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...

-Press release by Every Woman Treaty dated September 30, 2022 Every Woman, a coalition of more than 1,700 women's rights advocates in 128 countries, including India, has developed the findings-based draft instrument (Zero Draft EWT), informed by extensive consultation with experts from all regions of the world, including survivors, frontline activists, medical specialists, practitioners, scholars, human rights attorneys, and policy-makers. This Draft of global binding norm focuses on violence prevention and...

-The Hindu Its fifth edition has encouraging news but addressing discriminatory social norms must remain top priority The health system in India has been facing unprecedented stress during the COVID-19 pandemic which includes the looming Omicron threat now on the horizon. Against this backdrop, the recently released fifth edition of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 brings some positive news. NFHS-5, which presents a bird’s eye view of the state of the...

-Down to Earth The focus must be on safeguarding women and girls’ reproductive health. Smaller families can be achieved by ensuring gender equality, empowering women The law proposed by the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission on July 7, 2021 on two-child policy compels couples to limit their families through a series of incentives and disincentives. There is no evidence, however, that coercive policies can truly reduce fertility. Two-child policies are known to disproportionately impact...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...