Economist Aravind Panagariya's dismissal of Rajasthan's #righttohealth Act as an example of “irresponsible populism” is shocking in a country where the financial burden of healthcare continues to push over 55 million people into poverty every year. scroll.in/article/1047330 Panagariya also sees pensions and the right of the retired and elderly to a dignified life as a “populist” move in the context of the debate over a new pension scheme launched by the Bharatiya Janata Party government. scroll.in/article/1047330

#ScrollInvestigation: The Modi government greenlighted the clearance of about 3,000 acres of forest land in Chhattisgarh for the expansion of a coal mine operated by the Adani Group... ...even though a government-funded study found millions of tonnes of coal lying unextracted at the bottom of the existing mine.

THREAD | The assault of an activist in Sikkim’s Singtam town on April 9 has once again drawn attention to the concerns over the redefinition of who counts as “Sikkimese” for tax purposes in the Finance Act, 2023. scroll.in/article/104738… The act allows Indians who settled in Sikkim before 1975, when the Himalayan kingdom was merged with India, to avail of tax exemptions that ethnic Sikkimese groups have been granted.

The bill was necessitated by a Supreme Court verdict in January.

The Bharatiya Janata Party was on Sunday forced to replace a ceremonial banner it had erected in #Karnataka’s Mandya district to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi. scroll.in/article/104574…

A Thread ⬇️ The Opposition leaders pointed out that the banner featured two purported 18th-century Vokkaliga chieftains who the saffron party claims had killed Mysuru ruler Tipu Sultan.

According to the historical record, the Mysuru king was killed by the British.

THREAD: In early 2019, when Irshad Arif Irshad and his three friends decided to start an e-commerce business in Kashmir, they pooled their own savings instead of taking a loan.

“We did not take any bank loan because we know the risk of failure of businesses here,” Irshad said. They opened a web portal called Kashmir Origin, a local platform that sells curated Kashmiri handicrafts, organic products and fabrics.

All four co-founders had worked for e-commerce companies in #Kashmir as well as other parts of India, and brought their expertise to the table.

A group of 87 former civil servants urged President Droupadi Murmu to advise the Central government to immediately stop the Rs 72,000-crore mega project on Great Nicobar Island.

Read more: scroll.in/latest/1042354/ The mega project and the proposal to increase the island’s population amounts to “a planned destruction of the Adivasi culture and lives”, said Sharad Lele, a former member of the environment ministry and tribal ministry committee on the Forest Rights Act.
scroll.in/article/103826…

#Maharashtra: Prakash Gharu is relieved he no longer has to scrape off human excreta with brooms and carry it in baskets. scroll.in/article/103981…

Public toilets in Dhule where he has been employed as a sanitation worker for 22 years are now connected to the sewerage system. ⬇️🧵 But there is still something Gharu is expected to do as part of his job, which he dreads. scroll.in/article/1039817

Two or three times a year – often before the monsoon begins – he is summoned to join other sanitation workers to clean municipal gutters.

#Gujarat | Anganwadi workers say children find the food packets distributed by the government unappetising and prefer hot, cooked meals. scroll.in/article/104199…

“I tried, [but] my son does not like the taste."

Madhuben now dumps the contents into a cattle feed container Since 2019, the Gujarat govt has been handing out these ready-to-cook rations of energy-dense, micronutrient-fortified food to children, teenage girls, and pregnant and lactating mothers. scroll.in/article/104199…

In 2020-’21, it provided food packets to 38.18 lakh beneficiaries.

THREAD: On Oct 11, Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, general secretary of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, wrote a letter to Asma Zehra, convenor of the women’s wing.

The women’s wing was to be suspended, the letter said, and its social media accounts should be deleted. “The letter came as a shock,” Huda Rawal said. “I could not understand how and why this decision was taken. It was a unilateral action."

Rawal spent her spare time volunteering with the women’s wing of the board. scroll.in/article/103740…

On November 14, #MadhyaPradesh HC held that the provision of the state’s anti-conversion law requiring prior notice to a district magistrate for religious conversion violated a person’s fundamental right to life and privacy and so was unconstitutional. ⬇️
scroll.in/article/103794… The court ordered the state government not to prosecute inter-faith couples who changed their religion upon marriage, even if they had done so without informing the district magistrate. ⬇️ scroll.in/article/103794…

THREAD: At a function earlier this month, #Nagaland CM Neiphiu Rio said he would not be campaigning for the assembly elections, due to take place early next year. Instead, Rio said, he would prioritise the resolution of the “Naga political issue”. scroll.in/article/103758… In Nagaland, this refers to the long-running demand for a sovereign Naga homeland, which spawned India’s oldest insurgency. scroll.in/article/1037585

The question of addressing these political demands inevitably crops up before assembly elections.

