-The Hindu The second wave has amplified the issue of rent which does not draw much attention as food and income support do As State governments have begun implementing weekend curfews and lockdown-like conditions amid the second wave of COVID, there is another issue that is emerging — rent crises within informal rental housing markets. For example, domestic workers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, have begun reporting to the Rajasthan Mahila Kamgar Union (RMKU)...

-The Indian Express The United States will pursue negotiations at WTO to waive intellectual property for Covid-19 vaccines. This can allow large-scale production in middle-income countries, but there are arguments against the move. The United States on Wednesday announced support for waiving intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines, saying extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures. United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the US will pursue “text-based negotiations” on the waiver at...

-The Indian Express A waiver on IP protections would mean pharmaceutical firms and vaccine makers across the world can learn how to make these vaccines without fear of lawsuits from companies that originally developed them. In a move that could potentially help increase production of Covid-19 vaccines around the world, the United States on Wednesday announced its support for waiving intellectual property (IP) protections for these vaccines. Subsequently, the European Union (EU) agreed...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Indian Express A native of Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur, Kumar was preparing for a 25-hour bus ride to his hometown with his family of 10 in fear of a lockdown. Ranchi: AROUND ONE month ago, Anuj Kumar, a brick kiln worker in Gujarat’s Sathara, heard from a local NGO worker that the government had started a new scheme – One Nation, One Ration Card (ONORC). “The purvata mamlatdar [provisions official] asked me to...