-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: Global economic output is expected to contract by 4.9% in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 lockdown. India announced a lockdown on March 24, 2020, which was extended over two months, and continues in pockets of states depending on the spread of the disease, which has now infected more than half a million people in the country. The lockdown impacted millions of inter-state migrant workers who form the bulwark of India’s...
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In this time of crisis, the most urgent imperative is to protect underprivileged families from starvation -SY Quraishi
-The Indian Express There is an urgent requirement to put money in the hands of the impoverished to support them during the pandemic. This has been the refrain of the Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. Further, the government must tighten the implementation of its critical schemes related to nutrition, Food security and healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic is flaring up into a mass humanitarian crisis. Its foremost victim will be innocent children who have...
More »That Foodgrain stocks lie in public godowns while people are going hungry is a scandal -Dipa Sinha
-The Indian Express What is disturbing is that in the middle of the current crisis some are now calling for a massive downsizing of the PDS and a shift to cash transfers in place of Foodgrains. The Public Distribution System has played an important role in providing relief to people in the aftermath of the national lockdown. With COVID-19 cases increasing and the economy continuing to be in a downturn, some corrective...
More »Mitigating malnutrition -Dr. Pavitra Mohan and Dr Sanjana Brahmawar Mohan
-IDROnline.org In response to the Food crisis created by the lockdown, here’s what anganwadis can do to ensure that children stay nourished in times of COVID-19 and beyond. Two-year old Rameela* lives in Nayaghar, 100 km from Udaipur and 35 km from the nearest town. For nearly three months now, Rameela has received a tiffin every morning, filled with sattu (a porridge made from cereals, pulses, sugar, and oil) and khichdi (a...
More »Rs 150,000 crore plus: the govt stimulus for rural areas post lockdown -Harish Damodaran
-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...
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