-The Tribune Cabinet also approves purchase of Covaxin for 18-44 category industrial workers The Punjab government on Thursday decided to join the COVAX facility alliance for global sourcing and procurement of Covid vaccines at the best price, becoming the first state to take such a step amid vaccine shortage in the country. The decision was taken during the Cabinet meeting, which also approved the purchase of Covaxin for industrial workers, for whose vaccination...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Hindu The U.S.-supported move will have an effect if countries simultaneously address non-IP bottlenecks among other things The United States has finally relented and declared its support for a temporary waiver of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In October 2020, India and South Africa, at the WTO, proposed waiving Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II...

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 The pandemic revealed the precarious state of India’s informal sector. Localised production, trade and markets offer a better alternative to existing paradigm of development. Another wave of COVID, another round of lockdowns, another long journey back home for migrant workers. If there is one lesson we are learning after a year of COVID-19, it is that we have not learnt any lessons, at least not the crucial ones. 2020 exposed...