RajivSpeak

Ease of doing business ranking: Blue 2018, Red 2017 Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have tried to  extract  political capital out of the 30 point jump noted in the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business  report , calling the 100th ranking among 190 countries “historic”, a result of what he called “all-round and multi-sectoral reform push of Team India”, but a comparison with the last year’s  report  suggests there is little cheer about it.

  A new study of gender bias in India’s Bollywood movies suggests that whether it is plots, posters or trailers, a male is mentioned around 30 times in a plot while a female is mentioned only around 15 times, adding, “There is a consistency of this ratio from 1970 to 2017(for almost 50 years).”

 A recent high-profile report on the imposition of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on handmade products has complained that the Government of India (GoI) has not shown any consideration for 90 million agricultural households, "who necessarily are connected to the artisan sector and sometimes overlap in activities."

  Amidst  rising demand  from civil society advocates for a zero tax regime for handmade products, placed under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), well-known scholar, Dr Ashoke Chatterjee, has said in a recent paper that the sector, which is the second biggest source of livelihood following agriculture, remains "characterised by a pervasive mood of neglect, loss and anxiety."

  While the Government of India (GoI) made linking of aadhaar with bank accounts  compulsory  this June, ironically, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which is supposed to control all financial operations of banks, has not issued any order to this effect. This has come to light even as all banks are on an overdrive to push customers to link aadhaar numbers to bank accounts, lest their accounts would be blocked.

Average trend of 38 countries A dangerous trend appears to have overtaken India. In a survey carried out by one of the world's most well-known US-based research institutes, Pew, as many as 55% Indians support an autocratic rule, which is the highest among the 38 countries from which samples were collected by interviewing 41,953 individuals, telephonically and face-to-face.

  A top Government of India document has said that, in “model” Gujarat, the real wages of both male and female agricultural workers in 2016-17 were worse than most major Indian states. At Rs 223 per day, Gujarat’s male agricultural wages were lower than all but three of 15 major Indian states; and for females agricultural workers, Rs 202, they were worse than all but five of 15 major Indian states.

Amidst an aggressive BJP and RSS in Kerala, especially state party chief Kummanam Rajasekharan, calling the famous farmers' Malabar rebellion of 1921, also known as Moplah rebellion, “the first jihadi massacre”, facts have come to light suggesting that a powerful Muslim family from Maharashtra which was helping the rebels was also funding the freedom struggle.

Crowd in Petlad, Central Gujarat, on Rahul Gandhi's visit Even as Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi this week completed the second leg of his whirlwind visit to Gujarat ahead of the state assembly polls, to be held in December, all eyes are set on whether the party, which got 38.9% votes in the 2012 polls as against the BJP’s 47.9%, would be able win over the huge crowds Gujarat's Congress leaders had mobilized for him.

  One of India's premier independent consultants, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), has estimated that India's urban unemployment rate in the week ended October 8 is 8.2 per cent, the highest in the past 11 months. This has happened, says CMIE, despite the fact that the "urban labour participation rate has recovered to its level during the last December-January period."

  In a move that has shocked farm workers’ activists, a high-level Government of India committee headed by a senior bureaucrat has recommended that the wages paid under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) cannot be on par with minimum agricultural wages law for rural farm workers.

  Strange though it may seem, the Government of India is reportedly rattled by a study, released jointly by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Australia’s Walk Free Foundation (WFF), “Global Estimates of Modern Slavery”, despite the fact that it does not provide any estimates for India, nor does it criticize India in any in its 68-pages.

A recent journalistic investigation into the life of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), whom BJP politicians revere more than any other freedom fighter, has claimed that at the time when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was raising his Indian National Army (INA) to confront the British in India, Savarkar "helped the colonial government recruit lakhs of Indians into its armed forces."