-PTI/ TheWire.in The Rishikesh-Gangotri highway (NH-94) has been closed for traffic from Narendra Nagar to Chamba, while the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway (NH-58) has been closed from Tapovan to Maletha. Dehradun: Heavy overnight rains damaged the Rishikesh-Gangotri and Rishikesh-Badrinath national highways in Uttarakhand leading to suspension of traffic along the affected stretches for public safety, an official said on Friday. The Rishikesh-Gangotri highway (NH-94) has been closed for traffic from Narendra Nagar to Chamba, while...

-The Hindu As questions arise over the Ujjwala scheme’s success, it would be prudent to introduce alternative clean sources of energy In India, many women in poor households who use firewood or dung cakes for cooking spend long hours collecting firewood and making dung cakes. This is drudgery. It affects their health and puts the safety of women and girls in jeopardy. Using firewood and dung cakes also leads to indoor pollution,...

-The Hindu The Government’s consistent ‘no data’ declarations on important issues are a critical part of a larger political project It can be safely assumed that the popular American dictum, “In God we trust; all others must bring data”, is unlikely to be found in any office of the Narendra Modi government. There is mounting evidence to show that either the Government has ‘no data’ about issues that show it in a...

The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-The Hindu It is time to formulate a wage employment-based national urban livelihood scheme similar to MGNREGS During the pandemic, we have again and again faced the difficult choice of saving lives versus protecting livelihoods. According to the World Economic Outlook report of April, 2021 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), almost all countries, except China, experienced economic contraction last year. The global GDP shrunk by 3.3%. The contraction in the U.S.,...