-The Hindu The Electoral Bond Scheme inhibits the citizen’s capacity to meaningfully participate in political and public life Early this year the government introduced an Electoral Bond Scheme purportedly with a view to cleansing the prevailing culture of political sponsorship. But the programme’s failings have been so blindingly obvious, and its consequences so utterly devastating to rectitude and transparency in government, that even O.P. Rawat, who just retired Chief Election Commissioner, thought...

-The Hindu Occupational identities are competing with caste and religious identities in Madhya Pradesh The political mood of the people in Madhya Pradesh is complex. To understand voting behaviour only through the prism of caste is an outdated method in this State. In fact, occupational identities resonate across caste and religion. Employing the categories of farmers, labourers, government employees, small businessmen, the urban service classes, and so on helps us understand voter...

-Newsclick.in Unemployment among youth is raging at a staggering 26 per cent to 55 per cent in the three BJP ruled states going to polls in the coming weeks. High and pervasive joblessness among youth of age group 20-29 years is severely denting the re-election prospects of BJP in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. According to data from CMIE’s Statistical Profile for May-August 2018, unemployment rate was 26 per cent in...

-The Indian Express Apart from the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the BJP is also counting on the Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), to neutralise rural anger ahead of the elections. Dewas, Ujjain: After the violent protests of June 2017 and unremunerative prices for most crops in the last one and a half years, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has one trump card — a Rs 5,000 crore-plus insurance payout...

-The Hindu Business Line Hounded for her documentary on the horrors of manual scavenging, filmmaker Divya Bharathi holds up a mirror to social indifference A conspiracy of silence — that’s how filmmaker Divya Bharathi describes the uneasy quiet that shrouds the death of men and children in sewage tanks. Earlier this month, when six men choked to death in Delhi, the reaction was on expected lines — nothing beyond knee-jerk moves, she...