-Newsclick.in Almost 24% of the respondents reported having earned no wages in the unlock phases and close to 50% said that their monthly wages were less than Rs 5,000. A fact sheet produced by ActionAid Association India following its surveys focussing on informal workers has exposed the inadequacies of the governments that are failing in improving workers’ lives. The extensive report, which is a part of the organisation’s longitudinal study on the impact...

-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...

-The Indian Express Farmers in poll-bound Bihar are seeking mandis 'like in Punjab and Haryana' Begusarai, Khagaria: In 2006, Nitish Kumar’s government showed the way by repealing Bihar’s Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act and allowing crops to be freely traded outside the state’s regulated mandis. But 14 years on – when the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has enacted a law dismantling the monopoly of APMC mandis all over India and...

-Newsclick.in The plight of the migrant worker exploded as a repeating theme in Puja pandals across Kolkata at a time when the central government made its scandalous declaration in Parliament about its “lack of data” about the number of workers who had perished, evading all its responsibility and obligations. Much ink has been spilt over this past week on this sculptural tableau of goddess Durga and her children as a migrant worker...

-The Indian Express ASER report flags burden of digital inequality on children, and opportunity for government schools. The digital pivot in India’s schooling system risks pushing it into deeper inequality, seven months after schools shut down across the country to tackle the pandemic. A majority of children without access to internet has been thrown into distress — a handful to the point of self-harm, as several reports in this newspaper attest —...