-Livemint.com Industry estimates suggest two-wheeler sales for fiscal year 2021-22 (FY22) will close out at 14.5 million units, the lowest volume in almost a decade. This betrays a deep distress in incomes of rural households. Mint explains the fault lines: * Why are two-wheeler sales falling? Rural demand contributes 50-60% of two-wheeler sales in the commuter segment. Price increases, rising fuel prices and unseasonal rains leading to poor crop realizations have hit the...
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Reality is stranger than the fad for online education -- most schools lack IT-infrastructure
Online teaching was perhaps the most preferred mode (of the policymakers) for imparting education to school children in the last two years when schools faced closures thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was promoted by both the Central and State Governments when mobility almost came to a standstill (or got restricted in comparison to normal times) during the last two years. However, various studies (a list of those studies is...
More »India’s water management programmes haven’t cultivated water security or meaningful livelihoods -Nidhi Batra
-India Spend/ Scroll.in These programmes should look at skilling the workforce for paid jobs rather than unpaid, part-time volunteers. Central government programmes on water emphasise groundwater management by the community in a decentralised manner but, by and large, these schemes are silent on the availability, training and deployment of a skilled workforce for this task, especially in rural areas. Water management at the most decentralised, local levels is often a part-time, volunteer or...
More »Book Review: Working Lives in the Shadows of the Global City -Aparna Sundar
-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...
More »NREGA Tracker: Nearly 90 per cent of the allocated NREGA budget for 2021-22 has been used up, with 5 months of the programme still remaining
-GaonConnection.com The half-yearly MG-NREGA National tracker launched by PAEG today highlighted that 90 per cent of the allocated budget has been used up with 5 months of the programme still remaining and the remaining funds available can cover at most 13 days of employment per household till March 31, 2022. More details here. In her opening statement at the joint press conference conducted by Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) and LibTech...
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