-Livemint.com Localized lockdowns and rising covid cases among collection agents hamper loan recoveries Small finance banks are beginning to feel the heat of localized lockdowns and the advancing pandemic wave, as the virus spreads to India’s small towns and hinterland. However, they are better prepared this time, after last year’s severe setback. “The disease is spreading much faster, especially in smaller towns. Rural customers are, however, less impacted. There have been some delays...

-The Indian Express Maharashtra government’s move to regulate fees is laudable. But it must also address larger issues of transparency, accountability and inequality related to private schools In February, Maharashtra Minister of State for Education Bacchu Kadu directed the state education department to create a “plan” to take action against private schools allegedly charging excessive fees and repeatedly violating state regulations on school education. Kadu has been at the forefront of hearing...

-TheNewsMinute.com Experts say that the narrative that a country must choose between environment and development itself is wrong. Merely days after the fatal landslide in Kerala’s Pettimudi in Idukki district in August last year, the spotlight was back on the Gadgil report on the Western Ghats. The report, submitted to the government of India in 2011, had designated the Pettimudi region among the most sensitive ecological zones in the Western Ghats and...

-The Hindu Vaccination is important to prevent a second wave Several people have questioned the emergency approval given to the indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccine. They have demanded efficacy data and cast aspersions on the regulatory machinery. Such views will only increase vaccine hesitancy. It is not the case that the vaccine developed indigenously is being pushed by vested interests, while the international vaccines are great. Questions have been raised about the Moderna and...

-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...