-The Hindu Pratichi Trust report highlights the massive impact on the teaching-learning process About 40% primary school students could not attend online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic owing to the digital divide, a report published by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi (India) Trust found. The study was compiled on the basis of experiences shared by hundreds of teachers across 21 State-run primary schools in Kolkata. The 72-page report highlights the issues faced by...

-CBGAIndia.in India’s response to the pandemic has depended heavily on the exploited labour of women workers, most of them from marginalised backgrounds. These are ASHAs or Accredited Social Health Activists, the cadre of frontline health workers that has been mobilised for everything from door-to-door surveys, distributing medicine kits, measuring oxygen saturation, monitoring containment zones and spreading awareness about vaccines. 70,000 such women recently went on strike in Maharashtra demanding higher pay,...

-TheWire.in Sainath dedicated the prize to his fellow journalists who are reporting from rural India and to PARI, the news website he founded in 2014. New Delhi: Renowned journalist P. Sainath was the recipients of the Fukuoka Grand Prize 2021, one of Japan’s top awards open to people from all Asian countries for “investigate[ing] impoverished farming villages in India, listen[ing] to voices from the rural population”. The Fukuoka Prize has three categories, Academic...

-The Hindu “It should result in universalisation of rations to all migrant workers during the pandemic” The Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday should result in the universalisation of rations to all migrant workers across India as long as the pandemic continues, as opposed to the government’s one-time relief measures, said intervenors in the petition. Social activists Harsh Mander, Anjali Bhardwaj and Jagdeep Chhokar also welcomed the Supreme Court’s direction to the government to...

-IndiaSpend.com Women farmers are taking the lead in reviving the cultivation of native varieties of millets that are resilient to drought, salinity, extreme heat, pests and diseases; need less water than paddy; and are richer in nutrition. Nestled in the remote forested hills of Odisha's Malkangiri district, Bondaghati is home to the Bonda tribe, one of the 13 particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) in the state. Some 12,321 Bonda people lived in...