Kasmin Fernandes

COVID-19 continues to claim human lives and simultaneously cripple the economy. Daily wage earners with marginal savings have temporarily lost their jobs. They are unable to access food and essential items. Women who were already facing domestic abuse are grappling with increased violence. Senior citizens, at highest risk of complications and fatality, face acute...

Unlock 4.0 is falling into place with the lifting of some restrictions and the resumption of Metro rail services. Office goers in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kochi and Kolkata have welcomed the change after being stuck at home for nearly 5 months. Commuting is not going to be the same, however, and with good reason....

“How would you feel if you stepped out of blinding darkness into the light? That is what the gift of literacy does to you,” says 46-year-old Asha Devi residing in Narayanpur, Rajasthan. As a young girl, she did not pay much heed to her parents' efforts to send her to the local school. However,...

The new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) has called for a complete overhaul of the archaic rote learning system Indian students were saddled with. Higher education will get more autonomy and schooling will be multi-stream. Perhaps the most fundamental change at the government level is the renaming of the Ministry of Human Resource and...

Education has moved online in the wake of COVID-19. Schools and colleges were left with no choice during the lockdown but to switch to digital education. There is no certainty when schools will reopen and student lives will go back to normal. With no end in sight to the pandemic, it seems like online...

Canine internet celebrities are generally famous for their cuteness, but Indian army dogs Vida and Sophie are not only cute but heroic to boot. They are both top dogs fighting terrorism and infiltration and were conferred with the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Commendations medals this I-Day. Clips of their ceremony went viral on...

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has forever changed the way the world functions, and the realm of corporate social responsibility is no different. With CSR projects dominated by relief and donation work related to the pandemic, companies are spending massive chunks of their CSR budget on the PM CARES Fund, State funds, donation...

Surekha Gadpori lives in one the most socially and economically disadvantaged pockets in the city of Hyderabad. With extensive experience in active social work, the sprightly 60-year-old saw the potential for safe drinking water to improve her community's health and wellbeing. Surekha leveraged the trust and respect of her community to join the growing...

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has made an internal CSR committee mandatory for every company spending on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India. Such a committee comprising Board members and top executives monitors the CSR policy and calculates risk. However, fraud and unethical spending by external agencies and the internal team could go undetected...

Lisa Heydlauff came from the UK two decades ago and fell so in love with India that she decided to stay back. Since then, the multi-award-winning educator has spent many years innovating tools for young Indians, whether it’s offline through graphic novels in 1,000 government secondary schools in Bihar, or online through the newly...

PM Modi announced the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) this I-Day and a wave of hope for universal health coverage swept across the nation. It was welcomed more than the declarations on cybersecurity and optical fibre connectivity, for obvious reasons. Health and immunity are on top of every citizen's minds since the nation is...

India's single largest iron ore producer is public sector undertaking NMDC Limited. Short for National Mineral Development Corporation, it has an incontestably large presence in the states of Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. Apart from mining iron ore, the PSU also mines diamonds, minerals and magnesite. It has been around for more than 60 years, with...