-The Hindu The trend across developing countries is to give State governments as much discretion as possible India urgently needs to increase fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding. Among comparable developing countries with similar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, India has spent the least as a share of its GDP. While the Central government has announced measures amounting to 0.8% of GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that State-level relief...
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Statesmanship requires taking people along; when basic security is denied, hope dies -Nikhil Dey & Aruna Roy
-The Indian Express Prime Minister demanded discipline and sacrifice from the people, while offering no measures to alleviate distress of those who have lost their dignity and livelihoods. Millions of migrant workers, and other vulnerable groups, have lost their livelihoods, income security, and sense of dignity in three short weeks. They knew that they were vulnerable to the virus, but for them, the cure of an extended lockdown is already worse than...
More »A virus, social democracy, and dividends for Kerala -Patrick Heller
-The Hindu The State has managed the crisis by building on legacies of egalitarianism, social rights and public trust The global coronavirus pandemic is a natural, albeit brutal experiment. Just about every part of the world has been impacted and the range of responses we are seeing at the national and subnational levels reveal not only existing inequalities but also the political and institutional capacity of governments to respond. Nowhere is this...
More »Bitter Harvest -Ramandeep Singh Mann
-CaravanMagazine.in Farmers suffer under the coronavirus lockdown At the beginning of this year, things looked good for Indian farmers. As per advance estimates of the agriculture ministry, the country was expected to produce a record 106.21 million tonnes of wheat in 2019–20, 2.61 million tonnes more than what was produced the previous year. This increase was mainly attributed to increased acreage under wheat production and optimum soil moisture on account of a...
More »Rotis, mobile recharges, carrom boards -- how Kerala fixed its migrant worker anger -Shanker Arnimesh
-ThePrint.in Migrant workers protested in Kottayam on 29 March demanding to be sent back home. The state changed its strategy in dealing with them and has since seen no such protests. New Delhi: It was a blot on the much-touted Kerala Covid-19 response model. On 29 March, hundreds of migrant labourers flooded the streets of Kottayam town demanding that they be sent back to their home states. The protest caught the...
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