-Hindustan Times The concentration of political and economic power has made democratic contestation challenging. Citizens are finding other methods Fearing that India’s controversial proposed farm laws will disproportionately benefit a few corporate magnates, farmers have made Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance storefronts and Reliance Jio infrastructure the sites of major protest over the past few months. While Ambani has insisted that his company has no plans to enter corporate farming, his purported political networks...

-The Indian Express As the problem of non-performing assets persists in a sector stressed by the pandemic, the RBI Governor has agreed to look at a proposal for creating a bad bank. What are the arguments for and against the concept? Mumbai, New Delhi: The idea of setting up a bad bank to resolve the growing problem of non-performing assets (NPAs), or loans on which borrowers have defaulted, is back on the...

A recent report by Christian Aid -- an international NGO based out of London -- says that the world was not just hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it actually faced massive loss of lives and livelihoods owing to the intensification of the ongoing climate crisis. Climate-related disasters varied from fires in Australia and the United States, floods in China, India and Japan to storms in Europe and the...

-The Indian Express Simultaneously, it has started a review of all model concession agreements — the legal contract that forms the basis of the public-private partnership — across four key infrastructure sectors: airports, ports, electricity and railways. AMID the unprecedented concentration of power in at least seven core sectors in corporate India, from pharma and telecom to airports and ports, the Competition Commission of India has launched a set of detailed investigations...

-The Indian Express The Union budget should focus on enhancing credit flows to the small and marginal farmers, increase investment in health and education. The first advance estimates of GDP for 2020-21 are much better than the earlier market consensus and shows the inherent strengths of the Indian Economy. The economy is expected to contract by 7.7 per cent implying a COVID-19 induced loss of Rs 9.61 lakh crore in real terms...