-Livemint.com * Rural unemployment rate has been growing for the last couple of weeks despite rural economy opening up gradually * Economists believe despite the opening up of the economy, it will take time for unemployment situation to come back to the pre-covid time NEW DELHI: India’s rural unemployment rate climbed to 25.09% in the week ended 24 May from 22.79% in the previous week, while urban unemployment rate declined by over four...

-ThePrint.in Officials claim the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Social Security Act had some flaws that hampered its implementation, but experts say successive govts slept on it. New Delhi: The thousands of migrant labourers facing a crisis amid the Covid-19 lockdown would have had a safety net if a 2008 law providing social protection to unorganised workers had been implemented. But successive governments have failed to do so. The current database with the government shows...

A recent survey conducted by National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) -- a Delhi-based non-profit organisation -- shows how persons with disabilities in the country were disproportionately affected by the COVID–19 crisis. The report by NCPEDP has observed that persons with disabilities, particularly those from economically deprived sections, went through severe hardship during the lockdown. Without sufficient access to food or money, many of them faced hunger...

-Press release by Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch dated 26th April, 2020 A large number of civil society organisations came forward to respond quickly to the lockdown-induced hunger crisis among the informal sector workers in Gurgaon. Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch (GNEM), an organisation working among the unorganised workers, started distributing an average of 350 ration kits per day since 27th March, 2020, the third day of the lockdown, and about 25,000 cooked...

-Newsclick.in The latest education budget needs condemnation but got kudos. In recent times there has been growing discontent in universities and colleges over rising fees and cost of education. The growing worries about access to higher education for students of modest means extend beyond this, to the steady privatisation of higher education. Already, according to the government’s own data, nearly 77% of the colleges, accounting for about two-thirds of the students, are...