-Newsclick.in Both BJP and BSP may see dwindling dalit support with SP-RLD-SBSP alliance gaining. The political churning going on in Uttar Pradesh is arguably the most intense among the dalit communities which make up a sizeable 21% of the Population of the state. In the last election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had managed to get significant support from various dalit communities winning 74 of 84 seats reserved for Scheduled Castes....

-The Hindu Handbook sees prejudices and ignorance or deliberate misinformation campaign on the exercise The Registrar General of India (RGI) anticipates “organised movement” against the decennial Census exercise such as agitation for inclusion of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and court cases against the collection of data for the National Population Register (NPR). The concern is documented in the Census of India 2021 Handbook for Principal/District Census Officers and Charge Officers that has been...

-The Hindu How the Centre’s approach has eroded the very premise of MGNREGA   The disappointing allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the FY 2022-23 budget has created a buzz. Organisations such as the All India Kisan Sabha and NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) have raised concerns about the inadequacy of the amount. Grassroots activists and academics have been demanding higher budgetary allocations for MGNREGA; yet, the...

-The Telegraph If the estimates are correct, it would become the country with the highest death toll, well ahead of around 800,000 deaths so far in the US and 600,000 in Brazil India’s Covid-19 mortality is six to eight times higher than official counts, research released on Wednesday has estimated, reinforcing through a novel methodology earlier suggestions that undercounting had masked the true ferocity of the second wave. The study has estimated that...

-FinancialExpress.com Recent registrations cited as proof of job creation were mostly formalisation of existing jobs Defending the Centre’s record on employment, prime minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Rajya Sabha, talked about the impressive net enrolment to Employment Provident Fund Organization (EPFO): during 2021, 1.20 crore beneficiaries were enrolled under EPF—about 65 lakh beneficiaries in the 18-25 age bracket, implying they are first-time entrants to the labour market. He connected the...