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Coronavirus: Why isn’t Indian Media Asking Hard Questions of the Government?

Kalpana Sharma The prime minister orders and a country of 1.3 billion people obeys. That is the extraordinary spectacle we are witnessing after the televised announcement by Narendra Modi that all of India would go into complete lockdown for 21 days from midnight on March 24 in order to contain the spread of COVID-19. Fortunately,…

Corona – A Plague on Reason
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Corona – A Plague on Reason

Dunu Roy, March 2020 Gautam Navlakha – journalist; rights advocate; dedicated democrat – is directed by the Supreme Court to jail for an imagined violent overthrow of the government. He invites compatriots to listen to Leonard Cohen’s bass call to, “Ring the bell/which still can ring; forget your perfect/offering”. Would Navlakha have been surprised to…

A Pandemic in an Unequal India
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A Pandemic in an Unequal India

Harsh Mander If the COVID-19 pandemic lashes India with severity, it will not be just the middle class who will be affected. India’s impoverished millions are likely to overwhelmingly bear the brunt of the suffering which will ensue. The privileged Indian has been comfortable for too long with some of the most unconscionable inequalities in…

A Niggardly Response to an Extraordinary Crisis
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A Niggardly Response to an Extraordinary Crisis

C.P. Chandrasekhar In a show of solidarity, some of India’s opposition leaders have declared the much-delayed relief package (titled Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana) announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26 to mitigate the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the poor as a welcome “first step”. But any serious scrutiny of the…

Denying Interim Bail To Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha Is Alarming
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Denying Interim Bail To Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha Is Alarming

Press Release Statement by MRSD on Supreme Court’s rejection of pre-arrest bail plea of Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon violence case.   Mumbai Rises to Save Democracy (MRSD) is deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s rejection of the plea by Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha seeking anticipatory bail in the cases…

How Yes Bank’s Finances Quickly Deteriorated Over the Last 3 Years
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How Yes Bank’s Finances Quickly Deteriorated Over the Last 3 Years

Anjan Basu   The most astonishing thing about the Yes Bank crisis is that everyone knew it was coming, and yet everyone seems to have been taken by surprise when it did arrive.   Consider the circumstances. Rana Kapoor, the private sector lender’s founder–CEO, was ejected out of his position in January 2019, after a…

Economy Sliding into Stagnation
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Economy Sliding into Stagnation

Prabhat Patnaik   Changes in estimation methods have of late made statistics on the Indian economy increasingly bewildering; besides, whenever the statistics show the performance of the economy in a poor light, the BJP government simply suppresses them. Nothing however can suppress the fact that the Indian economy is sliding into a serious state of…

Disinvestment of LIC to Affect Policyholders?
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Disinvestment of LIC to Affect Policyholders?

Shilpa Shaji   Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement during the presentation of Budget 2020–21 proposing sale of a part of its holdings in Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has invited much criticism from the employees’ unions within the public sector undertaking (PSU) and the civil society. So far, the government’s proposal stands at the sale of…

Deadly Algebra of Wage Freeze and Super Profits in India
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Deadly Algebra of Wage Freeze and Super Profits in India

Courtesy: Newsclick   A recent analysis of official data reveals that workers in India across all types of occupations have been suffering a deadly squeeze on their incomes as inflation-adjusted wages have been barely increasing, or even declining for the past several years. This has not only devastated the living standards of already ill-paid workers…

Private Players Line Up to Run Private Trains
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Private Players Line Up to Run Private Trains

Sabrangindia    After vehemently denying the entry of private players, the Indian Railways has proposed a plan to allow private players to run their trains on around 100 routes across the country, mostly for tourism purposes.   The proposal was also mentioned by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while discussing the Budget 2020 where she said…