-The New Indian Express She said that a majority of farmers are labour class and are usually nomadic, landless or smallholding farmers. BENGALURU: If halal meat is boycotted, as is being demanded by Hindu organisations, it will lead to similar consequences as the ban on cow slaughter did. It will impact the livelihoods of farmers severely, warned experts.Dr Sylvia Karpagam, a public health researcher who recently released a report on the effects...

Online teaching was perhaps the most preferred mode (of the policymakers) for imparting education to school children in the last two years when schools faced closures thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was promoted by both the Central and State Governments when mobility almost came to a standstill (or got restricted in comparison to normal times) during the last two years. However, various studies (a list of those studies is...

-The Telegraph There is a perception that the ICMR is bureaucratic and lacks transparency in decision-making on the proposals it receives: Researcher Poor response has hit efforts by India’s apex health research agency to enhance the country’s pool of medical researchers through fellowship TRAIning programmes and to bring back Indian researchers from abroad, a Parliamentary panel has noted. The Parliamentary standing committee on health has expressed concern that the Indian Council of Medical...

-India Spend/ Scroll.in These programmes should look at skilling the workforce for paid jobs rather than unpaid, part-time volunteers. Central government programmes on water emphasise groundwater management by the community in a decentralised manner but, by and large, these schemes are silent on the availability, TRAIning and deployment of a skilled workforce for this task, especially in rural areas. Water management at the most decentralised, local levels is often a part-time, volunteer or...

-Scroll.in India saw an unprecendented economic upheaval in the last two years. With it came a mental health crisis – and a wave of suicides. Trigger warning: This article contains references to suicide and some people might find it disturbing. In December 2020, in response to the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai decided to set up a dedicated mental-health helpline for slum residents of...