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...

-TheQuint.in After interest payments, food subsidies, fertiliser subsidy will be third largest single-budget govt expenditure. With the Government seeking an additional appropriation of Rs 1.09 crore through the first supplementary in the current session, India’s fertiliser subsidy bill is set to exceed Rs 2.37 lakh crore this fiscal 2022-23. Govt Expenditures Going Big on Fertiliser Subsidies Excluding interest, pensions, and mandatory transfers to state governments, the revised budgetary discretionary expenditure is likely to be...

-Countercurrents.org The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by both the houses of parliament in July 2019. The opposition parties had been arguing against the proposed changes in the Right to Information Act of 2005 through this amendment. The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act, 2005) came in existence after a long movement against transparency and accountability in governance. It enabled all citizens of India the right to...

The Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round), which was released recently, informs one about farm households' income in the crop year 2018-19 and indebtedness in 2019 (as on the date of survey), among other things. Prior to the recent report, Land and Livestock Holding Surveys (LHS) and Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Agricultural Households used to be...

-The Hindu Bar on government jobs and welfare benefits for those who have more children. The Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission has prepared a proposed draft Bill for population control, under which a two-child norm will be implemented and promoted. After the law comes into force, a person with more than two children will be debarred from several benefits such as government-sponsored welfare schemes and from contesting elections to the local authority or...