Online teaching was perhaps the most preferred mode (of the policymakers) for imparting education to school children in the last two years when schools faced closures thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was promoted by both the Central and State Governments when mobility almost came to a standstill (or got restricted in comparison to normal times) during the last two years. However, various studies (a list of those studies is...

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...

-The New Indian Express Having a uniform rate will also be convenient in terms of calculations and indexation in one go for the entire country rather than different States/UTs bringing in their own dynamics, the report said NEW DELHI:  A parliamentary standing committee has flagged the disparity in wage rates in various states under the rural employment scheme MGNREGS, calling it baffling and unjustified. While in states like Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, the...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-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...