-Down to Earth The central government has mandated digitally capturing the attendance of all workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGnregs). Labourers and activist groups have opposed this and pointed out several loopholes in the move. The National Mobile Monitoring System, which came into effect on January 1, 2023, was launched with claims of bringing transparency and eliminating corruption at the ground level. Pilot tests began in May 2021 at...

-The Telegraph Research finds that 28 per cent children spend six hours or longer on digital devices New Delhi: Over a quarter of adolescents aged 13 to 17 years spend six hours or longer per day on smartphones or digital devices, according to a nationwide survey that experts say has deepened concerns about digital-era addictions. The survey, based on responses from 9,633 parents from 287 districts, has found that 28 per cent children...

-Newsclick.in As per the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021, Kerala (97.5%), Himachal Pradesh (95.6%) and Manipur (92.9%) are the best-performing states when it comes to school children with at least one smartphone at home. New Delhi: Even as online learning increasingly replaces traditional learning, around 45.6% of children enrolled in schools in Bihar have no smartphone at home, according to the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021....

-Newsclick.in Just reopening schools won’t make an unequal education system more equal without public funding. It may speed up SARS-CoV-2 mutations and risk another brutal Covid-19 wave. The Delhi government recently decided to reopen schools and other educational institutions after a long Covid-19 related shutdown. Previously, several other states had taken similar decisions. Such decisions have been backed by several experts and activists, principally on two grounds. Firstly, socially and economically disadvantaged...

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...