-Financial Express We have been hearing the expression ‘Industry 4.0’ ever since the idea of ‘smart factory’ was unveiled in Hannover in April 2013. Many opine ‘Agriculture 4.0’ akin to 4G of telecom. I believe Agriculture 4.0 is “going back to basics, but with technology as its underpinning” to usher in sustainability, in the wake of climate change and degradation of our agricultural ecosystems. We need to re-look at agriculture with...
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Waiting for reforms: On the economic stimuli
-The Hindu The stimulus incentives hold promise, but structural reforms are nowhere on the horizon People who have been yearning for major economic reforms from the Narendra Modi government, it seems, will have to wait to have their dreams come true. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday presented the third round of stimulus measures to resuscitate the struggling economy, but once again these have largely failed to live up to the initial...
More »Union cabinet approves bill to merge 13 labour laws into single code
-Hindustan Times The OSH Code is the second major labour reform approved by the government. It cleared the Wage Code last week that contained “provisions of minimum wages and payment of wages to cover employees in both the organised and unorganised sectors. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Occupational, Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, also known as the OSH Code, that seeks to merge 13 central labour laws into a...
More »ADR survey shows that better employment opportunities, better health care & drinking water are the top 3 priorities among Indian voters
-Press Release by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) dated 25 March, 2019 The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) commissioned perhaps the largest ever Voter Survey in any country. The survey was conducted between October 2018 and December 2018, prior to the General Elections to the Lok Sabha 2019. It covered 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters participating in this exercise spread among various demographics. The three main objectives of...
More »Sociologist Dipankar Gupta interviewed by Poornima Joshi (The Hindu Business Line)
-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...
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