If a national count starkly demonstrates that powerful chieftains of social groups are no guarantee for their base’s economic empowerment, these netas’ political influence may go down.
Women in leadership roles, research, and policymaking spaces play a pivotal role in revolutionizing India’s economic, social, and political prosperity.
The Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan programme was started to raise the standard of higher education. Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan was a centrally sponsored scheme for upgrading state and union territory colleges. It covers government and government-aided institutions of the States and Union Territories. RUSA’s part one was launched in 2013, and RUSA 2.0 was launched in 2018. With the National Education Policy being introduced in 2020, the RUSA scheme has been renamed and transformed to Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (PM-USHA).
The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PM-GKY) was rolled out on March 26, 2020. It represented the first impulse in India's emergency relief response package. The PM-GKY was aimed directly at alleviating the socio-economic impact of the pandemic and accompanying lockdown on vulnerable communities, particularly the poorest people.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is an ever-present reality in many communities, yet it remains a topic shrouded in silence. While its direct impact on women is often acknowledged, the effect it has on the early development of children is rarely spoken about. These children are not just bystanders; they are silent victims, absorbing the trauma around them and often replicating the cycle as they grow.
Migration is often seen as a pathway to better opportunities, but for many women in Jharkhand, it becomes a trap leading to exploitation and violence. Jharkhand is a state with high out-migration rates and witnesses a significant number of women and young girls leaving their villages in search of employment due to poverty and lack of employment. However, the migration process is often contaminated by illegal placement agencies that exploit the vulnerabilities of individuals by using pieces of employment information.
To revolutionize India's policy research space in the true sense, IMPRESS has to move beyond being a selective academic grant program to being an inclusive national knowledge production machine. As a young researcher, I envision the future of policy innovation occurring in open, diverse, and democratized research environments, not in hierarchical constraints. Visualizing IMPRESS in this way will not only establish it as a funding program, but as a driving force for India's intellectual and socio-economic balance.