-The Hindu Evidence of significant disparity in access to online schooling during COVID-19 Schools across the country have now been closed for six months due to COVID-19, but this means vastly different things for different people. For the child in urban Himachal Pradesh, where Internet penetration is higher than 70%, it likely means online schooling, Zoom classes and digital textbooks. For the child in rural Odisha, where less than 6% of households...

-Hindustan Times Digital divide: Students who, in theory, have access to e-teaching will have to depend on inconvenient methods such as mobile The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the education sector globally. Classes have been suspended to enforce social distancing and educational institutions, from schools to universities, have shifted to online methods of teaching and evaluation. As the number of cases continues to rise, there is no certainty about when normalcy will be...

Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...

-TheWire.in The nature of their work has exposed female workers to a higher degree of abuse and exploitation in the absence of an underlying social or economic safety net An indifferent government’s response to the current pandemic and its economic impact is now presenting a set of scenarios that is likely to exacerbate deep-rooted inequities, otherwise entrenched in different socio-political, economic forms. One particular group worst affected by the economic crisis, particularly within...

-TheWire.in It took 100-120 years to double Europe's population but India is doing so in only 30-35 years – but there's a catch. The ‘population growth’ debate in India gained in momentum after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over a “population explosion” in his 2019 Independence Day speech. While Modi has appreciated India’s demographic dividend, he expressed anxiety on this occasion, and asked for measures to deal with the implied stress...