-TheWire.in The auctions let millers earn a bloated revenue of at least Rs 4,600 crore in four years from milling over 5.4 lakh tonnes of raw pulses, hammering government coffers and possibly the quality of daal, show documents. New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government allowed millers to fatten themselves on tonnes of pulses meant for the poor by turning an auction procedure on its head. The Reporters’ Collective’s examination of auction archives shows...

-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...

-The Hindu India must invest robustly in the world’s largest social programme on early childhood services Being closed since the April 2020-lockdown, anganwadis are slowly reopening. Those in Karnataka, Bihar and Tamil Nadu are opening or considering opening shortly. As part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), anganwadis play a crucial role in supporting households, particularly from low-income families, by providing childcare, health and nutrition, education, supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up...

-Hindustan Times The headline unemployment rate in the March 2021 quarter was 9.4%. This is the lowest since the quarter ending June 2020, which coincided with the 68-day long nation-wide lockdown which was imposed on March 25, 2020. Could the Covid-19 pandemic have left long-term scars on India’s labour markets? The findings of the January-March round of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), released on November 30, by the National Statistical Office...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...