-Scroll.in The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed how rooted structural imbalances are between rural and urban, male and female, rich and poor, even in the digital world. As an immediate measure to stem the spread of Covid-19, most educational institutions have been shut since the end of March. It is still difficult to predict when schools, colleges and universities will reopen. There are few options other than to shift to digital platforms from...

-Newsclick.in The Public Distribution System is an essential social security measure, especially during a crisis like Covid-19, but biometric authentication is a roadblock. Over the past few weeks, the situation for daily wage earners has been particularly dismal. A telephonic survey with over a 100 people in rural areas of six states (Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh) by Road Scholarz, conducted in two phases (26-31 March and...

-Newsclick.in The lockdown has got the government talking about agri ‘reforms’ again, but the exploitation of India’s weakest farmers continues unchecked. It is a cruel irony that in the sixth week of the nationwide lockdown, the government is talking up omnibus agriculture “reforms” as if they can mitigate the growing distress in rural India. Reforms, no doubt, implies stricter compliance with online registration and payment rules, more focus on market-based pricing, and...

-Outlook India While nationwide lockdown is unavoidable and is a wise decision to contain the spread of the virus, there is a need to address the possibility of an unintended baby boom among poor and vulnerable groups. With most countries following nationwide lockdown or stay at home orders due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, there has been a debate on a possible unintended baby boom across the world. Although many demographers from...

-Vikalp.ind.in The unplanned countrywide COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in widespread distress to both principal classes among the rural population namely the peasants and agricultural workers. Peasants suffered in the first place from crop losses due to unplanned lockdown induced delay in harvesting of mechanised crops. Apart from this an additional problem for peasants was the elevated fluctuation in prices (fall in nominal prices more often than not) of both crops and...