-SabrangIndia.in On-ground voices and detailed reports highlight the need for cash transfers to keep vulnerable groups afloat in face of a growing unemployment Many experts and reports analysing the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 have demanded fiscal support for India’s vulnerable and below poverty line (BPL) population amidst the Covid-19 crisis. On June 17, 2021, this notion was reaffirmed when Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) President T. V. Narendran said, “There is an estimated...

-TheCitizen.in The Farmers’ agitation starting November 26 2020, was against three Farm Laws. The Essential Commodities Amendment Act, 2020, (ECA Act) is one of them. ECA Act amends the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, (EC Act) enacted “in the interest of the general public, for the control of the production, supply and distribution of, and trade and commerce”, and more precisely, “for controlling the rise in prices or preventing the hoarding of any...

In his Mann ki Baat address to the nation on 30th May, 2021, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi appreciated the fact that the farmers received "more than the minimum support price (MSP) for mustard" pertaining to the rabi production. One can easily guess from this statement of the PM that the mustard growers in Haryana (and elsewhere) preferred to sell their produce to private traders in the open market instead...

-Scroll.in Indians need more relief measures during the second Covid-19 wave. Even before the pandemic hit, India was one of the world’s most malnourished countries. As could be expected for such a country with such poor development indicators, Covid-19 hit India’s poor hard. To compound the problem, the Indian government put in place what was the world’s harshest lockdown with little planning. A new paper by economists Jean Drèze and Anmol Somanchi has...

-Moneycontrol.com Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, on the devastation of Covid, what plagues MNREGA, central government’s relief measures, stimulus packages, vaccination drive and more. The big lesson from the havoc wrought by Covid-19 is that India must abandon the “fragmented” US model of healthcare, which is a colossal failure, according to developmental economist Jean Dreze. A Belgian-born hunger economics expert who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and...