Hello,
The Cockroach Janata Party's "School Thik Karo" campaign has brought a high level of scrutiny to the country's government schools. Videos from these schools have revealed a range of problems, including shortages of teachers, crumbling infrastructure and poor hygiene.
As perceptions of government schools being of poor quality have set in, recent years have seen parents shift increasingly towards sending their children to private schools – predominantly those termed low-fee private schools. But though they are cheaper than elite private schools, for parents of lower income families, paying their fees can often be a crushing financial burden. Studies, meanwhile, do not clearly indicate that private schools offer a better education.
Johanna Deeksha travelled to Salem district in Tamil Nadu, to learn more about why many parents, even in a state lauded for its public schooling system, were choosing private schools. She found that they were guided by a range of reasons, including a belief that private schools were safer, and a desire to send their children to a school some distance from their homes.
"All that the parents of kids in low-cost schools seem to want, is an assurance that their children will be able to break out financial distress and have a chance at a decent future," Deeksha said. "Even if it means taking loans and cutting down on other basic needs."
She added, "Parents shouldn't have to struggle so hard to ensure their children have a decent school education, which is a fundamental right. But the government doesn't seem to be doing enough to help parents put their trust in government schools."

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Why many villages oppose a programme that rewards companies that plant trees

Hello,On paper, the idea of the green credits programme sounds reasonable. Companies can pay the government to afforest “degraded” forest land, and earn green credits for doing so. They can then use these credits later to fulfill their own compensatory afforestation obligations when they use forest land for particular projects.But experts, and those who live in villages near these green credits sites, say that the programme is deeply flawed. Chief among the flaws is that many sites include lands that the villages have been using for years – when they are fenced off for the programme, locals lose access to them. Further, experts say, the focus on so-called degraded forests carries a risk of massively undervaluing the ecological importance of these sites."We had been tracking this policy since 2023, when it was first announced," said Vaishnavi Rathore, who visited Gujarat's Vyara tehsil to report on the programme.She noted with concern that affected villages in the area were not adequately consulted before the programme was rolled out. "Over three years, we followed the programme from paperwork to communities on the ground – which to me was the most crucial piece of the puzzle," she said. "It was disappointing to see that many people who knew the forests intimately, the species and their uses, did not even realise when and why these forests were taken away from them."You can read the story here.

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Hello,Most of us hardly think twice about the process of taking a journey on a bus, or train or plane. We are familiar with the steps involved and usually navigate them without too much difficulty.To a young person with an intellectual disability, however, these experiences, and others in public spaces, are often confusing and frightening. The sensory stimuli they encounter can overwhelm them, causing them to react in panic.As their families often find, the challenge of keeping the children calm is frequently exacerbated by the fact that public spaces are rarely designed with any thought to the needs of those with these disabilities. Further, many people they encounter in the course of moving through public spaces treat the children with outright hostility."The public has made things harder for them because of which they are confined to their own homes," said Johanna Deeksha, who spoke to parents in several cities who have children with intellectual disabilities. "Nobody was concerned enough to address their children's needs which were not that many – quiet spaces, safer equipment."She added, "If authorities were to make spaces inclusive, I think it would benefit everybody. We cannot abandon parents with children with special needs. We need to see them and hear them."You can read her story here.

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What keeps witch-hunting alive in Jharkhand

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Why Jharkhand’s vulnerable tribal groups think Modi government is building marriage halls for them

Hello,Two years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a sweeping scheme that aimed to uplift some of the country's poorest communities. These were the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, many of whom live without basic health and education services, and even necessities such as water and electricity.Modi announced the scheme, named PM-JANMAN, in Jharkhand, a state in which around 4 lakh people belong to these groups. It had a budget of more than Rs 24,000 crore, to be spent towards safe housing, clean drinking water, education, health, telecom connectivity and livelihood opportunities.But when Nolina Minj visited four remote villages in Jharkhand where the scheme was supposedly implemented, she found that work under it had barely made any difference on the ground. In fact, many locals she spoke to had not even heard of it."While I wasn’t expecting top class infrastructure, I presumed that conditions would have at least slightly improved due to the PM JANMAN scheme and other previous interventions," Minj said. "I was in for disappointment." She was particularly struck by how little difference multi-purpose centres that had been constructed under the scheme had made. "The MPC structure at Salgi village was most preposterous as families there still don’t have access to basic facilities like potable water and electricity," she said. "Even in places like Range Tusrukona where the MPC had been running for a while, newborn babies are still dying due to lack of access to proper healthcare."

This yield from Jharkhand’s trees might hold the key to rural livelihoods

Hello,Every one of us has likely encountered lac in some form or the other. The substance is used in the manufacture of a vast range of products, from cosmetics and jewellery to insulation coating for electrical equipment. It is even used to add polish to products such as fruits and candies.But few of us, perhaps, have thought about where lac comes from. Lac is, in fact, a substance secreted by the Kerria lacca insect, which affixes itself to the branches of host trees like ber and kusum. And, as Nolina Minj found, reporting from Jharkhand, to many in rural India, lac cultivation offers a pathway to a livelihood that is more secure than that of agriculture, and other work."Today our country is the leading producer of quality lac in the world, and over 55% of this production is carried out by small scale Adivasi farmers in Jharkhand," Minj said. "We thus have a sort of monopoly over this natural polymer that's high in demand worldwide."But as experts and cultivators explained, lac production has seen a turbulent history, with output dipping for various reasons at different times, from unscientific cultivation to climate change. Securing the produce against these factors, they noted, would be key to providing cultivators with stable livelihoods."People say there aren't many livelihood options in rural Jharkhand besides agriculture and extractive mining," Minj said. "But then there's lac cultivation – an ecologically sustainable livelihood option if done right, which also holds much economic promise."

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