-TheWire.in Instead of giving freebies to the affluent, Sitharaman should have announced additional government spending in MNREGA and plans for filling vacancies in government jobs. After holding out for seven weeks, following her maiden budget, Nirmala Sitharaman finally blinked. For about a month now, pink papers and business-friendly pundits had been crying foul about India Inc’s shrinking sales. But, since you can’t sell a sob story about the rich, it was spun to...

-Scroll.in Democracy requires a national character that isn’t grounded in ignorance and government policy that is not a SOPhisticated version of Whatsapp. It is now clear – 1,020 days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told India he was wiping out 85% of its currency, by value – that demonetisation was not just a failure but a spectacularly misconceived move. That its destructive effects took at least 100 lives in its immediate aftermath,...

-The Hindu The Centre is riding roughshod over Kashmiri public opinion already beset with disaffection In the face of a massive security build-up in Kashmir at the close of July, a seasoned journalist conjectured, “This is just the right time when militants and their masters in Rawalpindi could do with a terror attack in Kashmir.” Such were the arguments trotted out by experienced media persons in seeking to account for the extraordinary...

-The Telegraph There are concerns that the proposal in the Economic Survey would end up privatizing a public good The Economic Survey has proposed that data of citizens obtained by the government be monetized for social benefits. It has claimed that data are a public commodity and, hence, people should benefit from large data sets. It has been proposed that data should be sold by the government to private entities like corporations...

-The New Indian Express As low prices continue to plague millions of farms all over the country, farmers and their leaders say cash transfers are fine, but main issue is agricultural prices which make farming unremunerative. NEW DELHI: Ishwar Singh is a worried man. The furrows in his brow below his once white turban have deepened. He planted onions in his two-acre farm near Sonepat this winter and got what he believed...