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...

-The Telegraph PM Modi’s Gabbar Singh Tax is the best example of his modus operandi — talk big, and when it’s time to act, make things worse: Congress Traders and shopkeepers will hold a nationwide protest next week against a hike in taxes on a range of products, including food grains and household items, and services that kicked in from Monday. “The 5 per cent goods and services tax on a range of...

-Mongabay.com - Perennial waterlogging in agricultural fields of Charkhi Dadri is making them uncultivable. Farmers are adopting alternate occupations or taking land on lease in other villages to continue farming. - While groundwater scarcity is a problem in many parts of North India, some 319 villages in Haryana have the opposite issue of waterlogging because of high groundwater levels. - Government interventions, saline water draining attempts and subsidies for crop diversification, along with...

-The Indian Express No doubt, with these laws, agricultural operations may become more efficient, but they threaten to lead to the marginalisation of the farmers. In other words, agriculture may flourish, but agriculturists could perish. The farmers’ agitation is unique in many ways. One, it is a coming together of 31 ideologically competing organisations. Two, it has successfully purged itself of the influence and interference of the established political parties as reflected...

-Livemint.com * The new scheme is a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's universal social secuity programme * PM Narendra Modi's new pension scheme aims at benefiting over 3 crore traders and shopkeepers The newly-inducted Union Cabinet, in its first meeting, approved a mega pension scheme to provide a minimum assured pension of Rs.3000 per month to all small shopkeepers and retail traders. The new scheme is a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's...