-The Indian Express Recognition of care work in the public sphere could also help in unsettling the gendered and unequal division of house work and unpaid care burden. COVID-19 has given visibility to Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and Anganwadi workers — women “Volunteers” attached to a government scheme or employed on a mission mode — who are frontline warriors in the battle against the pandemic. In India, there are about a...

-The Hindu A group of 100 Volunteers from various fields have teamed up with lawyers to arm economically and educationally weak people with knowledge about their rights against victimisation Guwahati: Aditpur has not been known for academics. But this village, about 20 km from western Assam’s Barpeta town, is teaching the Constitution of India to “doubtful” Indians who have never heard of it. Local activists and youth had on December 20 opened a...

-Livemint.com Farmers from Punjab and Haryana are well prepared for a long haul after occupying highways leading to the national capital New Delhi: Hundreds of thousands of farmers from Punjab and Haryana have stationed themselves at Delhi’s doorstep leading to an unprecedented standoff between the centre and farmer unions. In the past few years, farmer protests in Delhi were largely a day or a two-day event packed with speeches demanding loan waivers...

-Scroll.in Often the sole source of income for households in villages, NREGA has been plagued with issues during the pandemic. During the lockdown, an estimated 20 million to 30 million migrant workers returned home, out of work and out of money. Some of them tried helping their families with farming and some even used the skills they had developed to set up new enterprises. But most remained jobless. The National Rural Employment...

-The Hindu Hyderabad-based Balamitra Foundation’s project of distributing menstrual hygiene kits in Andhra’s Billalavalasa village has started conversations on a topic often brushed under the carpet When Sravani got her first period, she had no idea how to manage the bleeding since nobody had spoken about it to her. Even her mother was hush-hush about it. She ended up using cloth and missing a week’s class at school. Several girls like her...