Remote teaching and learning promoted by Edtech companies as an alternative to physical classrooms, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have a sizeable consumer base in our country. However, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are only a few takers of online education. In reality, class and caste-divide, which is more prominent in rural areas, affects access to digital learning. The majority of the school going...
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Kerala’s stringers lived a hard life. The pandemic made it worse -Jishnu D
-Newslaundry.com The Local reporters put their lives at risk covering the pandemic, yet they are made to work for meagre wages and without much organisational support. “I tested positive twice and was quarantined for almost 50 days in the past year,” said a stringer working for a Malayalam television channel headquartered in Kerala’s Idukki. “Since I report on the pandemic, my work requires me to be in places where infection levels are...
More »India has an edible oil problem, but palm oil won't fix it -Sayantan Bera
-Livemint.com * Amid soaring cooking oil prices, India has a new plan to grow oil palm Locally. Is the solution worse than the problem? * India plans to add about 2.5 million tonnes of home grown crude palm oil by 2030. Its ₹11,000-cr national mission on oil palm focuses on north-east and Andaman and Nicobar Islands M V. Ramoji Rao is a seasoned dentist and a busy one too. It’s not easy to...
More »‘Catastrophic consequences’: Only 8% of rural children regularly attended online class during lockdown -Diksha Munjal
-Newslaundry.com A new survey titled Locked Out notes that 37 percent of rural children are ‘not studying at all’. In the Kumtu tribal hamlet of Jharkhand, eight-year-old Suman, who would now be in Class 3, has not gone to school in nearly two years, owing to the coronavirus-induced lockdown in the country, imposed in March last year. Before the lockdown, when the Local government school in her village would open sporadically, Suman...
More »Poor Remuneration and Late Payments: The NREGA Payments Trap -Debmalya Nandy
-TheWire.in The current, complex payments systems employed by the government must give way to simple, decentralised systems to ensure greater accountability as empower Local governing bodies. The Union government’s approach to payments under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been a ridiculous joke, played on the workers who wait for their hard-earned money for a long time. Many do not get their payments at all, owing to various Local malpractices....
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