-Newsclick.in Labour force has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to CMIE. Latest estimates put the number of unemployed in India at over 5 crore. This is just short of the heights reached during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which saw recurring lockdowns and a shutdown of the economy. These estimates, made by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), are drawn from periodic sample surveys carried out by...

-The Hindu Opposition MPs question government’s inaction on 2014 task force’s recommendation of over 40 communities for inclusion Over the past one week, while the Parliament has discussed the inclusion of various communities in the Scheduled Tribes lists of Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Himachal Pradesh, Opposition MPs — specifically from Odisha — have questioned the government about the list of communities that were already recommended for inclusion on a priority basis...

-The Telegraph Jean Dreze claims that in the case of PDS, condition of Chhattisgarh and Odisha is better than Jharkhand Jamshedpur: Economist Jean Dreze said on Friday that not even 70 per cent of public distribution system (PDS) beneficiaries in Jharkhand have been receiving foodgrains after the Covid-19 pandemic. The Belgian economist, social scientist and activist painted a dismal picture of the public distribution system in the state while addressing a workshop on...

-The Telegraph Scholarship pool for OBCs, minorities reduced New Delhi: The pool of poor schoolchildren from the Other Backward Classes  and religious minorities who are eligible for two government scholarships has been drastically cut short from this year. The Centre has revised two schemes — the Pre-Matric Scholarship for OBCs and the Pre-Matric Scholarship for minorities — by limiting eligibility to students of Classes IX and X, and only those enrolled in...

-Deccan Herald One of the proposals under debate at Montreal is a call for slashing harmful subsidies by at least $500 billion annually from the estimated $ 1.8 trillion India has sought more public finance to protect its biodiversity and strongly opposed proposals to reduce subsidies on fertilisers and pesticides for the sake of biodiversity, asserting that the livelihood of hundreds of millions of farmers in the developing world depend on farming.  “Our...