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...

-TheWire.in One of the oddities of the ongoing hijab ban case, is how a secular court has to decide whether wearing a hijab is mandated by Islam. One cannot fault the Karnataka High Court beyond a point, as it is merely following ‘Essential Religious Practices Test’ laid down by the Supreme Court of India. Courts use this test to determine whether a practice is essential to the religion, in order to decide...

-Press release by the Right to Food Campaign Secretariat dated February 23, 2022 * 66 percent respondents said that their income has decreased compared to the pre-pandemic period * 80 percent reported some form of food insecurity, 25 percent reported severe food insecurity * 41 percent said that nutritional quality of their diet deteriorated compared to the pre-pandemic period * 67 percent could not afford cooking gas in the month preceding the survey. * 45...

-TheNewsMinute.com “The suggestion to have a uniform syllabus across the country and a single board is the brainchild of the right wing, which wants to create a homogenous nation, in place of the wonderfully diverse and multicultural society we have now.” In the crucial debate around federalism and states’ rights, one of the biggest issues is education. The subject was moved from the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution...

-The Hindu Many students have vowed not to enter classrooms without their hijabs Bengaluru: Young women wearing religious headscarves tearfully pleading to be allowed entry into schools and colleges with many vowing not to remove their hijabs has raised concerns on the impact this will have on their education. While the case is in the High Court of Karnataka, several writers and activists from the Muslim community and education experts have expressed fear...