Author: Politically Mathematics Collective

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Public Statement

On Distance Education

We should consider this global crisis as a chance to reflect, and imagine a better system. The crisis needs to be a time we ask hard questions about the education system and what role examinations, attendance, and virtual tools play to provisioning educational resources. Education is a central institution in our society, and teaching has become a labour essential to imagine our society running at all. This labour is increasingly being done by women. Any plan for the education system to navigate through this crisis and beyond must keep teachers at the centre.

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Essay

ऑनलाइन शिक्षा: महिलाओं के नज़रिये से

… समय ही बताएगा कि कोरोना के प्रकोप के बाद इस ऑनलाइन शिक्षा का कितना हिस्सा हमारे साथ रह जाने वाला है। लेकिन ये ज़रूरी है कि हम ये समझें कि इंटरनेट के माध्यम से ज़्यादा पहुँच का दावा खोखला है क्योंकि यह प्रणाली कई लोगों को शिक्षा व्यवस्था के बाहर कर देगी।

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Essay

Online Teaching: What does it have in store for women in India?

The idea that online education would bring some sort of democratization or larger reach seems like an incomplete picture of what is to come. It is important that we understand the problems and the kind of further marginalization online education would bring.

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Public Statement

Online Education in the times of COVID-19 and Beyond – Part 3

Author : Jayasree Subramanian. The most fundamental question is, how are we sure that children and youth, who themselves are facing different kinds of hardships in these abnormal times, would find it worthwhile to sit through these sessions which does not seem to provide anything including a hope for a better future. Online Education and […]

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Public Statement

Online Education in the times of COVID-19 and Beyond – Part 2

Author : Jayasree Subramanian. What makes it possible for us to consider online education as a solution without taking stock of the situation at the ground level and being sure that it reaches all the learners as it should? Online Education and the Culture of Exclusion It is obvious to everyone that the lockdown imposed […]

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Public Statement

Online Education in the times of COVID-19 and Beyond – Part 1

Author : Jayasree Subramanian. The Novel Coronavirus disease pandemic, also referred to as COVID-19 pandemic or simply as COVID-19, spreading across the world has transformed it like never before. In an effort to contain the spread of the disease, many countries imposed a partial or full lockdown and the Indian government too imposed a lockdown […]

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Essay Republished

Covid Financial Package not meant for the People

The 20 Lakh package includes measures adopted by reserve bank to increase liquidity, loans by banks and NBFCs (a total of more 12 lakh crore) and re announcement or repurposing of budgetary allocations. At a structural level, on the one hand states are being asked to dilute the labour laws while on the other hand sectors like mineral mining and coal mining are being privatized – posing existential threat to both the people and environment of this country.

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Public Statement

What contact tracing can mean in a democracy

The recent discussion on contact tracing in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic is intertwined with surveillance technologies. These technologies can be cheaply scaled up and they can also be highly personalized, depending on what databases they can be linked to. Given its importance and rapid acceptance by authorities and Governments in India, there are […]

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Essay Public Statement

Germs, Stains and our Pure Society

Author : V. Geetha We were obsessed with germs, even before Corona came upon us. Check out all those advertisements for sanitary items that clean floors, kitchen surfaces, clothes – and the running theme is getting rid of stains, germs, intrusive little critters of all kinds, all sufficiently and cutely demonized. And Corona has given […]

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Public Statement

Statement of Politically Mathematics Collective on COVID-19 Policies

While modelling exercises such as these will be evolving and ongoing, and every scientific exercise has levels of uncertainty and bias embedded in the design, there is a concern regarding the overwhelming importance of numbers in this discourse. History has taught us, that the value society places on a life lost to disease, depends on the value society placed on that life when alive. We are concerned about whom, in this pandemic, society has chosen to protect, and who it has decided to lose in the process.