-The Hindu Business Line The dismal quality of graduates is impacting the job market. But even high skilled workers are finding the going tough A big controversy has erupted over job creation under the Modi regime —in particular, over whether the unemployment rate in 2017-18 is, in fact, the highest in four decades as CMIE data as well as the officially undisclosed but reported in the press NSSO data seem to indicate. Further,...

-The Hindu Sabotaging the Forest Rights Act damages democracy Since 1980, THRough the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has “diverted for non-forest use” (bureaucratese for destroyed) over 1.5 million hectares of forest. How many Adivasis and forest-dwellers have been evicted by this ‘lawful’ forest destruction? Stripping these forests has yielded thousands of crores of rupees for corporations to which a bulk of these forestlands...

-ThePrint.in PVC pipes use the heavy metal lead as a stabiliser, but efforts to regulate its use have failed — because of government lethargy and industry resistance. New Delhi: The dream of piped drinking water in every Indian household comes with a caveat — it could expose people to lead, a dangerous heavy metal. Drinking water comes to most taps THRough polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes. Some cheap PVC pipes use lead stabilisers. Experts say...

-Hindustan Times From a constitutional point of view, the scheme fails the tests of rationality and non-arbitrariness Earlier this month, the Supreme Court indicated that it would hear the long-pending constitutional challenge to the electoral bonds scheme. The electoral bonds scheme, which was introduced by the government in early 2018, provides new channels for private funding of political parties, and has been subjected to severe criticism, including by a former Chief Election...

-The Indian Express Income support under PM-Kisan is only one small step. It must be complemented by large-scale reforms in agri-marketing and trade policies. Just ahead of the announcement of the 2019 general election dates, the prime minister launched the centrally sponsored ‘Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi’ (PM-Kisan) scheme of Rs 75,000 crore for small and marginal farm families. On February 24, from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, he transferred the first...