Opinion

By Seela Subba Rao Despite the enactment of The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the practice of using direct human labour in cleaning sewage and septic tanks prevails. The Safai Mitra Suraksha Challenge, launched in 2020, was aimed at mechanising the cleaning operation of septic and sewage tank in […]

By Srinivas Rao Mahankali Even as the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the world and ravaged global economies, it ushered in winds of positive change for India’s startup ecosystem. According to recent reports, 43 startups were identified as unicorns in 2020, and 42 others in 2021, making it a bumper period for homegrown startups. The […]

Women make up the majority of the world’s poor and are more reliant on natural resources

By Amy Myers Jaffe Russia produces close to 11 million barrels per day of crude oil. It uses roughly half of this output for its own internal demand, which presumably has increased due to higher military fuel requirements, and it exports 5 million to 6 million barrels per day. Today, Russia is the second largest […]

By PV Ramana Naxalites of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)], Maoists in short, commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8. They also observe a few other commemorative days/weeks –– International Lenin Day (April 22; Lenin’s birthday); Martyr’s Memorial Week (July 28-August 3, marking the death of Charu Mazumdar); Formation Day (September 21) […]

By Ratan Mani Lal In more than a month of campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, marked by charges, counter-allegations, promises and rhetoric, political parties put in everything at their disposal into the contest. The major election issues included price rise, cases of violence against women, Covid-19, unemployment, unresponsive government machinery, polarisation, favouritism and stray cattle menace. […]

By Prof GB Reddy, G Rishichandra Reddy March 8th every year is celebrated as International Women’s Day to commemorate the event when in 1910, Clara Zetkin, the leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, tabled the idea of an international women’s day to assert women’s demands. It has been observed […]

By Arun Sinha One of the strongest pitches of the BJP marketing in recent years has been that the Modi government has given to the poor many times more than any government ever before did. Free rations, a gas connection, a pucca house, drinking water, electricity, a toilet, medical insurance and more — a long […]

By VJM Divakar When the Telangana government decided to commence the 2022 Budget session of the State Assembly without the so-called customary Governor’s address to the joint session of the legislature, eyebrows were raised in certain sections criticising Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao. The criticism is mainly based on political intentions and these are the same […]

By Mariola Urrea The plenary session of the European Parliament held on March 1 has left testimonies that make it possible to anticipate far-reaching political advances for the process of European construction. It is enough to review the speeches of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Layen, and, particularly, that of the […]

By Balsher Singh Sidhu More than half the world’s population faces water scarcity for at least one month every year. Meanwhile, some people have to deal with too much water, while others have access to only poor water quality. That’s billions of people living with drought in Africa and India, facing flood risks in Bangladesh […]

BY MADABHUSHI SRIDHAR Does the Governor have a right or authority to address the Assembly session? As the formal head of Legislature, can s/he summon the session and decide to address the Assembly and Council jointly? MP Jain’s ‘Indian Constitutional Law’ (P 328) says, “the Governor’s address to the first session of the Legislature has […]

By Tanya Ogilvie-White Russian President Vladimir Putin overnight ordered the defence minister and the chief of the military to put nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty”, possibly referring to readying tactical nuclear forces. This could of course be a bluff, but Putin has demonstrated on numerous occasions he has a cavalier […]

By Franz Krüger For more than a century, journalism education prepared young people for the role of full-time professionals employed by sizeable news organisations. But the advertising-based business model that sustained journalism is collapsing because of new technology, and jobs of the old kind are becoming scarce. The educational model, too, must change to accommodate […]

By Juliette McIntyre, Douglas Guilfoyle The world was treated to a grotesque spectacle this week. Russia, the current president of the UN Security Council, launched an invasion of Ukraine while the Security Council was holding an urgent meeting to try to resolve the crisis. This has many people asking whether there is any point to […]

By Dhananjay Tripathi A couple of weeks ago, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar was in Australia to attend the fourth foreign ministers’ meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). This meeting was viewed by experts as significant because, in the joint statement, there was an indirect reference to Pakistan’s support for terrorism against India. The […]

By Dr Vanishree Joseph, Dr N V Madhuri Several measures have been taken in India for the deprived to recover from the impact created by the Covid-19 pandemic. As per the IMF staff estimates, these measures sum to about 0.6% of the GDP. This estimated amount is being used to spend in providing insurance coverage […]

By B Yerram Raju Institutional reforms are least spoken of in the Draft National MSME Policy. The policy has missed the labour-intensive sectors to address the inclusivity issue. When the policy mentions demographic dividend, full advantage can be derived only when the small enterprises in manufacturing are encouraged and a strong link between the micro […]

By B Yerram Raju The Draft National MSME Policy, targeting V-shaped recovery after the Covid pandemic and the $5-trillion economy by 2025 (since extended by two years to 2027), seems to have seen the world more than India. There is a virtue in looking at the policies of other countries during the pandemic. However, the […]

By Arun Sinha Regardless of how the government negotiates with the farmers on the issue of legally guaranteed Minimum Support Price (MSP) for 23 crops, there seems to be no way it can abandon them. The state has been a foster father to the farmers, encouraging them to grow wheat and rice, pushing them to […]

By Nayakara Veeresha The union Budget 2022-23 has been hailed as growth-oriented in terms of physical and digital infrastructure development owing to increased capital expenditure. Most of the entrepreneurs, industrialists and corporate entities have welcomed it. No doubt these are necessities for an emerging economy like ours. However, the big missing link is the direction […]

By Tej Singh Kardam “Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence, so amplifying our human intelligence has the potential of helping civilization flourish like never before — as long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial” Artificial intelligence (AI) is based on the notion that human thought processes have the ability, […]

By Arun Sinha The BJP’s top leadership needs to review whether the way their Karnataka leaders have handled the hijab row is working in or against the party interest. At first glance, it seems the party has lost some of the goodwill it had earned among Muslim women by passing the Muslim Women (Protection of […]

By Yashobanta Parida, Joyita Roy Chowdhury, Prakash Kumar Sahoo The current budgetary allocation for disaster management under the aegis of Ministry of Home Affairs is Rs 493 crore in 2022-23, which is only 2% higher than the last fiscal year. This fund is available for specific natural disasters for financing immediate relief measures and emergency […]