-Livemint.com Overwhelming support for Modi government in rural India despite lack of day jobs and money crunch, finds Gaon Connection-CSDS survey New Delhi: Borrowing money to run households; wage work coming to a standstill; farmers unable to sell their harvest on time and at a fair price; a drop in income for most families; yet, an overwhelming support for Narendra Modi-led federal government’s management of the covid-19 crisis. These are some of...

-National Herald The plea says the Centre failed to “undertake timely and effective measures for containing transmission of disease within India” despite being notified about the same by WHO in January, 2020. Six retired bureaucrats have moved the Supreme Court seeking an independent inquiry by a Commission appointed under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, into the Central Government's "gross mismanagement" of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, legal news website LiveLaw.in has...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-The Tribune This is a crucial moment for Modinomics. Till now, government schemes have been used to help the poorest of the poor survive, even when they do not have any regular source of income. The middle class has continued to back the PM, hoping his policies will yield dividends. The industrial recession has shaken that belief. It could well be the beginning of their disenchantment with the PM. IN 2014, journalist...

-The Indian Express That’s the actual liquidity pumped into rural areas by government post lockdown – through grain procurement, PM-Kisan and MGNREGA wages. There are many parallels one can draw between the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown (gharbandi) and demonetisation (notebandi), in terms of their impact on India’s farm economy. Both resulted in the same thing – demand destruction – albeit through different routes. Notebandi caused a haemorrhaging of liquidity from the predominantly cash-based farm...