-The Tribune Right from the inception of parliamentary democracy in our country, every party has appointed a whip tasked with disciplining the elected representatives. But what about direct command from the voters? Why can’t the voters bypass the parties and instruct their representatives on how to conduct themselves in Parliament? THE Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s decision to issue a ‘voters’ whip’ is one more democratic innovation in these dark times when formal democratic...

-IndiaTomorrow.net NEW DELHI: Many people were surprised when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was given the additional charge of the newly created Ministry of Cooperation. The Cooperation Ministry was earlier a part of the Ministry of Agriculture. But it was no amazement for those acquainted with how the cooperative movement plays a role in politics – state as well as national politics – and how BJP used the cooperatives from the state...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s suggestion to ‘match the following’ on political donations is impractical and incorrect In 2014, the Delhi High Court held that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were guilty of illegally accepting donations from two companies registered in India but whose controlling shareholder was Vedanta, a foreign company. The court held that this was in contravention of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976, as...

-Business Standard How support for left and right-leaning parties is changing in social composition Some decades back the typical voting pattern in many democracies used to be that the rich and upper middle classes used to vote in general for right-leaning parties, while the relatively poor voted for left-leaning parties. But in recent decades this pattern has been shifting: many of the professional or more educated voters in some of those countries...

-Article-14.com Despite appeals not to deploy them for election duty in the midst of a  pandemic, teachers were made to work, as the government went back on promises of safety. We spoke to families of nine dead teachers, dealing with the loss of wage-earners, grief, anger and fear Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh): “I lost my wife and my baby, who would have come into this world soon.” The voice of Deepak Agrahari, 30, was...