KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Hindu Only 819 hostels — 391 for girls and 271 for boys — have been sanctioned since the BJRCY scheme’s revision in 2007, against the target of constructing one each in every Block headquarters of low literacy districts  The Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Social Justice and Empowerment on Monday flayed the Union government over 46 years of missing data for the Central scheme to construct hostels for Scheduled Caste boys...

-Newsclick.in On Thursday, activists alleged that owing to a “shortage of schools” in the city, over 80,000 children have been denied admission to government schools in the recent past; the merger-closure policy has also led to a “steep decline” in the classroom teaching-learning process, according to them. New Delhi: The continuing merger of state-run schools in the national capital in the name of rationalisation has come under flak for leading to “severe...

-Junputh.com Public Release of ‘Impact of Hijab Ban in Karnataka’s Educational Institutions: An Interim Study Report’ by People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Karnataka (PUCL – K) In December, 2021, the Government PU College in Udupi, Karnataka prohibited six girls from attending classes after they came to the institution wearing the hijab. Similar restrictions began to be placed in other institutions in various districts and the issue soon escalated across college campuses...

-Newsclick.in Meanwhile, output has also dipped due to weather ravages, which hints at tough times in coming months. Strange as it may sound but rice and wheat allocation for distribution through various welfare schemes has been steadily dipping in the past several years. It is strange because the population is growing and even the Supreme Court has urged the Central government to revise its population norms for food grain allocation since these...