-Newsclick.in Inequality is not natural but manufactured. It’s time policymakers stopped normalising the wealth and income gap. Else, post-COVID inequality could become a permanent feature. Wealth and income inequality are more than just economic concepts. They also influence education and health outcomes, poverty levels, employment and unemployment rates, opportunities, choices, and, ultimately, happiness. Of late, several reports have investigated the impact of COVID-19 on various segments of society at the regional, national,...

-Down to Earth The employment scheme worked as a lifeline for rural Indian households during the COVID-19 pandemic Lack of awareness and complexity of application process hold women back from applying for work under the central government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), according to a recent report. Women beneficiaries struggled to enrol in the scheme, the report suggested. Most of them found enrolling for work a complex and time-consuming process....

-The Telegraph India’s economic recovery is uneven India’s ranking as one of the world’s fastest growing economies — a bright spot in a troubled and slowing world economy — routinely figures in the public discourse. It was upheld even as oil prices zoomed and inflation surged early this year. It did not waver when growth forecasts were lowered some six months ago. It wasn’t rattled when growth underperformed in the April-June quarter....

-The Hindu ‘Many didn’t get government benefits due to difficulties in procuring death certificates’ For every child who lost its mother, three children lost their father to the COVID-19 pandemic in Maharashtra. ‘Vulnerable Children of Maharashtra’, a report on the status of children orphaned by COVID-19 by Vidhi Maharashtra, an independent think tank, found that 22,760 children lost their fathers while 2,678 lost their mothers to COVID-19. The loss of either parent has a...

-The Hindu Being fiscally conservative resulted in a rise in extreme poverty, with there being no signs of any course correction A recent World Bank report, titled “Correcting Course”, captures the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global poverty. The number of people living in extreme poverty rose by seven crore million in 2020, as the global poverty rate rose from 8.4% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2020. This is the first...