-The Indian Express The lack of a social safety net resulted in misery for workers, many of whom were suddenly left without means of transport. Women were at the receiving end of the restrictions with the report pointing out how 50 per cent of households surveyed reported that women were spending more time in cooking or fetching firewood than before. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions that followed has...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-TheWire.in One of the most disturbing effects of the pandemic has been on the nutritional needs of the disadvantaged. The Budget needs to prioritise addressing this issue. The pandemic led disruptions of nutrition services have exacerbated India’s existing burden of undernutrition. Children did not get the mid-day meals and supplementary nutrition under the anganwadi services scheme they were registered under. Critical health services like immunisation, iron-folic acide and calcium supplementation, treatment of...

-Newsclick.in Farmers fear they will have to engage with big traders and agribusinesses on an unequal playing field where these giant corporations will be dictating the terms of engagement. Approved by the government of India in 1988, the Pepsi project was launched to initiate a second agricultural revolution in Punjab. The effects of the first agricultural revolution had faded. Yields of major crops were low. A joint venture among PepsiCo, Voltas and...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...