-Livemint.com Under the current income tax laws, if an employer is contributing towards the employee's NPS account, a deduction up to a certain percentage of salary qualifies for income tax deduction In the Budget 2021, tax experts expect the government to fix some anomalies in the NPS with regard to income tax benefits. They say that this will help in increasing the attractiveness of the National Pension scheme. "For contribution towards Tier I...

Preliminary findings of a survey among 3,994 respondents from 11 states reveal that most vulnerable households and communities, such as SCs, STs, OBCs, PVTGs, slum dwellers, daily wage labourers, farmers, single women headed households, etc. continue to witness depressed incomes during September-October in comparison to their income levels prior to the lockdown. The face-to-face survey conducted by the Right to Food Campaign and Center for Equity Studies (instead of telephonic...

-Press release by Working Peoples' Charter dated 21st September, 2020 Amidst the micro and macro-economic crisis of the last 5 years, the union government has aggressively pushed the agenda of labour law reforms -- purportedly to simplify India’s ‘complex’ labour legislations, improve the business environment, and augment growth and employment. These changes, driven primarily by the business fraternity, have been aimed at improving India’s ranking in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’...

ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...

Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...