-The Telegraph Migrant fiasco: Part II unfolds The decision to squeeze some money out of the mass movement of migrants blew up in the Centre’s face on Monday, prompting it to try and shift the blame to state governments. But the paper trail shows that states were asked to “collect the ticket fare” and hand over the amount to the Indian Railways. This is the second time the Narendra Modi government is finding...

-Scroll.in Gestures should not come at the cost of real action. When Narendra Modi announced India’s harsh lockdown starting from March 25 to combat the spread the coronavirus, migrant workers were the worst affected group. Stranded in cities without wages or access to food, hundreds of thousands of people started walking, cycling and smuggling themselves in container trucks and cement mixers to try to get home – a journey that was sometimes...

-TheThirdPole.net India’s pandemic-forced lockdown has plunged agriculture into a crisis that needs immediate cash transfers to bail out smallholder farmers preparing for the summer cropping season India’s complete lockdown to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has upended the agrarian economy of the South Asian nation. It could have a serious impact on farm production in the main summer cropping season, work for which starts in May. Farmers in India are no...

-TheWire.in Unlike other sectors, a large majority of the farming community do not have any savings to fall back upon. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only hit manufacturing, services and business but also pushed back the Narendra Modi government’s ambitious programme to double farmers’ income by 2022. From feeding a population displaced, dislocated and frozen in its tracks, to ensuring farmers stay afloat in the coming months, the government has a tough...

-Hindustan Times While open political contestation faces hurdles, the government needs to be held accountable Five weeks ago, the nationwide lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed the Indian economy in cold storage. It also seems to have put politics on ice. As the government prepares to gradually dial down the economic freeze on May 3, politics, too, must emerge from its hibernation. Politics — at its core — is about...