THREAD: This week on #TheIndiaFix ⬇️

For the past few months, a single thread has featured in politics across states: what sort of pension scheme should apply to government employees? scroll.in/article/103786… In several states, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have promised a sop to babus in the form of increased pensions. This involves a return to the so-called Old Pension Scheme, as it existed before 2004. scroll.in/article/103786…

🧵Mamta Kol has been eating chapati and salt at least two or three times a week ever since her husband lost his job two years ago following the #COVID19 lockdown in March 2020.

The 32-year-old mother of two weighs only 40 kg and often misses her menstrual period due to weakness. The community health workers, who visit Kol’s village in Madhya Pradesh, have told her to include milk and fruits in her diet.

She finds it "tragically hilarious".

“There were days when my family had to sleep on an empty stomach.” scroll.in/article/103559…

THREAD: Last month, the #Assam Police detained and deported 10 foreign nationals.

On October 26, they held three Swedish nationals in Namrup, claiming they had violated their visa norms by addressing a religious meeting. scroll.in/article/103703… The police heard “Christian missionaries were sending people to tea gardens and tribal areas” so they “alerted intelligence” and detained the Swedish visitors, Special Director General of Police (Law and Order) GP Singh said. scroll.in/article/103703…

THREAD: #CommonGround: When Tamil Indians were repatriated from Sri Lanka, many chose to settle in the hilly region of Gudalur in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district. Many bought land, and took up work on estates. scroll.in/article/1036907 Decades ago, lakhs of Tamils, mostly Dalits, taken to Sri Lanka during British rule, to work in the quickly expanding tea estates on the island.

After Independence, the Sri Lankan government refused to grant citizenship to the “upcountry Tamils”, as they were called.

THREAD #EWSQuota: On Monday, the SC delivered a three-two verdict upholding the validity of the 10% quota in educational institutions and government jobs for the economically weaker sections of the general quota introduced by the Modi government in 2019.
scroll.in/article/103688… While three judges held that the EWS reservation was constitutionally valid, two judges disagreed. They maintained that this reservation was discriminatory since it excluded members of the SC, ST and socially and educationally backward classes. scroll.in/article/103688…

<THREAD>

On June 14, two weeks after her vaccination, doctors declared 18-year-old Rithaika Sri Omtri brain dead. Her desperate parents first explored all medical options to save her.

She received her first dose of Covishield vaccine.
scroll.in/article/103636…

#CovidVaccine Rithaika suffered vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a rare adverse event in which blood clots restrict the flow of blood into vital organs, and also result in a low platelet count. scroll.in/article/103636…

#CovidVaccine #COVID19

More than two days after violence broke out at a rally organised by a tribal organisation in #Shillong on October 28, no arrests have been made even though Meghalaya deputy chief minister Prestone Tynsong had said the police would take “necessary steps”.

scroll.in/article/103621… #Shillong City Superintendent of Police Vivek Syiem told @ROKIBUZZAMAN2 on Sunday that the police had registered two cases related to the violence, but no miscreants have been identified so far. scroll.in/article/103621…

🧵#TheIndiaFix: On Oct 9, the New Indian Express reported a significant piece of news:

Amit Shah-led committee had recommended that the medium of instruction in higher educational institutions, including Central universities, should mandatorily be Hindi. scroll.in/article/103622… Just as drastically, the Committee of Parliament on Official Language recommended that government entrance exams – which are now conducted in both Hindi and English – should drop English. scroll.in/article/103622…

#TheIndiaFix

#DroupadiMurmu as President would be a triumph for the Sangh Parivar – but not the Adivasi community

By nominating Murmu as its presidential candidate,the Sangh has completed its last leg of appropriating all of India’s major identities By Vivek Deshpande
scroll.in/a/1026797 #PresidentialElections2022 | Should the nomination of a presidential nominee be beholden to considerations of caste, creed, tribe or even academic achievement? By Vivek Deshpande scroll.in/a/1026797

Nine years after Muzaffarnagar riots, the only woman who pursued rape charges still awaits justice

She stood her ground even as the other rape complainants withdrew their cases. Nearly a decade later, is a verdict anywhere in sight? @iyersaishwarya writes scroll.in/a/1026696 In 2013, as communal riots spread across Muzaffarnagar in western UP, she had been beaten up and raped. Her son, then three months old, had been held hostage.

If she protested, her assailants had said, they would kill her son, @iyersaishwarya writes scroll.in/a/1026696