-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...

-The Hindu Evidence of significant disparity in access to online schooling during COVID-19 Schools across the country have now been closed for six months due to COVID-19, but this means vastly different things for different people. For the child in urban Himachal Pradesh, where Internet penetration is higher than 70%, it likely means online schooling, Zoom classes and digital textbooks. For the child in rural Odisha, where less than 6% of households...

MS Swaminathan Research Foundation is offering fellowship for Odia, Malayalam and Tamil journalists. The theme of the MSSRF fellowship is "Gendered Impacts of COVID-19" dealing with gender and health, focusing on post COVID-19 situation in rural India, on how coronavirus changed women's lives. Entitled Mina Swaminathan Media Fellowship for Gender and Development, the fellowship offers a unique researcher-media partnership for journalisrs to focus on gender and development, particularly in rural India....

-The Indian Express Loan limits for renewable energy, health infrastructure doubled The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday brought financing of start-ups under the priority sector lending (PSL) category of the banking sector, proposed more credit flow to districts with lower PSL, and doubled loan limits for renewable energy and health infrastructure “to align it with emerging national priorities and bring sharper focus on inclusive development.” In a bid to address regional...

-Hindustan Times Expanding better opportunities with decent wages for frontline workers could also contribute to the revival of the rural economy by putting wages into the hands of many, and take us closer to achieving our health and nutrition goals The unsung heroes of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic have most definitely been the millions of frontline women workers, especially Accredited Social Health Activists (Ashas) who have been working tirelessly at...