-TheWire.in Contrary to the spirit of reform, Modi’s government has sought to arrogate to itself the power to transfer IAS and IPS officers at will, without the concurrence of state governments. On Sunday, at the first convocation ceremony of the Rashtriya Raksha University in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended several progressive steps towards better policing, including the need for a psychological approach for improvements in jail conditions, for personnel to study...

-The Wire Science There is reason to celebrate the drop of India’s maternal mortality rate: the decline is consistent and continuous, indicating that the reproductive health of India’s women is getting better. However, a closer look at the state-level MMR data reveals that the all-India three-year average of maternal deaths camouflages the performance of some states. We can predict that the Empowered Action Group states and Assam will have to redouble their...

-Scroll.in They are now alone in the world, hungry, jobless and with zero bargaining power and protection – and the employers know that. It was early on a rainy morning in early August 2021, when the dreaded second wave was just abating. We drove to Company Bagh, in the Walled City of Old Delhi, to check if work had revived for Delhi’s casual daily wage workers. Thousands of these workers gather every...

-TheWire.in The widespread victories of lesser-known candidates in Punjab reveals voters’ entrenched anger with traditional parties in the state – an anger which AAP was able to capitalise on. Chandigarh: Even as the election verdict in Punjab sent shock waves across the country and beyond, it was less known faces that stole the show by defeating the bigwigs in the state. One of the major upsets of the election was the massive defeat...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...