-NetworkIdeas.org With its gross debt as of March 31, 2021 placed at Rs. 1.8 lakh crore and losses in the preceding quarter totalling more than Rs. 7,000 crore, Vi (former Vodafone Idea), once India’s largest telecom company in terms of subscriber base, is staring at bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to win state support to survive, Kumar Mangalam Birla, the Chairman of Vi, wrote to the government in June, offering to...

-The Hindu The channels of communication between scientists and society remain limited Indian scientists engaged in science, contributing to the understanding of the natural world and developing approaches and technologies to measure or change outcomes well before the Scientific Revolution that began in Europe in 1543. Whether it was the more than two millennia-old Charaka Samhita or the Jantar Mantars of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, science and technologywere embedded in the...

-Down to Earth The Taliban are set to overtake Kabul; but an expert believes they will spare the age-old Karez system of underground aqueducts in the country given its importance The resurgent Taliban is on the victory march to Kabul. It has already taken provincial capitals as well as Afghanistan’s third-largest city of Herat. As the Taliban appear at the gates of Kabul again after two decades, fears have grown about what...

-The New Indian Express Once a beleaguered backward region, Odisha now boasts of effective governance in partnership with panchayati raj Institutions and uses a community-based response strategy towards combating crises Odisha, a state averred by many as one of the poorest in the country, has set an example for the nation, be it by becoming the first city in the country to achieve clean drinking water from the tap in the city...

The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...