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 Centre will introduce new guidelines for releasing subsidies to farmers for the purchase of farm machinery and tools, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shobha Karandlaje has said. A major portion of the subsidy is at present set apart for the purchase of tractors and farmers are not able to purchase other farm machineries and tools required for their daily work, she said.  The minister asked youth...

The Internet Freedom Foundation has requested the Tamil Nadu government to provide residents with a choice to produce an alternate document of identification - Medianama The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has written to the Tamil Nadu Finance Secretary requesting the government to provide residents with a choice to produce an alternate document of identification such as a driving license, voter ID, or passport to avail benefits of government schemes. Violation of privacy and...

-Reuters/ Business Today The government aims to cut spending on food and fertiliser subsidies to Rs 3.7 lakh crore ($44.6 billion) in the fiscal year from April, down 26% from this year, two government officials said, to rein in a fiscal deficit that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food and fertiliser subsidies alone account for about one-eighth of total budget spending of Rs 39.45 lakh crore this fiscal year, but reductions...

-Scroll.in In theory, natural gas is 'cleaner' than coal, but while producing the gas a certain amount of methane ( a greenhouse gas) leaks into the atmosphere. RK Singh, the Union Minister for Power, New and Renewable Energy, said on December 5 that natural gas is just as responsible as coal for global warming, if not more. “In COP26 they added a line, they wanted to add… phase-out of coal. But thereafter India...