The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Behanbox.com New Delhi: Usha Sahu, 45, a Mitanin trainer from Bemetara district in central Chhattisgarh was in for a  shock when she checked her bank account in October. The bank had deducted Rs 2000 from the 4,000 rupees that she received as a special incentive for the Covid-19 duties for the months of April to September, 2021. “When the other Mitanins in the block started complaining about the deduction, I checked my...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-National Herald The combination of ignorance, arrogance and the desire for “shock and awe” on the part of Modi government can be quite lethal, as the Indian people have learned to their great cost In the entire history of post-independence India, no single economic measure has been as devastating for the people and as utterly futile in achieving its stated objectives, as the demonetisation of currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs...

-Hindustan Times While demonetisation was subsequently described as a policy boost to promoting digital payments, the original policy had very different stated targets. November 8, 2021 marks five years of demonetisation in India. On this day in 2016, in a televised address at 8 pm, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1000 -- these two denominations were 86% of the currency in circulation at the time in...