-The Indian Express They will not only help capture the true scale of the tragedy, but will also help in planning better for the next waves of the pandemic. In his memoirs, the writer Suryakant Tripathi (1896-1961), better known as Nirala, described the river Ganga as “swollen with dead bodies” when the deadly second wave of the influenza pandemic struck India in 1918. The pandemic was a deeply traumatic experience for him,...

-ThePrint.in In various state govts, the office of district magistrate has been reduced to a glorified post office that receives instructions from various govt departments. Not so long ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ridiculed India’s civil servants in Parliament when he questioned whether the government should be run by ‘babus’, a euphemism for bureaucrats. It is ironic to see the PM now, addressing the very same ‘babus’, the district magistrates of...

-Newsclick.in The Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) said that its volunteers called 80 officers from across the 20 zones and enquired about the assistance being provided to migrant workers. The Union Labour Ministry’s helpline numbers for migrant workers are more of a “post office”, a group of researchers from the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) said on Monday, May 24, thus concluding that lessons from last year have not been learnt by...

-The Hindu Analysis of excess deaths from the civil registration system spotlights the systematic obfuscation in official statements By all accounts, the mortality impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exceptionally large. Crematoria, burial grounds, and, in some places, even riverbeds are full. Tragically, almost everyone has lost at least one person close to them. Given this reality, few people have much faith in official COVID-19 death counts. How many COVID-19 deaths...

-ThePrint.in Researchers from Boston and Columbia universities studied Meghalaya's matrilineal tribes to find that women are more politically active than men when wealth passes from mother to daughter. In most societies around the world, women participate in politics at lower rates than men. Research shows that women also have a distinct set of economic policy preferences, prioritising government-led taxation and redistribution of wealth more than men. Scholars have long debated whether cultural...