2025

* Metamorphosis of the Rural Job Guarantee Scheme | Arup Kumar Sen
* The Quiet Theft: How India

A welfare state modeled on ideals of social responsibility & respect for rights ceding ground to private business interests and cost cutting
In the last session of Parliament as the year 2025 winds to an end, the Modi Government rushed through legislation (all named in Hindi much to the displeasure of parliamentarians from non-hindi speaking states) that has far reaching consequences without much debate. There was ’The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025’ that does away with (…)

The Union government is set to introduce the Viksit Bharat

INDIA NEEDS A new formula to bring about a rational and fair method of representation in Parliament. Every seat needs to have a value.
India is a federal country and has adopted parliamentary form of government with representative democracy. Elections to the Lok Sabha are conducted once in 5 years, and all citizens of India above the age of 18 participate in these elections and elect their representatives.
Each Member of the Lok Sabha is expected to represent more or less equal number of (…)

Article 243 E and 243 U of the Constitution of India deals with the question of duration of Panchayats and Municipalities and periodicity of elections to the rural and urban local bodies. It says

The codes are designed to leave labour unprotected in the face of capital’s onslaught.

PART II (Part I appeared as Why the RSS-BJP Juggernaut Needs a Political Seawall in the Dec 6, 2025 issue of Mainstream)
Hans ran and ran, past the fields of tulips and past the windmills. His small wooden shoes clicked and clacked against the brick road and kept his feet warm and dry from the sloshy mud and puddles. Hans was still running when he passed one of the many dykes. Something did not look right. Hans crept closer to the dyke to see. There, in the middle of the high stone (…)

Did Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar outrage the modesty of Dr Nusrat Parveen pulling down her veil on November 15 while distributing appointment letters to the non-allopathic doctors offered government jobs?
Pleaders Blog, a legal site, explains that Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) states that

Abstract
The functioning of democracy depends upon the harmonious coordination of all the three organs of the state namely Legislature, Executive and Judiciary. The observations made by the PM-EAC member on the lines of economic factors alone is inadequate to enthuse the judiciary to reform from within as the key to legal reforms lie in the hands of legislature and executive. The economic rhetoric of under performance of the judiciary failed to see the political reality of the state within (…)

I recently went for lunch at India International Centre. This time I was not there for a talk or a panel or a seminar. My supervisor invited me and a few friends for a meal, and since she has a membership, we were allowed into the dining space. I have admired this place many times while attending academic events. The lawns, the old trees, the calm corridors, the sense of scholarship in the air. But a quiet event room is different from a dining room where rules breathe in every corner.
I (…)