-TheWire.in The opposition has accused the state government of hastily implementing the KALIA scheme with an eye on elections. New Delhi: The Odisha government has found that it provided the benefit of its Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme to 3.41 lakh ineligible beneficiaries, The Hindu reported on Wednesday. This has led to the state exchequer spending Rs 170 crore more than it needed to on the scheme. Prior to...

-Newsclick.in The roots of the present economic slowdown squarely lie within the neoliberal trajectory, which has led to a crisis of overproduction. Demonetisation and ‘hasty’ GST only aggravated it. With former prime minister Manmohan Singh resurfacing on the political landscape and articulating once more the orthodox neoliberal position, one can now clearly discern three distinct perspectives on the current economic slowdown. The first is the orthodox neoliberal position that Singh has now articulated....

-Down to Earth The National Democratic Alliance government's move is an assault on the independence of information commissioners, writes former Central Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu Alas! I thought the Narendra Modi government is strong enough after its re-election. But now it is scared of the Right to Information (RTI) and the Chief Information Commission (CIC), as if they are monsters who can harm the power of the powerful rulers. The Information Commissioner...

-Mumbai Mirror On July 22, the Lok Sabha passed a set of amendments to the Right to Information Act, which – if enacted into law – will have dangerous consequences for open and transparent governance. Notably, these amendments were first proposed towards the fag end of the previous NDA government’s tenure, but in the face of sustained protests, were not carried forward. Nevertheless, one of the first legislative acts of the government...

-The Telegraph In a fortnight, we will know how many lakhs will be catapulted into a maelstrom of trauma thanks to the NRC What does it take to prove one’s identity (read citizenship) in a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic? Ask nonagenarian Amar Upadhyay, whose daughter, Baijayanti Devi, was the first woman martyr of the Assam Agitation, and who contested the assembly elections. Ask Kargil veteran, Mohammad Sanaullah. Ask Manju Devi, the great-granddaughter...