-Scroll.in The Nobel laureate said people needed reassurance and that the administration had to be ‘proactive’ in doing so. Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee on Friday said India has not done “anything close to enough” to provide relief to the Poor, who have been adversely impacted by the countrywide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. In an interview to BBC, Banerjee said the Indian government needs to think of a “clear,...

-The Indian Express According to sources, the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED), which comes under administrative control of the Agriculture Ministry, has been tasked with ensuring supply of pulses from the buffer stocks it maintains. Announced as part of the COVID-19 relief package about a month ago, free pulses — 1 kg per family — to beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) are yet to reach...

-The Indian Express The impact of the lockdown may make social issues more prominent again in terms of class, at the expense of caste as well as religious identities and communal tendencies. When interviewed by journalists, several migrant workers badly affected by the COVID-19-related lockdown admitted that they had voted for the BJP in 2019. Indeed, the party attracted Poor voters in large numbers during the last Lok Sabha elections, especially among...

-The Telegraph Unesco and Unicef advisories carry a huge significance for India, where the lockdown has triggered efforts to promote online teaching from primary school to universities New Delhi: Two UN agencies have warned against any large-scale shift towards online education, saying it would deepen socio-economic inequalities and warning that virtual platforms can leave children vulnerable to sexual exploitation. The Unesco and Unicef advisories carry a huge significance for India, where the lockdown...

-TheWire.in Social policies almost always have multiple, often unintended, consequences. This feature came out sharply, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a nationwide lockdown to arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus without announcing an immediate or near-simultaneous relief package for India’s Poorest. As the fight against COVID-19 unavoidably puts the livelihoods of millions at risk, an ugly truth of Indian society has come out in the open – namely, a large...