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...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 135
What CAG's Nitpicking Over Kerala Worker Cess Says About the Problems With Purpose-Specific Taxes -Himanshu Upadhyaya
-TheWire.in Why should the money collected through purpose-specific cesses be funneled into a state's consolidated fund? On July 20, 2022, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)’s report on Kerala’s finances for the fiscal year 2020-21 was tabled in the state assembly. Amongst several other observations, this report has noted how funds being kept outside the ‘Consolidated Fund’ of the state. The context here is the manner in which Kerala treats cess...
More »How Delhi's Construction Workers Were Failed by Their Government-Run Welfare Board -Himanshu Upadhyaya
-TheWire.in A recent CAG report paints a sobering picture of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board's performance. A recently tabled Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report has raised critical questions over the functioning of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board. Let’s start with the most startling revelation. According to the national auditor, the welfare board, which comes under the Delhi government’s labour department, spent a meagre Rs...
More »More Confusion, Less Benefits Mar E-Shram Registration Process -Shreya Adhikari and Debojit Dutta
-TheWire.in Across India, unorganised workers registering for the e-Shram card have to wade through rumours of monetary benefits, fear of fraud, and a daunting process. On June 31, 2021, in response to a petition on the struggles faced by migrant workers during the pandemic, the Supreme Court directed the central government to accelerate the process of building a database of unorganised workers. The government responded by launching the e-Shram portal – a...
More »The curious case of Meghalaya’s COVID-19 relief package -Rakshita Swamy and Angela Rangad
-The Hindu Audits, transparency and citizen-centric accountability need to be a part of fund support and disbursement Every COVID-19 wave in India has brought us face to face with the dire precarity of life and livelihood for India’s vast numbers of unorganised workers, and the inadequate response of the state and society to their plight. The latest global OXFAM inequality report highlights how India’s billionaires have grown dramatically in numbers and wealth,...
More »
