-The Indian Express Laws like Official Secrets Act conflate the interests of particular parties, governments with the greater good. They must be contested. The greatest failing of Indian public life over the past 70 years is the manner in which the state and forms of government have become identified with the life of the people. We have come to believe that state and society are the same thing and that pronouncements...

-Press release by NREGA Watch (Jharkhand) dated 2nd February, 2019 Thousands of NREGA workers across Jharkhand spilled to the streets today to express their anger at the continued denial of their entitlements. In over 30 blocks of the state, workers raised their voice against the abysmal wage rate, acute shortage of work, increasing delays in payment of wages, and violation of several other rights. They also demanded work and submitted grievances...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The Hindu India has the technological capacity, the financial resources, and the need for a simple, transparent basic income scheme In 2010-2013, I was principal designer of three basic income pilots in West Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, in which over 6,000 men, women and children were provided with modest basic incomes, paid in cash, monthly, without conditions. The money was not much, coming to about a third of subsistence. But it was...

-ThePrint.in Not BJP or Congress, farmers are setting their own agenda for 2019 elections. Has the farmers’ movement finally arrived at the centre stage of national politics in India? And, can 2019 be the first Lok Sabha election to be fought mainly on farmers’ issues? I asked myself these questions sitting at the stage of Kisan Mukti March at the Parliament Street last week. Tens of thousands of farmers from all over the...