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 The decennial Census exercise, which was indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be held for the first time both in the digital mode and through paper schedules The Union government has amended the Census Rules framed in 1990 to allow the details to be captured and stored in an electronic format and also to enable self-enumeration by respondents.  The decennial Census exercise, which was indefinitely postponed due to the...

-Vikalp.ind.in The spread of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns in India since the last week of March 2020 have put not just people’s health concerns at the forefront, but most of the economic and social sector activities are at halt. Amidst the virus spread and subsequent lockdowns, schools, colleges, universities (educational institutions) are closed without completing the academic calendar year. To deliberate on teaching and learning processes and research activities in...

A recent survey conducted by National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) -- a Delhi-based non-profit organisation -- shows how persons with disabilities in the country were disproportionately affected by the COVID–19 crisis. The report by NCPEDP has observed that persons with disabilities, particularly those from economically deprived sections, went through severe hardship during the lockdown. Without sufficient access to food or money, many of them faced hunger...

Although no journalist was murdered in the country last year as opposed to six such murders in 2018, it would be wrong to say that press freedom has never been violated, says the recently released report by Reporters without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières - RSF) -- a media watchdog organisation that works for freedom of expression and information. The report says that India's performance in 2020 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI)...