-Down to Earth The arduous journeys of those who migrate for medical treatment in India Marta kya na karta (One can do anything when pushed to the wall),” says 40-year-old Rita Kumari from Supaul district of north Bihar. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was tightening its grip across the country Rita and her daughter, Sandhya, had to undertake multiple trips to hospitals in Nepal and Uttar Pradesh, before reaching the All...

-Business Standard Borrower cannot be charged any amount not been explicitly mentioned in a factsheet, says regulator. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday released its final guidelines for microfinance loans, lifting an interest cap and allowing companies to have a board-approved policy to price for such lending. The RBI will continue checking that microfinance institutions do not charge usurious rates. The regulator said each entity has to disclose pricing related information...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-TheWire.in As Rohingyas in India face rising Islamophobia, a strong tide of Hindu nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, the view that fires in refugees camps are due to accidents is rather unconvincing. Rohingya refugee camps in India witnessed four fires in 2021 alone, higher than any other year prior. Between 2016 and 2021, 12 mysterious fires broke out in Rohingya camps alone. Most of these conflagrations demonstrated a peculiar trend – they catalyse...

-The Hindu Spells of impoverishment during the pandemic were not infrequent, and lower castes and minorities bore the brunt of it Few observations survive the test of time. Fewer gain significance over time. Engel’s Law is a case in point. A version is that the poorer a family, “the greater the proportion of the total outgo which must be used for food. The proportion of the outgo used for food, other things...