-SabrangIndia.in On-ground voices and detailed reports highlight the need for cash transfers to keep vulnerable groups afloat in face of a growing unemployment Many experts and reports analysing the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 have demanded fiscal support for India’s vulnerable and below poverty line (BPL) population amidst the COVID-19 crisis. On June 17, 2021, this notion was reaffirmed when Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) President T. V. Narendran said, “There is an estimated...

-ThePrint.in Women employed as domestic workers in India’s cities have lost work in vast numbers, forcing many to return to their home villages. Lasuben Shivlal Raval is a 70-year-old grandmother from Ahmedabad in India. She has worked as a ‘headloader’ – a goods carrier – in one of the city’s biggest wholesale cloth markets for decades. Her work was always tough, but life became immeasurably harder for Lasuben and her fellow workers...

-TheWire.in If the current data is anything to go by, the low death figures reflect poor testing and recording rather than some natural “protection” from severe disease in rural India. Many rural areas were hit hard during India’s devastating recent COVID-19 surge. The scale of this rural epidemic remains largely hidden in official figures. But a flood of news reports tell a tale of infection sweeping rapidly through villages, high mortality, minimal...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com Thiruvananthapuram: VEHICLES scattered left and right as Ushakumari S., surreally perched on her scooter in a personal protective equipment (PPE) suit, drove at top speed through Kollam’s streets to get to a hospital. Riding pillion with her was a COVID-19 patient, Ramla Beevi, who needed her second antigen test done. Ushakumari had got fed up, waiting for an ambulance to ship the patient, and decided to take matters into her own...

-Article-14.com While COVID-19 orphans have dominated mainstream discourse, India’s children silently face an epidemic of other vulnerabilities, including hunger, the loss of school, early marriage and trafficking for sex. How child rights are being rolled back by decades. New Delhi: The first hint that something was out of place was when Saraswati Pagade, a team member of YUVA (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action) Navi Mumbai Childline noticed a surge in the...