must be based on a rigorous identification of economic backwardness. The introduction of the 124th constitutional amendment that provides the possibility of quotas for the “economically weaker sections” (EWS) has rekindled the debate on reservations. These quotas diverge from reservation policies for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other socially and educationally backward classes, by jettisoning caste or community identity as the...

-The Hindu A well-designed assignment mechanism is vital for the quota for economically weaker sections to work A new Constitution amendment provides 10% reservation to individuals from economically weaker sections (EWS) in the general category for government jobs and educational institutions in India. This law raises several implementation questions. Under the law, EWS applicants may even find it harder to obtain positions. These problems can be addressed using the science of matching...

-The Hindu The exclusion of migrants from the electoral process reveals the caste- and class-driven nature of mainstream politics While political commentators have been busy analysing voter preferences in the general election 2019, one segment, namely migrants, continues to be overlooked. The Election Commission of India (EC), on February 21, clarified that NRI voters cannot cast votes online, and that an NRI who holds an Indian passport can vote in his/her hometown after...

-The Economic Times The group said the threat posed by digital platforms to the integrity of the upcoming elections has assumed “alarming proportions”. A group of rights organisations and citizens — including Internet Freedom Foundation, Common Cause and former chief election commissioners N Gopalaswami and SY Quraishi — have “made an urgent appeal” to the Election Commission to rein in digital platforms to ensure integrity of the general elections. The group, which also...