Opinion
Appeal
The legacy of IPA, founded by Nikhil Chakravartty, the doyen of journalism in India, to keep the flag of independent media flying high, is facing the threat of extinction due to the effect of the Covid pandemic. Only an emergency funding can avert such an eventuality. We appeal to all those who believe in the freedom of expression to contribute to this noble cause.Modi Package Stands For Sell-Out, Not Self-Reliance
By Binoy Viswam When the prime minister came out with the much-awaited package to fight the pandemic, certain enthusiasts of the Sangh ideology were fascinated. For them the most attractive element was his proclamation of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. They even went to the extent of believing that now India would...
FM’s Financial Package For MSMEs
By Aashna Jain In light of COVID-19, the Finance Minister of India (“FM”) on May 13, 2020, announced a slew of incentives for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (“MSMEs”). The directions for the MSMEs formed the first tranche of the much-awaited financial package of Rs 20 lakh crores,...
Media Shutdown, Lay-Offs Are Now New Normal In Kerala
By N P Chekkutty The reports about the imminent closure of various editions of Times of India and the shutdown of most bureau offices of the The New Indian Express in Kerala did not come as a surprise, though they are signs of a long winter of deep and...
Violation Of Lockdown Norms By Madhya Prdesh Officials
By L S Herdenia BHOPAL: Enforcement of lockdown has been marked by several controversies in Madhya Pradesh. They include violation of lockdown by the government officials and public representatives. Controversy over the farm loan waiver by previous Congress government and notices to former Congress ministers to vacate official bungalows...
Vietnam Observes Ho Chi Minh’s 130th Birth Anniversary
By Steve Sweeney Vietnam celebrated the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ho Chi Minh on May 19 by announcing the imminent end of its COVID-19 outbreak, with no locally transmitted cases reported for 33 consecutive days. Despite bordering China, where the outbreak began, Vietnam has recorded no deaths...
Pakistan Offers Good Cash Assistance To Laid-Off Labour
By Sankar Ray Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan Niazi announced reimbursement Rs 12,000 to each laid-off worker due to Covid 19-led lockdown under the Ehsaas Kafaalat social protection and welfare program (Ehsaas Cash Emergency Programme), launched on 1 April last. It became operational right away. He tweeted ‘Yesterday...
Modi’s Rs 20 Lakh Crore Stimulus Is Virtual, Not Real
By Nitya Chakraborty Desperate situations demand innovative solutions. The Indian economy, ravaged by the lockdown for the last 57 days, is in a dark tunnel with no possibility of coming out in the near future. The Rs. 20 lakh crore stimulus accounting for 10 per cent of the GDP...
Lockdown May Be Going The Demonetisation Way
By K Raveendran Is Modi’s Covid lockdown going the way of the ill-fated demonetisation? Looks like it is. There have already been many similarities between the two events that have influenced the economy and people’s lives like none else. Both were announced in a jiffy, arbitrarily and without due...
Selling Off India’s Public Assets, Surrender To MNCs
By Chidambaram N It was more than a century and a half ago that Abraham Lincoln said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”...
Corruption Fuels ‘Natural’ Disasters By Making The Poor Suffer
By Belinda Henwood Indian NGO, SEEDS in partnership with researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is part of a research initiative termed the Corruption and Disasters Research Initiative (CADRI) to pioneer a new area of cross-disciplinary...
Remembering Ho Chi Minh On His 130th Birth Anniversary
By Pallab Sengupta “When you can uproot all the grass of Vietnam, only then will there be no anti-French fighters left in Vietnam”. It was told by Nguyen Trung Truc before he was killed by French colonialist when they invaded Saigon region in the year 1859. That was the...
Pandemic Is Bringing Political Shifts In America
By David Trujillo and Ismael Parra Rev. Dr. William Barber of the New Poor People’s Campaign has been preaching: “This virus is teaching us that from now on, living wages, guaranteed health care for all, unemployment and labour rights are not far-left issues but issues of right vs. wrong...
How Will The Post-Covid Society Look Like In India?
By Kalyani Shankar How will life change for us in the post lockdown exit period and what have we learnt from the coronavirus outbreak? As every doctor and administrator in the world claims that it will be a ‘new normal’ and you have to live with it but what...
Only The Third Package Announced By FM For Farmers Can Produce Results
By Anjan Roy Of all the changes and reforms the finance minister announced over the course of last week, the one reform which is likely to have a lasting impact would be her announcements regarding marketing of farm products. This is visually scrapping the APMCs and marketing of agro...
Poor Labourers Are The Serfs Of Modi’s New India
By Arun Srivastava It was more than a coincidence that on the day around 24 poor daily wage workers, on way to their native places, were killed in a road accident near Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh, the senior BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi were celebrating the sixth...
Kerala Deplores Terms Set On Borrowing
By P Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government has offered a cautious welcome to the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and unwrapped in fie tranches by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The Government has welcomed the decision to raise the limit for...
Getting Muscular With China’s Xi Jinping
By Sushil Kutty Are we past the worst of the coronavirus crisis? From the looks of it and the behaviour of lots and lots of people across the world, yes! Countries worldwide are lifting lockdowns and markets are tentatively started selling with people buying into the belief that things...
Virtual Courts Are A Necessity At The Time Of Pandemic
By Saniya Siddiqui There can be no two opinions, that the novel coronavirus caught the entire world by surprise, and what set countries apart is how they responded to the crisis. India chose the world’s strictest stay-at-home restrictions to ensure life is preserved while allowing only essential services. Although...
