KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

- Scroll.in The right to work has been suspended in the state as a result of a political battle over upcoming elections. People working under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in West Bengal have not been paid their wages for more than a year now with the Union government stopping the payment of funds. Bengal is the only state impacted by this stoppage, Scroll.in reports. MGNREGA is a national...

-Hindustan Times On November 7, the government amended the electoral Bonds scheme to allow their sale for 15 extra days during the “year of general elections to the Legislative Assembly of States and Union territories with Legislature NEW DELHI: Electoral Bonds worth ₹676.26 crore were sold from November 6 to 15 after the government allowed the sale of Bonds for an additional 15 days ahead of state elections in Gujarat and Himachal...

-The Telegraph ‘Ill-timed, improper’ amendment notified by Centre a bid by ruling party to take ‘undue advantage’, says former economic affairs secretary New Delhi: Former Union economic affairs secretary E.A.S. Sarma has asked the Election Commission of India to prevent the fresh sale of electoral Bonds, as allowed under an amendment notified by the Centre on Monday that he described as “ill-timed, improper” and as a bid by the ruling party to...

-Newsclick.in On December 6, the Indian Supreme Court will decide on whether non-transparent political donations are hitting the sovereignty of the Indian people and their right to know. Electoral Bonds, in the transparency and accountability graph, as claimed by the government have some inherently anti-democratic characters. Their key feature of anonymity enables a system where people do not know who are giving/donating money to the political parties they then are voting for....