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Dear Reader,
An accompanying concern to India’s growth story is whether the impact of the upward trajectory in GDP, percolates downwards to create meaningful and productive employment. The answer is a clear no, according to The India Forum. With thousands jostling to enter the job market every year, the present model of "corporate-driven industrialisation" is unable to create "quality employment," especially in India's hinterlands, it asserts.
The response to this "jobless growth," it argues, is to focus on, amongst others, two important aspects. One is reducing the gap in productivity between small agriculture and organised industry by raising the productivity of the former. And two, increasing the employment potential for the educated by employing them in an expanded delivery of basic and essential services in primary health and education.
Farmers in India are increasingly at the receiving end of the vagaries of climate change, farm prices, and, as this story by मैं मीडिया shows, government apathy and malfeasance. Farmers in Kishanganj who had bought price-controlled maize seeds for sowing from the sub-divisional office of the Bihar State Seed Corporation Ltd say, that the seeds did not yield a crop even after weeks of sowing. Losses and distress followed in its wake.
Last week, on January 8, after years of fighting a case, Bilkis Bano seemingly got justice from the land's highest court. A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Justice B V Nagarathna, overturned remission orders of the Gujarat government, which had allowed the premature release of 11 convicts held guilty of gang-raping Bano and murdering 14 members of her family in 2002. The Supreme Court Observer analyses the 251-page judgement and the principles involved -- the maintainability of the petition, the Gujarat government's authority to grant remission, and the question of the convicts' personal liberty.
And, after the Prime Minister’s call to Indians to look at tourist destinations within India rather than locations on foreign shores, there has been a broad call for promoting tourism to islands like Lakshadweep and the Andamans.
In the context of this call, Keraleeyam Masika evaluates the options. Do Lakshadweep and Andamans have the same enchantment as Maldives to attract visitors? Even if enticed, do the Indian locales have the capacity to absorb these tourists and provide the expected experience? And how will this relatively sudden and increased influx affect the ecology and the society of these islands?
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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