-Livemint.com Development—healthcare, jobs, education—inevitably lowers the total fertility RATe Give me a rupee for every time I have heard “demographic advantage" applied to India in the last several years, and I’d be sitting on a small fortune. Invariably, the mentions are tinged with pride, as if we’ve suddenly transformed into a commendably and overwhelmingly young nation. Truth is, we used to be even younger and are getting steadily older. But that’s a story...

-TheWire.in R. Ramakumar, a professor at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has said the Narendra Modi government simply can’t meet its target of vaccinating every adult by the end of the year. According to him, this is both because the supply of vaccines will be nowhere near sufficient and, second, because the vaccination RATe can’t rise to the level required to meet the target. He listed eight...

-The Hindu Business Line As our governments think and rethink lockdown measures and scheme policy interventions, it is time we, as a society collective, pay attention to our children on the brink of irreversible damage What does it mean to lose one’s childhood to unsung labour? What is it like when books are replaced by bricks, playgrounds by agricultural fields, plastic toys with heavy-metal machines, alphabet recitations by silent cries of help?...

-The Hindu The case for reservations for women and transgender persons in State jobs and higher education The Bihar government recently announced 33% horizontal reservation for women in State engineering and medical colleges. While reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) is referred to as vertical reservation, horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries, such as...

-The Hindu There is evidence to suggest that the PLFS data may underestimate the loss of earnings and fall in consumption The third annual round of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data conducted during July 2019-June 2020 was released recently. The PLFS captures key indicators of the labour market such as the labour force participation RATe (LFPR) — the proportion of population working or seeking work; worker-population RATio (WPR) — the...