In the month of June this year, encephalitis related deaths in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district grabbed the headlines. Actually, most of the children, who were admitted or died at Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), hailed from East Champaran, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and Samastipur apart from Muzaffarpur. Unfortunately, till recently official data on the number of cases and deaths related to Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) was unavailable for...

-The Indian Express How an affable, erudite professor influenced everyone around him. The first time I met Shamnad Basheer was at a patent conference in Mumbai in 2007. He was wearing a light-blue linen suit (always ahead of the curve, be it law or fashion), looking more a GQ model than a professor who had helped organise a first-of-its-kind patent conference in India. There was also an exhibition moot court to...

-The Indian Express Basheer’s energy shines through in his multi-dimensional academic career, which was marked by controversies and pathbreaking achievements. Inhabiting dualities defined Shamnad Basheer. Nicola Lacey, biographer of the eminent legal philosopher H L A Hart, wrote that Hart was surely an insider to Oxford philosophy, but always saw himself on the margins. Memories of Basheer kindle something similar: Inspiring students, intervening socially, recognised publicly and yet, secluded and distant....

-Livemint.com Four out of 10 youth who received vocational TRAIning are out of the labour force, and a significant chunk of those in the workforce remain unemployed Reiterating the government’s commitment to the 'Skill India' initiative in her maiden budget speech, India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that the government is enabling millions to take up industry-relevant skill TRAIning, boosting their job prospects. An analysis of the unit-level data from the Periodic Labour...

-The Hindu A large number of caste names are difficult to tabulate, says official. New Delhi: Census 2021 is unlikely to collect “caste wise” data as a similar exercise conducted in 2011 by another ministry threw up about 40 lakh caste names that were difficult to tabulate, a senior government official said on Friday. The decennial exercise would involve 31 lakh TRAIned enumerators, with data collected digitally using Android based mobile phones. The Census...