Remote teaching and learning promoted by Edtech companies as an alternative to physical classrooms, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have a sizeable consumer base in our country. However, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are only a few takers of online education. In reality, class and caste-divide, which is more prominent in rural areas, affects access to digital learning. The majority of the school going...
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‘Where is the development, where are the services?’: Patricia Mukhim -Sanjoy Hazarika
-The Hindu A troubled Meghalaya will see unrest growing until 2023, when the next elections are due, says the editor of ‘The Shillong Times’, Patricia Mukhim On August 13, an ailing former leader of an armed group was shot dead in the middle of the night at his home in Shillong by a police team. The incident led to unrest in Mawlai where the encounter occurred and resonated in the adjoining neighbourhoods...
More »RBI proposal to loosen lending norms for private players a catastrophe in the making -Rana Mitra
-Frontline.thehindu.com The RBI’s proposal to loosen regulations for private lenders in the microfinance space will have disastrous consequences for the poor, especially women in rural areas. Microfinance, a category of financial services aimed at serving people from low-income households who lack access to conventional banking credit and services, was originally designed by international finance capital institutions such as the World Bank as an alternative to providing direct concessional credit to the poor—which...
More »Making Sense of India’s Measures of Unemployment -Rahul Menon
-TheIndiaForum.in The co-existence of seasonal and regular employment has posed a challenge over the decades for accurately measuring unemployment in India. An explainer and a discussion in the light of the puzzling results of the 2019-20 Periodic Labour Force Survey. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of 2019–20 has revealed a significant fall in in the unemployment rate, to 4.8% from 6.1% in 2017–18, according to what is called the Usual Status....
More »Farmers’ stir, the new dimension in UP’s politics -Satendra Kumar
-The Hindu Its retrieval of the old secular political language openly counters the BJP’s divisive and communal politics On September 5, 2021, in Uttar Pradesh, lakhs of farmers gathered at Muzaffarnagar’s government inter-college ground for the kisan mahapanchayat organised by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM). At the mahapanchayat, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait reiterated the farmers’ demands to repeal the three farm laws and for the “legal guarantee of MSP...
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