-Livemint.com The list of PDS beneficiaries has not been updated for over five years and excludes many children and women NEW DELHI : It’s well past lunch hour, but 50-year-old Bitaiya is yet to step into her kitchen. Her meagre supply of wheat flour was scraped clean the night before. So, whether she—a daily wage earner whose husBand died of tuberculosis a few years ago—and her two children, seven- and 16-year olds,...

-Hindustan Times Seema Kulkarni of the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (Soppecom), Pune speaks about supporting 500 single and widowed women who do not have ration cards or Bank accounts, access food supplies * What is the situation of agricultural village economy in Maharashtra after the lockdown? Maharashtra has been facing an agrarian crisis for some time now. Post-Covid-19 and the lockdown the situation has only worsened. Harvesting operations have come to...

-The Indian Express/ PTI They are distributing packets containing food grains and other essential items to residents of different localities and urging citizens to strictly follow the lockdown and not venture out of their homes. Mumbai: In a move aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus, some city-based NGOs and political leaders have started free distribution of essential items to people, particularly those residing in slum pockets. They are distributing packets containing food...

-The Hindu Seeing economists as ‘plumbers’, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo show how economic reasoning and evidence can shed light on real-world issues John Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesian economics, once said that “if economists could manage to get themselves thought of as a humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid”. Judging from recent opinion polls, economists still have a long way to go. According to...

-Livemint.com * A prolonged lockdown will hurt farmers about to harvest the winter crop and the landless living on daily wages * Continued disruption in the food supply chain will eventually hit consumers if prices vary widely across regions. This uncertainty has also hit 70 mn households in rural India who own small dairies NEW DELHI: Baburao Sanap has no clue how to pull himself out of a big mess —he’s saddled with...