-Scroll.in In absence of any overarching policy protecting them, home-based workers are one of the worst affected in the coronavirus pandemic. Around 41.85 million workers in India work from their homes as home-based producers. They have always done so, even before the pandemic. The poor quality of their homes and the deficits in housing and urban infrastructure policies have grave economic consequences for them, which are being exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. At...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and public policy The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the persistent digital divide afflicting rural India owing to poor and insufficient internet connectivity. With the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech acknowledging the need ‘to complete’ internet connectivity to villages, there is a renewed vigour and interest in the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN)/BharatNet project. An important question to pose when translating policy to project is: when should...

-The India Forum Nandini Sundar teaches at Delhi University. Gowhar Fazili teaches at Ambedkar University Delhi. Academic freedom is about the right to study, teach and research a diversity of viewpoints. Yet, this right that is so crucial for the pursuit of knowledge has seen widespread attacks in colleges and universities across India. The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 claims it is based on principles that include creativity and critical thinking, constitutional values,...

--Press release by Mineral Inheritors Rights Association (MIRA) dated 27th August, 2020 The Ministry of Mines has put up a notice on 24th August, 2020 seeking public comments on substantial matters of reform of mineral laws, rules and regulations within a period of 10 days, i.e. 3rd September, 2020. The state governments have not yet been consulted and a 10-day period for the states to respond undermines the federal spirit of...

-Livemint.com Since education policies and government programmes have greater implications for the socially marginalized, they should be open to public scrutiny and debate Anurag Behar’s article on the new educational policy 'A plea to educators at the cusp of a seminal shift in education' on 12 August in Livemint raises some very important and serious concerns and is therefore, deserving of attention. It points to a growing rift between framers of the...