-The Hindu As flows decline and pollution worsens, there will be less irrigation and drinking water available in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh New Delhi: The Ganga river basin could see crop failures rise three-fold and drinking water shortage go up by as much as 39% in some States between now and 2040, says an assessment commissioned by the World Bank and submitted to the Central Water Commission. If there is no intervention,...

-The Hindu The labour force may have actually shrunk while the Modi government has been in office Attuned as we have become to political grandstanding on the purpose of democracy, we may not have imagined that something so prosaic as statistics can alter our perception of how it is actually working for us. The emergence over the past few months of data on employment, speaking precisely the lack of it, cannot but...

-The Hindu Proposals will impact Central Budget and those presented by States for 2020-21, says N.K. Singh The 15th Finance Commission will not alter its approach on solely using the 2011 Census for population figures in its calculations for allocations to States, Chairman N.K. Singh said in an interview. However, he added that other measures would be included that would ensure that States that have performed well by controlling population growth would not...

-The Indian Express A two-year-long study jointly undertaken by the SPPU, JNU and Indian Institute of Dalit Studies has revealed that only 22.3 per cent of the country’s higher caste Hindus own 41 per cent of the country’s total wealth Pune: Caste continues to play a significant role in the educational and professional choices available to an individual, and the resultant income and assets, reveals a two-year-long study jointly undertaken by...

-The Hindu Employment opportunities, formal jobs and the labour force are all shrinking The jobs situation in India does not reflect a crisis, but it is a matter of serious concern. A crisis is understood as an emergency that demands immediate attention, without which we could see a calamity of sorts. There is no immediate calamity of any kind on hand. But there is a deeply insidious problem at work in the...