-Livemint.com Beset by poor technology access and ineffective online classes, students from poor households have lost reading abilities significantly, suggests a new survey covering 15 states. The losses are much more stark for students from marginalized communities With most Indian schools shut for the past year and a half, children from poor households, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, are rapidly forgetting what they had learned before the pandemic, new survey data suggests. Less...

-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...

-Newsclick.in The government’s brazen class bias is crystal clear, as it gives away national assets built with public money to its favourite capitalists, together with tax breaks. Junior Minister for Rural Development in the Central government, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, ruled out in Parliament any increase in the amount of monthly pension given by the Centre to the elderly under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP). The amount currently being given to each...

Generally, economists refer to indicators like Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR) in order to assess the extent of joblessness and work related precarity at a particular period of time in a certain geographical area. However, there are other indicators too, which can help in understanding the job situation, livelihoods security and vulnerability of workers in a better way such as 'percentage distribution...

-NDTV.com With 186 people in hospital and a high number of affected children, the Firozabad administration has ordered closure of schools for Classes 1-8. Firozabad: The death of 53 people, including 45 children, over the past 10 days in a suspected dengue outbreak in Firozabad has prompted the Uttar Pradesh government to set up an inquiry. At the Firozabad medical college, the scenes are horrifying: rows of children suffering from fever and their...