-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Niti Aayog, the government's thinktank, has strongly backed taxing of agricultural income above a certain threshold and removal of exemptions on personal income tax as part of a strategy to expand the tax base and prevent evasion. There is a view within the thinktank that the blanket relief on agricultural income was aimed at protecting farmers, but it was being misused by many non-farmers who...

-The Hindu Several youth collectives in the State are campaigning to make menstruation a hygienic and normal experience for women Her eyes welled over with pain. A victim in her own body, She crawled into a corner, bleeding. ‘Don’t talk about it’, she was told. Haiku #40 by Saurav Harigovind, MES Medical College Don’t. Don’t is the first lesson that a girl newly inducted to womanhood learns. Do not let anyone know that you bleed, especially men....

-The Hindu Electoral reforms announced in the Budget are not what they are claimed to be — they will neither cleanse our politics nor bring transparency Given his interest in cricket, this must be called Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘doosra’. His announcement on electoral reforms in his Budget speech combined an element of surprise, some degree of deception and a sleight of hand — all that go into a doosra in cricket....

-NDTV A recent headline in Quartz, an otherwise serious media agency, claims that Jammu and Kashmir is the first state in India to "commit to a universal basic income" (UBI). A glance at the original source quickly negates this claim: it is based on nothing more than "seeds of a thought" (sic) from the Finance Minister of J&K about possible cash transfers for a small minority of poor households. This is...

-The Hindu Business Line No special treatment for political parties, clarifies Jaitley New Delhi: Political parties registered with the election commission may not necessarily escape scrutiny of their returns with regard to deposits of old demonetised notes just because they are exempted from taxation under Section 13 A of income tax law. For political parties to gain exemption under Section 13 A, certain conditions have to be met. Also, there are "enough provisions" in...