-Economic and Political Weekly The status of the tribal domestic workers in Jharkhand is explored. It is evident that large numbers of tribal women are engaged as domestic workers inside and outside of the state, and the sector provides a large chunk of employment apart from the cultivation and agricultural sector. The data show differential engagement in the sector by age, urban–rural location, gender, and tribe. Please click here to access the...

-The Hindu Over 2 lakh households have exhausted quota. More than 2 lakh rural households have already completed their guaranteed 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme within the first three months of the financial year, according to the scheme’s database. This is higher than seen at the same time last year, indicating even higher demand for work than 2020-21’s unprecedented levels. Given the high...

-The Hindu The Government needs to reverse its neglect and policy missteps as key indicators show the sector has resilience The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic could be slowly receding with a decline in the official estimates of daily infections and deaths. The economy is also very gradually getting back to normal, with many States beginning to ease some of the restrictions imposed in their lockdowns. However, the challenge of an...

-Scroll.in The result is a big mess, in the words of one official. In nine months since September, a file containing a proposal seeking environmental approval to upgrade a highway in Sikkim has travelled about 1,500 km from Shillong to Kolkata to Guwahati, before returning to rest in an office in Kolkata. Until last week, the file had not been examined, an official in the environment ministry said. The story of this file...

-The Hindu 2021 deaths surge reverses decline in mortality After registering a lower number of deaths overall in 2020 compared to 2019, Kerala witnessed a significant increase in the overall death count due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, resulting in an estimated 15,222 “excess deaths” till May 31, month-wise data from the Civil Registration System show. The overall “excess deaths” for the period April 2020-May 2021 were 13,868,...