-The Indian Express A collective of NREGA women activists discovers its political voice. As Jean Dreze recently observed, one of the key ideas behind NREGA was that it would serve as a platform for increasing the overall political capacities of workers. It was hoped that people would organise themselves to collectively demand work and, in the process, learn about other legal and constitutional provisions. While learning about the latter has Been patchy,...

-The Indian Express On Sunday, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren reacted to the findings by ordering a probe and promising to revamp the verification system. Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh said verification “has Been stopped” till the probe is completed. Ranchi: On October 31, barely 48 hours after The Indian Express told him that official records had listed 180 beneficiaries from his school for the Centre’s pre-Matric scholarship for minority students, the principal...

-Newsclick.in Double digit jobless rate, crashing women’s employment and absolute fall in number of employed have left people in th state devastated – and furious. Unemployment, it is often said, is death by a thousand cuts. It pushes families into hunger, snatches away children’s education, prevents medical care, and propels people into debt. And, if you are already poor and disadvantaged and living on the edge, unemployment is like a death sentence. A...

-PTI/ The Indian Express During a hearing held through video conferencing, seven out of the 15 accused said they have not Been given warm clothes, though it is permitted under the prison rules, and the Jail authorities said they need court order for it. A Delhi court Tuesday expressed displeasure with Tihar jail authorities after several accused in a case related to the February riots in north-east Delhi stated they have not...

-The Hindu 20% of people demanding work have Been denied; even higher on ground, say workers. Having run through 74% of its labour budget under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) at the halfway point of the year, and expecting the demand to go up still further in a pandemic year, Bihar has asked the Centre for an additional six crore persondays of work to be added to its...