-The Hindu Invites political parties for discussion; Congress, RJD and NCP agree to participate so far As political parties prepare their election manifestos and promises, a group of civil society leaders and concerned citizens on Tuesday released a document, Reclaiming the Republic, which they hope will shape the political agenda in the run up to the Lok Sabha poll. The comprehensive list includes judicial and electoral reforms, repeal of laws which threaten personal...

-Hindustan Times Fiscal prudence has been compromised in favour of pleasing every conceivable vote bank the NDA can appeal to What a difference five years make. In July 2014, when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) unveiled its first full budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley made clear that the NDA was against “mindless populism”. “India,” he said in a media interaction, “has to make a choice between mindless populism and fiscal prudence…. the...

-The Hindu There are few parallels anywhere else of the state itself producing statelessness in the manner that it is doing in Assam By requiring long-term residents of Assam to prove their citizenship by negotiating a thicket made up of bewildering and opaque rules and an uncaring bureaucracy, the Indian state has for the past two decades unleashed an unrelenting nightmare of wanton injustice on a massive swathe of its most vulnerable...

-The Hindu Labour Minister replies to Parliament New Delhi: There is no data available on unemployment subsequent to the period of demonetisation, Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar told Parliament on Monday, in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha. More than a third of the questions asked by Members of Parliament to the Labour Ministry on Monday were related to unemployment data. The Ministry held firmly to citing Labour Bureau surveys...

-Hindustan Times The basic principle of the constitutional order on which the Indian State runs is there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion. By prioritising people from certain religions - primarily Hindus - and explicitly excluding one particular community - Muslims - the amendment appears to legitimise the idea that India is fundamentally a Hindu State. The Citizenship Amendment Bill — which provides for the grant of Indian citizenship...