-Macroscan.org The Budget sops will not provide a solution to problems of poverty and unemployment in India, which result from structural changes creating a mass of unutilised and underutilised labour force. Please click here to read more. ...

-Livemint.com * The Narendra Modi government launched a host of schemes, but most of them have had no visible impact * According to NSSO, joblessness among rural men in the 15-29 age group tripled to 17.4% in 2017-18, compared to that in 2011-12 Shiv Prasad has a plan—one that he feels can change his destiny. The daily wager from Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region has experienced crushing poverty, trying to provide for his 10-member...

-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...

-The Indian Express Direct income support for farmers is too late, too little The hopes of farmers for a meaningful package from the Modi government have evaporated after the announcements in the Union budget. The proposed Rs 6,000 annual direct income support to small and marginal farmers is a drop in the ocean. States like Telangana and Odisha have done much better with their Rythu Bandhu and Kalia schemes respectively. After...

-Counterview.net Reclaiming the Republic, a civil rights network, has released a document prepared under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (retired) -- and backed, among others, by Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan, bureaucrat-turned-human rights activist Harsh Mander, economist Prabhat Patnaik, Right to transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj and social scientist Yogendra Yadav  (click HERE for full list) -- with the "aim" of putting forth policy and legislative reforms needed to “protect” and...