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...
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Expand the food safety net without any more delay -Reetika khera
-The Hindu Expanding PDS coverage to account for the increase in population since 2011 is a no-brainer; the Government’s resistance to implementing a Supreme Court of India direction is baffling The National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, through the Public Distribution System (PDS), provides a crucial safety net for roughly 800 million people. Even critics of the PDS appreciated its services during the COVID-19 lockdown. The humanitarian crisis resulting from the COVID-19 lockdown,...
More »Hunger pangs -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...
More »Opinion: Protecting the midday meal -Reetika khera
-Telangana.com India’s school meals programme is ubiquitous, helping deliver food to millions. It faces threats from multiple angles. It would be hard to find a larger or more universal school meals programme than that in India. Until Covid-19 hit, more than 87% of children in rural government schools were being served the ‘Mid-Day Meal’. At last count, the scheme covered 118 million children. The benefits of school meals are well established, but government...
More »Education in India Has Plunged into a Crisis. Just Reopening Schools Isn't Enough. -Mitali Mukherjee
-TheWire.in A recent survey in 16 states and union territories suggests has revealed that there has been a catastrophic slide in literacy among children from poor and marginalised sections. However, there seems to be no plan to help them. October is the month for new beginnings, not least for scores of children who have been unable to attend school in its physical form for the last year and a half. The pandemic...
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