-The Hindu Business Line At present, panchayats make no contribution to the design of schemes. Their autonomy is negligible. This needs to change Decentralisation has long been recognised as an efficient instrument for promoting economic democracy, and delivering services to meet the needs of people. There are three different channels for decentralisation — political, administrative and fiscal. Political decentralisation promotes trust and cooperation between government agencies and citizens. Administrative decentralisation enables authority...

-The Hindu It is a very important first step in addressing the mental health and well-being of children scarred by the pandemic It is now clear that COVID-19 caught us all by surprise. The school education sector in India too struggled during the novel coronavirus pandemic. While online learning for children has had its fair share of challenges, including learning loss, fatigue from online learning to mental stress, there is another group...

-Newsclick.in Scores of Mukhya Sevikas are protesting in Lucknow against low Salaries and delayed promotions. Lucknow: Scores of Mukhya Sevikas (supervisors) employed under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) across Uttar Pradesh (UP) are protesting against the Centre and the state government in Lucknow since Monday for not fulfilling their long-pending demands of pay parity with the staff of other departments like the Secretariat and the delay in promotions. Holding placards that read,...

-Newsclick.in The daily wage earners accounted for the largest number of suicides in absolute numbers, at 37,666 in 2020. The share of this category in all suicides has increased from 12% in 2014 to 24.6% in 2020. Daily wage earners made up the largest share of total suicides in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals, according to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). As per the report titled...

-The Hindu There has been sharp rise in the NPAs amid COVID-19 pandemic With unemployment rising, the ability of those who have taken education loans to pay back has come down sharply. As a result, the non-performing assets (NPAs) have increased in the last one-and-a-half years. R. Nagarajan had taken a loan for his engineering course and started repaying it when he got a job at a start-up in the second half of...