-The Hindu SWAN, which relaunched its helpline in April, releases findings based on over 8,000 callers Bengaluru: Migrant workers, one of the more vulnerable groups left in lurch during the national lockdown called by the Centre last year, are facing another crisis during the second wave of COVID-19. This time around, the problem is compounded by a lack of savings, which they used up last year. Around 92% of the country’s workforce who...
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It’s time to protect the poor and the migrants from rising edible oil prices
In his Mann ki Baat address to the nation on 30th May, 2021, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi appreciated the fact that the farmers received "more than the minimum support price (MSP) for mustard" pertaining to the rabi production. One can easily guess from this statement of the PM that the mustard growers in Haryana (and elsewhere) preferred to sell their produce to private traders in the open market instead...
More »Indian family budgets are stretched, they’re borrowing more. Faster vaccination can fix this -Ila Patnaik and Radhika Pandey
-ThePrint.in RBI data shows a sharp increase in households borrowing against gold. Other indicators also show higher borrowing. More credit is fine, but vaccination needs priority. The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown has hit household incomes sharply. Households have survived to a large extent by borrowing. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows a sharp increase in households borrowing against gold. In addition to borrowing from the...
More »Covid-19 made poor more vulnerable to child trafficking, say NGOs -Sushmita Ghosh
-IndiaToday.com Activists say that despite the Covid-19 restrictions in places, cases of child trafficking continue to rise unabated. On June 4, Pooja (name changed) was rescued from her employer’s house in Patna. At 10, Pooja had been working as a domestic help for about a year. She was taken by child traffickers in June 2020, when the country was exiting from a nationwide coronavirus lockdown. After a year of child labour, she was...
More »The inadequate food safety net -CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
-The Hindu Business Line/ NetworkIdeas.org With India experiencing a severe second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing decentralized lockdowns, a crisis of loss of jobs and livelihoods and resulting hunger is being reported from across the country. A reluctant central government has, therefore, been forced to revive the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), to distribute 5 kilograms of free foodgrain per person per month to the approximately 80 crore...
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