-TheWire.in Despite the fact that India's financial inclusion infrastructure has a complex mix of self-help groups and small private banks offering credit to the poor, it has failed to deliver during the pandemic. When the pandemic struck, policymakers and prominent economists across the world called for financial infrastructures to be strengthened. They argued this would support the efficient channeling of relief through cash transfers or cheap loans. India was no exception to...

-IndiaSpend.com Massive job losses, up to 51% decline in earnings and reduced food intake--migrant workers struggled to survive through the recent lockdown in Gujarat, finds a study. Migrants received no relief during the second wave, and the measures taken in the last lockdown were not adequate, it shows Ahmedabad: Migrant workers were weeks from running out of food, struggled to access healthcare and faced acute livelihood problems during the partial lockdowns imposed...

-The Hindu The second wave has amplified the issue of rent which does not draw much attention as food and income support do As State governments have begun implementing weekend curfews and lockdown-like conditions amid the second wave of COVID, there is another issue that is emerging — rent crises within informal rental housing markets. For example, domestic workers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, have begun reporting to the Rajasthan Mahila Kamgar Union (RMKU)...

-The Tribune ‘High indebtedness, inability to repay loan led to extreme step’ Over 7,300 farm labourers in Punjab have died by suicide between 2000 and 2018. As many as 5,765 of these (79 per cent of total suicides by farm labourers) were because of high indebtedness and inability to repay the loan. An average agricultural labour family in the state has a debt of Rs 76,017 while the agricultural labourer suicide victim family...

Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...