Burnt out or jobless - meet China's 'full-time children'   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66172192  Gruelling work hours and a dismal job market are forcing young Chinese to make unusual choices.

The burnout driving working adults to become "full-time children" is not entirely surprising given China's notoriously poor work-life balance - work culture in the country is often referred to as the so-called "996" - where people consider it a norm to work 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

Poor no longer? Dimensions of poverty in India https://www.livemint.com/news/india/multidimensional-poverty-in-india-niti-aayog-s-findings-show-progress-but-pandemic-s-impact-not-reflected-in-data-11689703547861.html Tanay Sukumar 2 min read 18 Jul 2023, Around 135 million Indians exited ‘multidimensional poverty’, a measure of deprivation beyond money, between 2015-16 and 2019-21, the Niti Aayog says. The basis of calculation is the National Family Health Survey (NFHS). 

Doesn’t this show resilience during the pandemic?
Not really. The national MPI, as well as the global MPI for India, used data from the NFHS, which last took place between June 2019 and April 2021. Fieldwork was already complete in 22 of the 36 states and Union territories, including some of the most populated states, by February 2020. So the MPI doesn’t reflect any possible post-pandemic shifts.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/multidimensional-poverty-in-india-niti-aayog-s-findings-show-progress-but-pandemic-s-impact-not-reflected-in-data-11689703547861.html

12.6 करोड़ की नौकरी गई, तो 13.5 करोड़ लोग गरीबी से ऊपर कैसे उठे? https://www.viplavikisansandesh.page/2023/07/126-135.html जुलाई 18, 2023 •

India's Niti Aayog is claiming that the number of poor in rural areas of the country has decreased from 32.59 percent to 19.28 percent and the number of poor in urban areas has decreased from 8.65 percent to 5.27 percent during that period, during which the country's economy was further reduced to minus growth and then the large population was suffering from hunger, deprivation, lockdown, unemployment, and death in the Kovid epidemic. According to Mahesh Vyas, CEO of the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, 1 crore people lost their jobs in the second wave of Kovid. Whereas in the first wave 12.6 crore people had lost their jobs in 2020 itself. Of these, 9 crore were daily wage workers.

According to the business podcast of 6 May 21, by April 2021, the poorest 20 percent of the country's families had lost their entire income. While India's richest families saw their own income drop by less than 25 percent in the same period. A research by Azim Premji University suggests that the first wave of Covid pushed 230 million new people into poverty. It was found in this research that in the first period of Kovid, there was an increase of 15 percent in the village and 20 percent in the city in the number of poor. In such a situation, this juggling of fake figures released by the Niti Aayog of the Modi government completely exposes the Modi government and its Niti Aayog.

How the Dravidian Model of Development Succeeded in Tamil Nadu https://thewire.in/books/how-the-dravidian-model-of-development-succeeded-in-tamil-nadu

In prioritising the counter hegemonic articulations of the plebes against the exploitative Brahminical social order, Dravidianism evolved a new common sense of equity as the bedrock of popular, electoral democracy.

review of A. Kalaiyarasan and M. Vijayabaskar’s The Dravidian Model: Interpreting Political Economy of Tamil Nadu, 

the sub-national variant in the developmental path produced in Tamil Nadu is the product of Dravidian political ideology. As we have seen, this variant mitigates the trend to rising inequality seen all over the world and ensures effective redistribution through state measures.

If this process is to be translated into the paradigm of capitalist transition that Piketty uses, it is possible to say that the Dravidian movement intervened in the transition of a society dominated by clergy and nobility to that of an ownership society resulting in the hegemony of the propertied class which once again accentuates inequality after a brief hiatus of reduction in inequality with the advent of democracy or social democracy.

In prioritising the counter hegemonic articulations of the plebes against the exploitative Brahminical social order – the disenfranchised sections of the ternary society in Piketty’s terms – for a fair share in economic growth and governance, Dravidianism evolved a new common sense of equity as the bedrock of popular, electoral democracy.

MP plans to hand over 10 trauma centres, 13 path labs to private players https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bhopal-news/madhya-pradesh-government-to-hand-over-trauma-and-pathology-centres-to-private-players-to-improve-health-services-101689670901339.html Shruti Tomar Jul 18, 2023

A second official of the medical education department said the state government will hand over 5,000 to 8,000 square feet of space along with equipment and machines of pathology, microbiology and virology labs of the 13 medical government colleges to private partners.

