A grocery store owner and a tailor, Raveena Kumari is the sole earner in her family with huge responsibilities. Resident of Belahwa village in Bihar’s Champaran district, she would sometimes struggle with calculation and stock counting at the store and coming up with new designs while stitching clothes. Our facilitators in the area introduced her…
The pandemic has significantly disrupted the education sector- which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future. In India, 320 million students have been affected by COVID-19 school closures, and though the government quickly recommended shifting to “online teaching,” this ignores India’s immense digital divide—with embedded gender and class divides. In an effort to…
COVID-19 pandemic has changed the daily routine of people’s lives. On March 25, the government of India announced nationwide lockdown till April 14, 2020, again extended till May 3, 2020, closing schools,
COVID-19 pandemic has changed the daily routine of people’s lives. On March 25, the government of India announced nationwide lockdown till April 14, 2020, again extended till May 3, 2020, closing schools, offices and public transportation. This crisis ushered in a new era of virtual systems. There are over 40 million migrant labourers across the country and when thousands of migrant workers are going back home in this pandemic, the question arises whether they will be able to educate their children if schools are closed and not connected through the Internet and be able to get basic health facilities or medicines.
Kapil is a 31-year-old truck driver from a village near Palwal Haryana, who selflessly helped the migrant workers who he came across on his way back from a delivery.
Vijay Nath and Sanjay, migrant workers who came in search of work to Badli, Haryana, shared- “We didn’t have any money on us when we left and no money for food at home as well.”
The Covid-19 crisis is expected to have a lasting economic effect on many low-income communities across the country, especially in rural India. The lockdown led to a halt in the main source of livelihood for many families in villages, making survival tough. Most people struggled to find an alternate source of income and lack of…
By Osama Manzar Osama Manzar is founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation. He is also Board Advisor to Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) of World Wide Web Foundation. For a decade, with the rapid digitalisation across sectors, we have been talking about digital inclusion and exclusion, but it was only when the Covid-19 induced…
Krishna Ram lives with his wife in Barmer, Rajasthan. He has no children and has already been retired for a year and so. There were mistakes in his Aadhaar card, because of which he was not able to receive his pension. Since the problem were beyond his understanding, he had already given up on this…
I, Lakshmi, belong to Alwar district in Rajasthan. I do stitching work to feed my family, me and my husband are not educated enough to understand English. Last week, my husband bought a smart phone on which we do nothing more than listening songs, YouTube browsing and watching serials. One fortunate evening, Poonam came to…
