-The Indian Express Acknowledging the burden of housework on women is welcome. But more needs to be done to address their exclusion from employment. At a time when four states and the UT of Puducherry are heading for elections, housework and recognising those who do it have become topics of public discourse. In the poll-bound states in south India, housework has figured in manifestos. In Kerala, the ruling Left government has promised...

-The Hindu This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on small savings schemes after switching to a quarterly interest rate setting system in April 2016. Hours after notifying significant cuts in small savings instruments’ returns for this quarter, the government has backtracked on these sharp cuts. This is the first time that the Centre has scrapped the notified interest rates on small savings schemes after...

-Livemint.com * Trying to project lower interest rates as a panacea for everything isn’t the right way to go about it. The central government just played an April Fool’s joke on a large section of India’s Middle Class, which invests in small savings schemes. Late Wednesday evening, the government announced a substantial cut in interest rates on small savings schemes for the three months to June. The interest rates on Senior Citizen Savings Scheme...

During the last one year, India seems to have lost the race in becoming the world leader in terms of development, prosperity and growth thanks to the recession brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. The total number of poor people in the country has swelled and the Middle Class has shrunk in 2020 in comparison to what was anticipated earlier. A new study by the United States based think tank Pew...

-Down to Earth Gaps in data on women and girls particularly severe; countries do not invest enough in public intent data systems, the report said Most countries have shied away from an open-data policy — more so countries with developing economies, according to a recent World Bank report. Only 11 per cent low-income countries consistently made available with a license classifiable as ’open’, the report flagged. The comparable rate for lower-middle-income countries was...