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 Status of Policing Report in India 2023 (SPIR) was released on 31 March in New Delhi by Common Cause and Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. SPIR 2023 study explores public opinions and experiences regarding digital surveillance in India. Recent developments, such as the Supreme Court's recognition of the right to privacy and discussions surrounding data protection, have intensified debates around privacy and surveillance. The study also considers...

-The Telegraph It has been estimated that 76% of all prisoners in India — 371,848 in absolute numbers — are undertrials Days after the Indian president, Droupadi Murmu, highlighted the plight of poor and tribal undertrials languishing in jails for petty crimes despite getting bail, the Supreme Court has sought details of such prisoners for formulating a national scheme for their release. This is timely. It has been estimated that 76% of...

-The Telegraph Study records targeting of minorities during pandemic, including use of social media handles like ‘#CoronaJihad’ New Delhi: The Washington-based think tank Pew Research Centre has come out with a study that puts India at the top of its index of social hostilities involving religion in 2020 in the context of the impact of Covid restrictions. The study has recorded the targeting of minorities in India during the pandemic, including the use...

-The Hindu It justifies the ‘intelligible differentia’ between Scheduled Castes practising Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism and those practising other religions The affidavit filed by the Union government before the Supreme Court Bench hearing the case for the inclusion of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims on the list of Scheduled Castes contradicts itself at several junctures, leading to a lack of clarity on its arguments defending the current criteria for determining which communities...