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 Farm policymaking slowed down after the repeal of three laws in 2021. But the climate crisis, geopolitical instability and inflation have exacerbated the urgency for reforms In November 2021, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi repealed three contentious farm laws in a dramatic turnaround. The entire episode — from the passage of the laws, the protests that followed and the turnaround — had stalled national agriculture policymaking. Yet, as this column...

-The Telegraph Raj Bhavan Cholo to mark the beginning of the second phase of the farmers’ movement where Bengal cultivators are expected to play a major role The Bengal chapter of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) will organise a “massive” farmers’ march to Raj Bhavan in Calcutta on November 26 to mark the second anniversary of the movement that forced the Narendra Modi government to withdraw three controversial agriculture laws. SKM leaders said...

-Newsclick.in Many farmers also brought uprooted electric meters from their tube wells, dumped them on the premises of PVVNL and asked the officials to deposit them in the office. Lucknow: Farmers from across Western Uttar Pradesh intensified their ongoing protest by allegedly holding government officials hostage for several hours inside the Paschim Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL) under the banner of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU). The protest is against installing electric meters...

-The Telegraph Citizens’ participation in policy-making is an important factor in assessing the quality of democracy Within five days of the announcement of Agnipath, the scheme had been amended 10 times, raising the larger question concerning consultation in policy-making. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government has taken a number of policy decisions without public consultation — from demonetisation, which saw 60 changes in 43 days, to GST, which has been...