-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the persistent digital divide afflicting rural India owing to poor and insufficient internet connectivity. With the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech acknowledging the need ‘to complete’ internet connectivity to villages, there is a renewed vigour and interest in the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN)/BharatNet project. An important question to pose when translating policy to project is: when should...

ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...

-The Indian Express PM Narendra Modi has announced a panel to fight malnutrition in young women and ensure they get married at the right age. A look at how the two are linked During his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “We have formed a committee to ensure that the daughters are no longer suffering from malnutrition and they are married off at the right age. As soon as the...

-Down to Earth The programme can provide a safety net for the poor, not just in COVID-19 times, but for times to come In these darkest days of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) — when jobs and economies have collapsed — 56 million households got work in the past three months and these jobs provided relief. This was under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which perhaps is the...

-The Indian Express More and better-distributed rainfall this year is likely to result in higher sowing, higher production, productivity and profitability for the agriculture sector. While it is clear that India’s broader economy will contract this year, it is also true that well-distributed rainfall has MEAnt that the agriculture sector per se may be quite productive this year. A new report by Crisil throws light on the prospects of the farm sector. Here’s...