India has once again banned some apps, 118 to be precise, including PUBG, for the purpose of national security. In light of that, we made a list of 9 other issues that deserve attention as well. 

1. India’s GDP contracted by 23.9% in Q1 of 2020, the biggest crash in 40 years. 

While GDP was expected to go down due to the COVID-induced lockdown, nobody was expecting it to go down as much as -23.9%. And while by definition, we are not into a recession yet, the numbers for Q2 aren’t expected to be much better, thus officially sending us deep into a recession.  

2. India’s urban unemployment rate has worsened in August, is slowly inching up towards 10%. 

According to the data released by CMIE, the urban unemployment in India shot up to 9.83% in August from 9.15% in July. The current rate means that one out of every 10 people in urban India is unemployed. 

3. India ranks as low as 142 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index. 

The World Press Freedom Index 2020 reported that ‘there have been constant press freedom violations, including police violence against journalists, ambushes by political activists, and reprisals instigated by criminal groups or corrupt local officials’. 

4. Dalits continue to be discriminated against, in many cases killed in India.

Dalits being discriminated against, lynched for ‘crimes’ like owning a horse, resisting rape, fishing, entering a temple among other things.  

5. 78,357 new COVID-19 cases have been recorded in India in the last 24 hours, taking the total toll to 37 lakh. 

The Union Health Ministry data this morning showed that the new cases have pushed India’s coronavirus tally to 37,69,523. The death count has risen to 66,333 with 1,045 more fatalities. 

6. At least 868 people died in floods in 11 states this year. 

Heavy rain had triggered floods in a number of states like Bihar, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya in July. Mumbai, Konkan and Karnataka then became flooded in the first week of August. Rajasthan then faced flash floods on the 15th of August.  

7. 1.8 crore Salaried Employees have now lost their jobs; 50 lakh of them became unemployed in July itself. 

Despite the recovery in the overall employment rate, around 50 lakh salaried people have lost their jobs in July, reaching the total number of job losses in the category to 1.8 crores. CMIE also added: 

While salaried jobs are not lost easily, once lost they are also far more difficult to retrieve.

8. At the beginning of 2020, India had dropped 10 ranks to 51st position in Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. 

India was graded in electoral process and pluralism (8.67), government functioning (6.79), political participation (6.67), political culture (5.63) and civil liberties (6.76). The survey attributes the primary cause of  this regression to ‘an erosion of civil liberties in the country’.

9. According to government released data, one woman reported a rape every 15 minutes on an average in India in 2018. 

The NCRB data is usually released every two years. According to the report, women reported almost 34,000 rapes in 2018, of which 85% led to charges and 27% to convictions. 

Let’s hope these issues are being tackled as well.