Remote teaching and learning promoted by Edtech companies as an alternative to physical classrooms, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have a sizeable consumer base in our country. However, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are only a few takers of online education. In reality, class and caste-divide, which is more prominent in rural areas, affects access to digital learning. The majority of the school going...
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Kinnaur landslides: Will the fragile district survive misguided ‘green energy’ projects? -Dimple Behal
-Down to Earth blog The ecology of Himachal Pradesh’s hydropower hub is too fragile for such projects “Twenty-five years ago, people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much about climate change. Today, we have no excuses,” Desmond Tutu, South African theologian, had said. The recent landslides in Himachal Pradesh's Kinnaur district brought back focus on how 40 per cent of the state is geologically ‘highly sensitive’, according to a report...
More »In U-turn, Centre denies existence of panel to oversee supply of medical oxygen -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Statement comes after it recently argued against disclosing info related to committee The Centre has denied the very existence of a committee set up to oversee medical oxygen supply during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The statement comes just two weeks after it argued strenuously before the Central Information Commission (CIC) against disclosing information about this committee on the grounds of strategic interests, commercial confidences, intellectual property and Cabinet papers. Last week,...
More »CIC slams Centre’s denial of information on medical oxygen committee
-The Hindu Apart from PPE kits, RT-PCR tests, masks and gloves, Empowered Group later managed supply of medical oxygen The Central Information Commission (CIC) has slammed the Centre’s blanket denial of information related to a committee overseeing medical oxygen supplies during the pandemic, saying its rationale was “far fetched” and “unjustified”. In its order on Saturday, Information Commissioner Vanaja Sarna directed the Centre to respond to the Right to Information (RTI) request...
More »Making welfare conditional is a stamp of coercion -Suhrith Parthasarathy
-The Hindu A simple reading of U.P.’s draft population control law is that it will grossly impinge on the right to reproductive freedom On Sunday, the government of Uttar Pradesh released a “Population Policy” in which it stated its intention to bring the gross fertility rate in the State down from the existing 2.7 to 2.1 by 2026. To achieve this, the government says it will consider the enactment of a new...
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