-The Indian Express We have long ignored the vital role public educational institutions play as exemplary sites of social inclusion and relative equality. In Indian conditions, this role is arguably even more important than the scholastic role. The current craze for online education (OE) reminds me of the wall graffiti advertising sex clinics that are visible across urban north India. These ads promise guaranteed cures — shartiya ilaj — for all kinds...

-CaravanMagazine.in On 17 May, for the third time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Narendra Modi administration extended India’s lockdown—one of the harshest across the world. For the third time, the Indian government did so without seeking scientific inputs from a national Task Force constituted to advise the central government on its pandemic response, according to multiple members of the team of scientists. There was a consensus among members we spoke...

-Newslaundry.com Such interrogations have to happen officially, they cannot question me about my sources and contacts over tea.’ A journalist in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow was interrogated by the Special Task Force of the state’s police after reporting on low-quality personal protective equipment kits supplied to hospitals and colleges in the state. On April 17, Lucknow-based journalist Manish Pandey of News1 India, a Hindi news channel, broke the story of a letter sent by...

-CaravanMagazine.in A national Task Force on COVID-19, comprising 21 leading scientists from across the country, which was supposed to advise the Narendra Modi government on its response to the pandemic, did not meet even once in the week preceding the announcement to extend the nationwide lockdown, according to four members of the group of experts. In a national broadcast on 14 April, Modi announced the decision to extend the lockdown till...

-The Telegraph Search for treatment insights India plans to create a database of detailed case records of patients with the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) from public and private hospitals across the country to gain fresh insights into myriad factors that might have influenced their treatment outcomes. A National Task Force for Covid-19 has asked a 10-member medical panel to establish a patients’ database to enable doctors to understand better why a small proportion...