-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, dated August 6th, 2020 The Right to Food Campaign has sent a memorandum to the Hon'ble Minister of Women and Child Development Ms. Smriti Zubin Irani demanding to restart the hot cooked meal and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. It may be noted that most services for women and children have been shut down since March this year i.e. since the time when...
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Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »The pandemic is about eyes shut -Rajendran Narayanan
-The Hindu There is a resonance between Saramago’s literary world and the migrant labour distress in contemporary India The novel, Blindness, by Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago, is strikingly prescient about a sweeping illness. The plot revolves around a mysterious epidemic because of which people suddenly turn blind. The thread It starts with a person driving his car who turns blind while waiting at a traffic signal. He pleads to be taken home and...
More »Grain aplenty and the crisis of hunger: on universal Public Distribution System -Dipa Sinha
-The Hindu The focus on One Nation One Ration Card is misplaced when what is needed is a universal Public Distribution System With the economic crisis continuing on the one hand and the health system crumbling under the burden of rising COVID-19 cases on the other, it is clear that it will take a long time for things to get back to “normal”. Unemployment is high and it will take a while...
More »SWAN’s third report outlines the perpetual plight of migrants in terms of food shortage, income insecurity and travel difficulties during the lockdown
On June 5th this year, the Stranded Workers Action Network, comprising volunteers from various civil society groups, academics and students enrolled in university education, released its third report entitled ‘To Leave or Not to Leave? Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and Their Journeys Home’. Among other things, the latest report states that nearly four-fifth of migrant workers (out of 5,911) who called SWAN volunteers for help (altogether 821 distress calls were made)...
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