-The Hindu Allocation for anganwadis sees negligible increase of 0.7% Two lakh anganwadis will be upgraded in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech on Tuesday. In last year’s Budget, the government had renamed a few schemes and categorised them under ‘Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0’. Though the government is yet to share the detailed of the renamed scheme, on Tuesday the Finance Minister said this would include “new...

--Press release by the National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 29, 2022 An education emergency of unprecedented proportions has severely impacted hundreds of millions of children in India. Prolonged school closures have caused learning deprivation, student dropout, increased child labour, malnutrition, and early marriages that are compromising the future of our country. It is time to open schools and massively increase funding of public education with a clear focus...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Maharashtra police detained five traditional herders from Kachchh on January 7 suspecting these semi-nomadic pastoralists were smuggling camels to slaughterhouses in Hyderabad. Also detained: 58 camels “We have not confiscated these 58 camels,” asserts Inspector Ajay Akare, in charge of the Talegaon Dashasar police station in Amravati district. “We don’t have the powers to do so since Maharashtra has no specific law against cruelty to these animals.” “The camels,” he says, “are...

-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

-Hindustan Times The study has been authored by Ashish Jhalani, co-author of the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) in India’ report released by the PM's Economic Advisory Council. Let us first recognise that there is a fundamental challenge in early education years, that has been severely underestimated in the education planning strategy of India. Perhaps that is why the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council released a report titled The State of...