Preliminary findings of a survey among 3,994 respondents from 11 states reveal that most vulnerable households and communities, such as SCs, STs, OBCs, PVTGs, slum dwellers, daily wage labourers, farmers, single women headed households, etc. continue to witness depressed incomes during September-October in comparison to their income levels prior to the lockdown. The face-to-face survey conducted by the Right to Food Campaign and Center for Equity Studies (instead of telephonic...

-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru and Delhi: India’s national nutrition-specific programmes reach various social groups nearly equally, data show, and differences between uptake and delivery for all groups are small too. Yet more people from Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities remain undernourished, as successive National Family Health Surveys have shown. During the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the link between social identities and Access to health services has been well documented in the United States and...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have multiple impacts on our lives. Existing challenges have been exacerbated and new ones have emerged. Across the country, individuals, communities, businesses and governments are responding differently. Covid has claimed many casualties. Good reportage need not be one of them. The pandemic and the consequent economic slowdown have also taken its toll on good journalism. At this moment, we need good journalism to be stronger than...

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which was released on July 6th (observed as World Zoonoses Day by research institutions and non-governmental organisations across the globe) this year, says that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases in humans are estimated to have an animal origin. Likewise, almost three-fourth of all new and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic i.e. these diseases...

-The Hindu What we have done so far, and what all remains to be done The global pandemic is marching on. As I had said at the JRD Tata Oration, hosted by the Population Foundation of India on its 50th anniversary, of the lessons I have learned over the last nine or 10 months, the most important one is the significance of investing in public health and primary healthcare. Countries that invested...