-Scroll.in The unprecedented reversal comes after 15 years of steady progress by India in reducing infant deaths On November 8, 2016, the Indian government undertook a drastic policy decision, choosing to ban high value currency notes in circulation. Overnight, 86% of India’s currency became worthless, throwing live and livelihoods in disarray. Now new research is pointing to the widespread impact this dislocation might have had on human development. A new paper by economists...

-The Wire Science Manika Bishunpur (Muzaffarpur, Bihar): Chunchun Devi stands alone in front of her hut in Manika Bishunpur village’s Mushahari tola in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. Three of her children – two daughters and a son – are playing nearby. On June 11 last year, Chulhai Ram and Chunchun lost their 4.5-year-old daughter, Raveena, to acute encephalitis syndrome (AES), locally known as chamki fever. She was the third of Chulhai and Chunchun’s...

-The Hindu Apex court lays down guidelines for matrimonial cases. The Supreme Court on November 4 held that deserted wives and children are entitled to alimony/maintenance from the husbands from the date they apply for it in a court of law. In a significant judgment by a Bench of Justices Indu Malhotra and R. Subhash Reddy, the top court said women deserted by husbands were left in dire straits, often reduced to destitution,...

-Newsclick.in Double digit jobless rate, crashing women’s employment and absolute fall in number of employed have left people in th state devastated – and furious. Unemployment, it is often said, is death by a thousand cuts. It pushes families into hunger, snatches away children’s education, prevents medical care, and propels people into debt. And, if you are already poor and disadvantaged and living on the edge, unemployment is like a death sentence. A...

-Scroll.in A large section of migrant workers surveyed who want to return have a single earning member, with family sizes ranging from four to eight dependents. “I was very scared. What kind of a disease is this? How will I manage with my small children here? Whatever happens I will never return to Surat again.” Durgabai, an Adivasi woman migrant worker from Udaipur, Rajasthan, was recalling her horrendous experience during the Covid-19 lockdown...