“The government will bear the expenses of the doctor, lab technician as well as their maintenance. The company will decide the rate of tests accordingly,” the official said 

Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), a non profit working in the field of health, said handing over pathology and trauma centres will not improve public health facilities but lead to deterioration.

“This whole structure and arrangement will directly benefit the private company and this type of contract will only harm the public. According to the information, it is possible the test rates will go up by 200% to 700%. Along with this, the government is also talking about increasing the participation of private health service providers in public health institutions in the second and third-tier cities of the state,” said JSA convenor Amulya Nidhi

The problems with the Data Protection Bill  https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-problems-with-the-data-protection-bill/article66531928.ece February 21, 2023 Anjali Bhardwaj,Amrita Johri
The Bill must be put through a process of rigorous pre-legislative consultation and redrafted before it makes its way to Parliament

First, the Bill seeks to dilute the provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which has empowered citizens to access information and hold governments accountable.801j - "information which cannot be denied to parliament,, shall not be denied to any person.. Based on the incorrect understanding as being applicable only to privacy exemption, this orvision is sought to be deleted. But the Shah Report has said "privacy Act should clarify that  publication of personal data for public interest .. should not be constitute infringement of Privacy...

Third given that government is the biggest data repository, .. the oversight body should be adequately independent to act on violation of the law by government entitites...

finally, the bill stipulates that the Data Protection Board should be digital by design.. this when 33% women have never used the internet..

Writes Thomas Franco remembering the Bank Nationalisation Day, in Random Reflections this week.
https://www.cenfa.org/nationalisation-of-banks-was-a-historical-achievement-and-it-has-to-be-saved/

Some media articles are lauding the Modi Govt for its turnaround of the public sector banks! Credit is being given to the present government for absolute success in NPAs, profit, growth in credit and resistance to external shocks. Yet, as of March 2023, the banks have accumulated 15,324 corporate loans with outstanding above Rs. 71,12,765 crore. This is the real achievement of the Modi government!

Though the government announced two years ago that it is going to privatise two public sector banks, it could not privatise even one so far because of the strong opposition from the United Federation of Bank Unions. Yet, using dubious methods, it has succeeded in reducing the strength of PSBs.

Now the RBI has come up with its circular on compromise proposals for wilful defaulters and frauds. Will that save the banks? No! The new cycle will start, and we will see another crisis soon. That means we don’t have a banking success story, either by NDA or UPA.

Notwithstanding the above, the need of the hour is to save PSBs and their character. They have a huge opportunity due to their branch network and customer base. The depositors still have more faith in PSBs as seen from the chart. If every one of them is given a loan, there will be huge growth in advances. For that, the employee’s strength should be at least doubled and outsourcing should stop.

beerbiceps and the politics of FLUFFOGANDA - Part 1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-m5zvRVmkJul 15, 2023

Ranveer Allahabadia a.k.a #beerbiceps has been doing a series of video podcasts with ministers of the Modi Gormint. So I decided to watch it all and dissect it piece by piece. We all paid for Ranveer's travel, food and lodging after all. 

This is PART 1 of the Ranveer does Fluffoganda series. If you reach till the end, congratulations. The producer of the video thanks you.

Colin Gonsalves on Manipur: Winning Elections Doesn’t Absolve you of Crimes Against Humanity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9241mDIeJE https://youtu.be/L9241mDIeJE?t=99 NewsClickin  Jul 4, 2023 
Union home minister Amit Shah visited Manipur and blamed the present conflict on a High Court order regarding the Meitei demand for Scheduled Tribe status.

Dr. Colin Gonsalves,  argues forcefully that Shah’s accounting of the blame is incorrect and describes the extent to which the Manipur government under N. Biren Singh was responsible for orchestrating the violence. Gonsalves, on behalf of his clients, is pleading with the state to arrest those organised groups which have unleashed the violence as a starting point towards peace. He also calls on the media and ordinary citizens of India to introspect and question the state of Indian democracy.

This interview was recorded in Imphal on June 25, 2023.

Why Yogendra Yadav says - “INDIA can be a turning point in Indian politics”  https://youtu.be/L3EXuau9iQY?t=178 
26 दलों का गठबंधन बना । नाम INDIA . क्या है ये इंडिया ? कैसे ये लड़ेगा बीजेपी से ? क्या से देश की राजनीति में बड़े बदलाव का संदेश है ? और आगे इंडिया को क्या करना होगा ? अगर मोदी को हराना है तो ? आशुतोष ने बात की मशहूर राजनीतिक विश्लेषक योगेन्द्र यादव से ।