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 Telegraph Scholarship pool for OBCs, minorities reduced New Delhi: The pool of poor schoolchildren from the Other Backward Classes  and religious minorities who are eligible for two government scholarships has been drastically cut short from this year. The Centre has revised two schemes — the Pre-Matric Scholarship for OBCs and the Pre-Matric Scholarship for minorities — by limiting eligibility to students of Classes IX and X, and only those enrolled in...

-The Hindu Any state intervention inspired by Islamophobic views will only help deepen majoritarianism The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to undertake a survey of madrasas has raised serious concerns not just over the fate of these institutions but also on the future of Muslim identity. Other BJP-ruled States have also expressed concerns about madrasas. In May, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the word ‘madrasa’ should cease to exist. In September,...

--Press release by Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) dated September 21, 2022 Over One lakh People Already Evicted in 2022. Nearly 1 Million People Faced Evictions in India in the Last Five Years. In 2021, over 36,480 houses were demolished and 2,07,106 people were forcibly evicted across India by governments – at all levels, reveals a new report by Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN). The report also finds that in...

-Press release by Oxfam India dated 15 September 2022 New Delhi: Oxfam India’s latest ‘India Discrimination Report 2022’ finds women in India despite their same educational qualification and work experience as men will be discriminated in the labour market due to societal and employers’ prejudices. The academically recognised statistical model applied in the India Discrimination Report is now able to quantify the discrimination women face in the labour market. The lower...