-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-Livemint.com India has seen several large farmer-led movements. Yet, farm issues have rarely dominated national election campaigns, as Indian farmers remain divided by caste, geography, and class More than thirty years after hundreds of thousands of farmers led by Mahendra Singh Tikait brought Delhi to its knees, a new farm agitation has once again shaken Delhi. A government worried that it might be seen as ‘anti-farmer’ has agreed to reconsider the recent...

-The Indian Express Post 2014, two centralisations — of political and economic power — continue to reinforce each other, with profound consequences for the country and potential to define popular narrative in days ahead. The return of single-party dominance and its implications for politics after nearly 25 years of minority/coalition governments at the Centre (December 1989-April 2014) has been widely commented upon. As have concerns over rising corporate market power and their...

-The Hindu Affidavit says that legislators are not bound by specific service conditions like that of government employees. The Central government has told the Supreme Court that it rejected the idea of barring convicted legislators for life from contesting elections, forming or becoming an office-bearer of a political party. The Union Ministry of Law and Justice said an elected representative of the people cannot be equated with public servants who are banned for...

-Newsclick.in As the farmers from Punjab and Haryana camp outside Delhi, Prof Judge explains the nature of the agriculture crisis gripping Punjab, why the three farm laws will prove disastrous to them, and the Narendra Modi government’s indifferent attitude towards their problems. Currently the president of the Indian Sociological Society, Professor Paramjit Singh Judge taught at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, for well over two decades. Social Change Through Land Reforms...