-The Hindu Despite being specialists, they are relegated to the margins The Central Board of Direct Taxation (CBDT), a wing of the Ministry of Finance, has initiated disciplinary proceedings against some Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers for a report they submitted to the government recently. The officers are not corrupt, nor did they abuse any Minister or any functionary of the government. So, what was their crime? A group of 50 IRS officers...

-The Telegraph 'Wish there were announcements on government spending' Kolkata: Like many Indians, a young businessman keenly awaiting the fine print of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-reliant India Mission) placed himself before a television screen around 4pm on Wednesday. The businessman did not have to brush up his language skills to understand finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman but he came away with a sense of déjà vu. “I heard that I will...

-Hindustan Times Flood-based irrigation in Haryana, Punjab a threat to groundwater which is depleting over 3 feet every year Chandigarh: Breaking the traditional wheat-paddy cycle is the need of the hour to preserve groundwater for the future generations, reveals a research conducted by scientists of the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Karnal (Haryana). Asserting that the rice crop alone consumes about 50% of the total irrigation water, the researchers have suggested radical...

-TheThirdPole.net Fisheries markets collapsed in the first days of the lockdown, impoverishing hundreds of thousands of small fishers, and recovery is nowhere in sight When Pradip Chatterjee, president of Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (South Bengal Fishers’ Forum – DMF), starts talking about the problems that plague small scale fishers in West Bengal, there is no stopping him. He finds a multitude of issues that confront them, from climate change to Covid-19. DMF is...

-The Hindu Having observed National Technology Day (May 11) this week, we look at the stark digital divide among Indian students during the pandemic and lockdowns — but there is still hope Bangalore: Sruthi Sri Laxmi, a Class XII student in Coimbatore, last attended school on March 16, before it closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. She has been learning via WhatsApp ever since. The notes and assignments would be posted in...