-The Hindu House panel on education discusses COVID-19 impact The Centre is assessing how badly school students have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and will collect States’ surveys on digital education access and learning losses by the end of this month, the School Education Department told a parliamentary panel on education on Monday. The panel asked the Centre to also assess the impact of its own guidelines and interventions, as well as...

-The Hindu Remigration of young, trained workers Bihar, Jharkhand workers at minimal levels A survey of young, semi-skilled migrants from rural Bihar and Jharkhand in April 2021 has found that last year’s lockdown led to an informalisation of labour among men, while most of the women simply dropped out of the work force altogether. It also found that the number of out-of-State migrants halved between March 2020 and 2021, with no net effect...

-Business Standard How support for left and right-leaning parties is changing in social composition Some decades back the typical voting pattern in many democracies used to be that the rich and upper middle classes used to vote in general for right-leaning parties, while the relatively poor voted for left-leaning parties. But in recent decades this pattern has been shifting: many of the professional or more educated voters in some of those countries...

-TheIndiaForum.in Anurag Mehra teaches engineering and policy at IIT Bombay. His policy focus is the interface between technology, culture, and politics. The shallow form of schooling with its emphasis on information kills rather than develops curiosity and creativity, all made worse by the importance given to 'marks' recorded in exams. An overhaul is needed but not one driven by digital delusions. Policymakers seem to have a deep love for the word 'innovation'. The...

A recent report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) states that the countrywide lockdown imposed on 25th March, 2020, which was extended for nearly two months in phases, affected the food and nutritional status of vulnerable sections of the Indian population. It says that a programme like the Mid-Day Meal Scheme covers four-fifth of primary-school-aged children in the country that helps in improving not only nutrition but also...