-The Hindu In seeking to pursue conflicting objectives, the policy architecture is complex and difficult to implement Contrary to popular perception, public policies are made without full knowledge or facts. More often than not, they embody assumptions arising from experience, an understanding of history, and present conditions. Considering the vast sea of unknowns surrounding COVID-19, it would be understandable to place a greater reliance on historical experience. Instead, India’s vaccine policy appears...

-TheNewsMinute.com There have been cases of people saying that their KYC details, which were shared with the Chinese loan apps, were used to open bank and crypto exchange accounts in their names, without consent. Shonali*, a 48-year-old lecturer from West Bengal was laid off from a private university in March 2020. The lecturer, facing financial stress, turned to Chinese-owned instant loan applications that provide microloans without collateral, but at high-interest rates. Shonali...

-The Hindu House panel on education discusses COVID-19 impact The Centre is assessing how badly school students have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and will collect States’ surveys on digital education Access and learning losses by the end of this month, the School Education Department told a parliamentary panel on education on Monday. The panel asked the Centre to also assess the impact of its own guidelines and interventions, as well as...

-The Hindu Bihar government’s reluctance to publish number of deaths is uncalled for, says Division Bench. The Patna High Court has pulled up the Bihar government again for not maintaining its records of births and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and said that State’s reluctance to publish the number of deaths was “uncalled for” and was “not protected by any law”. The Division Bench of the court, comprising chief justice Sanjay Karol and...

-TheIndiaForum.in The worsening of poverty during the pandemic may well have led to a worrying spurt in marriages of girl children in India. The information available indicates that has happened, pushing back the progress of recent decades in reducing child marriages. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted life for all groups in society. While attention has been focused on the direct effects of Covid-19 on hospitalisation and deaths, the ways in which it...