-The Hindu It can be made workable if there is political will and fiscal resources As economies around the world struggle to recover from the double whammy of a pandemic and a lockdown, unemployment is soaring. In India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the promise of jobs and the politics of unemployment have a long history. Can a citizen demand work as a right, and...
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Rajiv Khandelwal, co-founder and director, and Divya Varma, programme manager, policy and partnerships, of Aajeevika Bureau, interviewed by Civil Society News
-CivilSocietyOnline.com When millions of workers literally burst on to the scene during the sudden lockdown in India, the entire country was shocked by how vulnerable they seemed. They didn’t have housing, savings, healthcare and rights as employees. In their large numbers, they accounted for the majority of the workforce and yet there was no one to speak for them. The lockdown was expected to be a watershed moment because of this unsettling...
More »Keep a close eye: Social audits in India -Santosh Kumar Biswal and Uttam Chakraborty
-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...
More »Ankhi Das’s Exit from Facebook Is Not Enough for Indian Users -K Raveendran
-Newsclick.in The WSJ report highlighted how important the Indian market was for the business of Facebook, as the platform is banned in China, the only other country with the potential of a billion customers. Ankhi Das, who through her own interpretation of her role as public policy director of Facebook in India gave a tinge of saffron to the social media giant’s blue colour scheme, has finally exited the India operations. She...
More »Sustained efforts required to reduce multidimensional poverty amidst the pandemic
Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...
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