Down to Earth Himachal Pradesh’s Shimla city has been battered following three days of heavy rainfall — there have been three major landslides in the last four days and the bodies of over 22 people have been recovered so far. Over two dozen people are missing and suspected to be buried under the debris. According to experts, the city has long crossed its carrying capacity, which is leading to regular landslides...

The Union government told the Rajya Sabha on Monday (July 31) that it has no plans to empower the National Statistical Commission (NSC) using a legislation. Minister of state for statistics and programme implementation Rao Inderjit Singh was answering a question on whether the government is planning to empower the NSC by insulating the selection process from political bias. Singh responded that said the chairman and members of the NSC are selected...

The high dropout rates in schools in several states, including Karnataka, during 2020-21, as revealed by data from the Ministry of Education, is a matter of concern when the education sector is considered to be recovering from the damage caused by the damage caused by the Covid pandemic. Karnataka, with a dropout rate of 14.6%, is in the company of states like Bihar and Gujarat, which had dropout rates higher...

Scroll.in Though the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) has refocussed attention on school education in recent years, some fundamental problems continue to plague the system. Despite the constitutional and legal obligations of governments, education budgets have remained modest and woefully inadequate to requirements. While there has been a reasonable expansion of coverage and enrolment in schools, the fundamental issue of poor learning outcomes, especially...

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...