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Federalism and Economic Justice

THE Goods and Services Taxation regime is antithetical to the very idea of cooperative federalism. The rightwing is conducting an all-out campaign to impose one tax across the country ignoring the need for diversity and local autonomy.

The report submitted by the Fifteenth Finance Commission points out that in the year 2018-19, 62.7 per cent of the total tax revenue is collected by the union government. But when it comes to expenditure, 62.4 per cent of the total government expenditure is borne by the states.

SBM 2.0, Sequel of Failure of 1.0

ON October 1st – a day before the Gandhi Jayanti – the prime minister made a big announcement. The flagship and the equally lauded - critiqued central government programme: Swachh Bharat Mission will now have a sequel. The prime minister said that with the Swachh Bharat 2.0 Mission, his government aims to make the “urban areas garbage-free”.

Patents and Price of Covid Vaccines

THE corporate media also had to note the beating that PM Modi’s and BJP’s image got due to failure in management/mismanagement of Covid-19 pandemic; bringing in stark reality the absence of public healthcare infrastructure both in urban and rural India; lack of equipment, oxygen and medicines and healthcare personnel; and lakhs of counted and uncounted deaths as aptly penned by ParulKhakkar in Shab-Bahini Ganga and the king becoming ‘Nang

On Caste Census

THE central government in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on September 23, stated that it is not possible to carry out caste census in the 2021 census operation. It also made it clear that this was a ‘conscious policy decision’. The reasons advanced by the central government for its rejection of the widely supported demand for conducting caste census as a part of the general census are flimsy and trivial.

Recent IP Regime Review by Parliament

THE process of India’s public engagement with the intellectual property (IP) regime including Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is a matter of worldwide interest. With the latest development on the front of public engagement with IP policy and strategy it is apparent that India stands on the verge of abandoning its opposition to the imposition of strong IP on the people of this country.

National Monetisation Pipeline: A Pipeline to Drain Public Wealth into Corporate Coffers

THE BJP government led by Modi recently unveiled a four year National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) claiming to garner Rs 6 lakh crore for infrastructure development. In reality, the NMP is aimed to hand over huge functional infrastructural assets of the country to private corporates and big business houses, including foreign MNCs. The corporate cronies of the BJP government will be allowed to mint huge money utilising the assets built with people’s money.

Syllabus Revision in DU: Assault on Academic Autonomy

UNIVERSITY of Delhi has been ravaged by a recent controversy pertaining to the revised syllabi of a few departments, namely, English, History, Political Science and Sociology. On August 24, 2021, the academic council, the highest statutory body on academic matters, approved syllabi of the aforesaid departments with arbitrary additions/deletions suggested by an “oversight committee’ which acted as an extra-statutory authority on academic matters despite having no member from the concerned departments.

BJP’s Yet Another Distortion - This Time, the Struggle against Hyderabad Nizam

COMETH September, Woketh the BJP in Telangana. Since last few years it has become a practice for the BJP leaders to intensify their efforts to distort the history of the heroic struggle of the people of Telangana that brought an end to the autocratic rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad. They are using the day on which Nizam had abdicated his throne – September 17 – to further their campaign. They intend to use the observance of 75th  Independence Day to distort history and spread vish (poison) in the name of amrut (nectar).

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