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...

DeCEDA/Qrius 2022 was a milestone year for India. India walked into 2022 with an infectious wave of Covid-19 impacting lakhs of people, the wave receded a few weeks into the year. As hopes for a post-pandemic recovery surged, war in Ukraine brought in new challenges for the economy. With supply chains disrupted, global sanctions imposed on Russia, prices of fuel and food shot up. Inflation, already on a high from pent-up...

-Newslaundry The Government of India has removed exemptions for journalistic work from data protection obligations in the fourth iteration of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022. If this iteration is passed as law a story containing personal data may result in journalists having to prove to a data protection board that their story was in the public interest, Newslaundry reported. The three previous versions - in 2018, 2019 and 2021...

-The Telegraph Alertness among public and preparedness by healthcare institutions is always good, says Organised Medicine Academic Guild’s secretary-general New Delhi: A body of medics has called on fellow doctors and government agencies to acknowledge India’s largely safe status against existing coronavirus variants and avoid “scaremongering” lest the public disregard caution if and when a “real wolf” arrives. The Organised Medicine Academic Guild (Omag), a body of 15 professional medical associations with a...

-Newsclick.in There is no evidence either of the subvariant being particularly more transmissible than other variants of the Omicron lineage, according to the eminent immunologist. BF.7, the new Omicron subvariant which has triggered a surge in China, has also been detected in India. Till the filing of this article, India hadrecorded only four BF.7 cases. New precautionary measures taken by the government, including advisories on wearing masks in public places and avoiding...