-Down to Earth The Taliban are set to overtake Kabul; but an expert believes they will spare the age-old Karez system of underground aqueducts in the country given its Importance The resurgent Taliban is on the victory march to Kabul. It has already taken provincial capitals as well as Afghanistan’s third-largest city of Herat. As the Taliban appear at the gates of Kabul again after two decades, fears have grown about what...

-The Hindu The monsoon session which has ended is another example of Parliament being quite ineffective in all its functions The monsoon session of Parliament which ended on Wednesday was a disappointment in several ways. This was the fourth straight session that ended ahead of the original schedule — other than the cancelled winter 2020 session. This meant that many Important issues had not been discussed such as the COVID-19 response and...

-The Hindu The archivist and activist on curating the oral history of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and its Importance as a movement of the marginalised As an activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), Nandini Oza lived and worked among the people affected by the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) for over a decade. Having participated in the movement and documented its oral history through the voices of its leaders, she felt it...

-The Telegraph Inequality remains integral to India’s growth story This year marks three decades of market-friendly economic reforms introduced in 1991 by the P.V. Narasimha Rao administration. Manmohan Singh was considered the mastermind behind breaking the shackles of the license-permit raj, an inefficient government, a stifled private sector, and a strictly controlled Import regime. All these led to low economic growth, large incidence of poverty, an inefficient, unwieldy public sector, and pervasive...

-Hindustan Times The budgetary allocations for Ujjwala, which is listed as money for “LPG connections to the poor” in the ministry of petroleum’s budget, was just ₹21,365.81 crore between 2016-17 and 2020-21. With the Prime Minister launching the second module of the Ujjwala Yojana from Mahoba, Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has, in a way, started its election campaign for the crucial state which goes to the polls in early...