-Newsclick.in The Bill and the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s recommendations are riddled with many problems, and some of them are giving rise to serious concerns over enabling the State with surveillance power. The much-awaited Joint Parliamentary Committee’s report on the country's FIRst comprehensive data protection law has been tabled in the Parliament. After two years of intense deliberation and consultation, the report was finalised and adopted. The law, if passed, would regulate data...

-Newsclick.in After facing severe setbacks due to demonetisation, hasty implementation of GST, and the ill-conceived COVID-19 lockdown, the MSMEs are gasping due to a steep rise in raw material prices. In a FIRst, the entrepreneurs of the micro medium and small enterprises (MSME) went on a one-day strike across the country on Monday. Affected severely by the policies of the Union government, the ill-planned lockdown in March 2020, and now by the...

-The Telegraph The agrarian laws might have been repealed but are we any wiser about what it was that the farmers were so against, what reforms they could do with instead of the ones thrust upon them? Even in retreat over the farm laws, the Modi government adopted the same top-down approach it employed while bringing them in in May 2020. Pleasantly surprised as they were by the Prime Minister’s unexpected announcement,...

-The Telegraph The index includes 5 pillars comprising 41 indicators on the basis of which the states have been ranked for literacy among children. * The Index is aimed at understanding the overall state of foundational learning across children aged below 10 years in India * Chief minister Mamata Banerjee congratulates all teachers, guardians and members of the education department West Bengal has topped the ‘large states’ category in the Index on Foundational Literacy...

-Scroll.in It is essential for policy makers to understand the crises created by widening income inequalities and labour market ruptures. In the context of the current global macro-economic situation, there are three deep currents for the Indian government to be aware of. How it understands and responds to these challenges will shape the country’s socio-economic trajectory over the next few years. The FIRst undercurrent: the deepening of income and wealth inequalities. Second: a...