-The Hindu Over 2 lakh households have exhausted quota. More than 2 lakh rural households have already completed their guaranteed 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme within the first three months of the financial year, according to the scheme’s Database. This is higher than seen at the same time last year, indicating even higher demand for work than 2020-21’s unprecedented levels. Given the high...

-Newslaundry.com The state’s River Training Policy appears designed to allow near unfettered mining of sand and boulders by private contractors, bypassing green clearance and scientific assessment. In November 2020, a few months before floods ravaged Uttarakhand, the deputy collector of Purnagiri in Tanakpur district announced an open auction of tenders to desilt the riverbed in Champawat’s villages. Tenders for government work usually seek the lowest bidder, the contractor willing to do the job...

-The Telegraph A delay of 57 days would mean variants get eight weeks to circulate unnoticed, says IBAB scientist India has furnished coronavirus genomes from 0.05 per cent of its Covid-19 patients, a tiny fraction of its own target, scientists have said amid concerns that the signals from even the limited sequencing efforts have not triggered timely interventions to save lives. A study on global sequencing efforts released on Thursday said India had...

-IndiaSpend.com The government has said that the economic impact from the second Covid-19 wave will be less than that of the first. But economists point to signs of a growing rural economic crisis, and call for urgent relief measures to ward off long-term damage. Siolim, Goa: Ramesh Ram, 31, is listed as a textile industry staff worker in the administration's Database of migrant workers in south west Bihar's Kaimur district. But for...

-Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, January-June, 2021 This note analyses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the production and cost of cultivation of crops grown in the monsoon (kharif) season. The note is based on a survey of 164 informants from 26 villages across 13 States of India. The survey, conducted by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS) between mid-September and mid-October, 2020, was based on telephone...