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...

-Hindustan Times The umbrella body of Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) in Delhi have issued a charter of demands seeking a more ‘liveable, breathable and commutable’ city. The umbrella body of Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) in Delhi have come up with a ‘People’s Manifesto’ for the upcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, issuing a charter of demands seeking a more “liveable, breathable and commutable” city. The manifesto issued by United RWAs Joint Action...

-Newsclick.in The central government has raked in over Rs18 lakh crore from excise duties compared to Rs14 lakh crore from taxes by all state governments over the past eight years. Yet again, the government has tried to obfuscate the exorbitant petrol/diesel prices by blaming state governments. This time, it was the Prime Minister himself who blamed some Opposition-ruled states for not reducing taxes like the Value Added Tax (VAT) after the central...

-Deccan Herald Poor pandemic management has added 10 million youth to the ranks of the unemployed in the country India’s GDP growth rate has been slowing consistently since 2016, thanks to consistent economic policy mistakes made by the Union government, starting with demonetisation. It hurt the non-farm unorganised sector MSMEs, as it hurt agriculture (third year running, after two years of drought in 2014 and 2015). Between them, these sectors are responsible for...

-National Herald The Pandora Papers raise issues that need serious introspection. Even if the wealth has been salted away legally, does it reflect a flight of capital? Do HNIs feel their wealth is not secure in India? What is different about the Pandora Papers from the earlier Panama Papers leaks, revealed by ICIJ five years ago? Unlike the Panama papers which were leaks from a single source, a law firm called Mossack...