-The Hindu Advent of pandemic caused long delays at every stage, says Rural Development Ministry Less than 6% of houses sanctioned under the Centre’s flagship rural housing scheme in 2020-21 have reached completion so far this year, with COVID-19 stalling progress, the Rural Development Ministry told a Parliamentary Standing Committee last month. However, some States such as Odisha and Jharkhand used the scheme to provide employment opportunities for migrant workers who returned...

During the last one year, India seems to have lost the race in becoming the world leader in terms of development, prosperity and growth thanks to the recession brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. The total number of poor people in the country has swelled and the middle class has shrunk in 2020 in comparison to what was anticipated earlier. A new study by the United States based think tank Pew...

-NDTV The 'R' factor - a statistic used worldwide to track, and potentially, control the spread of the virus - is a measure of how many people are being infected by one person New Delhi: Concern over an alarming increase in new coronavirus cases in India - 131,750 over the past 72 hours - was underlined Monday by a spike in the 'R', or 'reproduction rate', of the virus, which has jumped...

-The Hindu Nearly 24 hours after the Centre’s request, the label remains. The government does not have the power under the Information Technology Act to direct Twitter to remove the ‘manipulated media’ tag from certain tweets, experts said. They say the Centre’s move raises concerns of censorship and view the action as “needless interference” in implementation of the terms of service of a private company conducting business in India. The government on Friday had...

-The Hindu Pew Research report suggests middle class may have shrunk by 30% and number of poor risen by 7.5 crore India’s middle class may have shrunk by a third due to 2020’s pandemic-driven recession, while the number of poor people — earning less than ₹150 per day — more than doubled, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. In a comparison, Chinese incomes remained relatively unshaken, with just a...