AS India marks its 70th anniversary of independence, it is necessary to recollect that the current political and social battles that are going on in our country emerge from a continuous ideological battle between three distinct visions of what should be the character of the political and social structure of post-independent India that arose during the course of our epic freedom struggle, particularly in the decade of the 1920s. The mainstream Congress vision had articulated that independent India should be a secular democratic Republic.

REFERRING to a list of 12 grains and their flours, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that “GST on these goods shall apply when supplied in ‘pre-packaged and labelled’ commodities attracting the provisions of Legal Metrology Act. For example, items like pulses, cereals like rice, wheat, and flour, etc, earlier attracted GST at the rate of 5 per cent when branded and packed in unit container. From July 18, 2022, these items would attract GST when “pre-packaged and labelled”.BRANDED AND UNBRANDEDLet us clarify this rigmarole.

REPORTS of attacks on minorities, especially Muslims, in Uttar Pradesh have become commonplace.  Justifications of these attacks are a regular feature on high-decibel, provocative tv ‘debates’.  Hindi newspapers are also full of these reports and justifications.  This has become a tested way of deepening religious polarization which has paid rich political dividends for the ruling party.  Attacks on dalit men, women and children occurring with greater frequency and intensity after 2017 are, however, absent from the mainstream electronic media and hard to find in the newspapers where they fi

A WIDE-RANGING field study was conducted by the CITU Centre covering manufacturing hubs in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in collaboration with the CITU state committees. The survey team covered around five manufacturing industrial clusters of Bengaluru and Chennai and had interactive sessions with many groups of workers covering 23 manufacturing industries to capture a deeper understanding of the dynamics of rapidly changing employment relations as well as to mark the composition of workers recruited under different nomenclatures and categories in the same shop floor.

CENTRAL labour minister, Bhupender Yadav has written an article in The Hindu’s ‘Bussines Line’ on June 23, 2022, under the title - Labour reforms and the rise of jobs. He has argued that “India’s labour regulatory framework has been rigid and hindered the growth of output, investment and employment expansion”.