-Health-check.in Between 1817 and 1920, India faced three pandemics that wiped out large chunks of its population. What lessons do these events hold for India today on how to manage the ongoing Covid-19 surge and how to plan ahead? Our interview with Chinmay Tumbe. Mumbai: The Covid-19 pandemic has been with us now for more than a year and in India we are just seeing the beginning of the tapering off of...

-Moneycontrol.com Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, on the devastation of Covid, what plagues MNREGA, central government’s relief measures, stimulus packages, vaccination drive and more. The big lesson from the havoc wrought by Covid-19 is that India must abandon the “fragmented” US model of healthcare, which is a colossal failure, according to developmental economist Jean Dreze. A Belgian-born hunger economics expert who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and...

-The Hindu It is to assess Budget benefits for SC/STs, Rural Development Secretary says. The decision to split MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) wage payments by caste categories was done on the advice of the Finance Ministry in order to assess and highlight the benefits flowing from budgetary outlay towards Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Rural Development Secretary N.N. Sinha told The Hindu on Thursday. He said this should...

-The Hindu It will complicate payment system, may lead to a reduction in funding, say experts. The Centre has asked the States to split wage payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme into separate categories for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and others from this financial year. Workers’ rights advocates said this will unnecessarily complicate the payment system, and expressed fears that it may lead to a reduction...

-The Hindu Official secrecy on pandemic policies aggravates a crisis In August 2020, the Modi government constituted the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) as a nodal agency on all matters related to vaccine administration and rollout. Asked under the Right to Information (RTI) Act for details of the NEGVAC’s meetings, the Health Ministry, which anchors the expert group, replied that it does not know where the concerned documents...