-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: As India deals with growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the economic ramifications of the resultant lockdowns, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has made a slew of announcements and promulgated ordinances to revive the economy, including the agriculture sector. It brought in the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion & Facilitation) Ordinance 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020, and amended the...

-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...

A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...

-The New Indian Express Ninety two per cent of the respondents had lost their jobs, said the survey which covered both migrant and non-migrant workers. NEW DELHI: Communities struggled with hunger with loss of livelihood amid the lockdown with inter-state and intra-state migrant workers being the worst hit, according to a survey by Centre for Equity Studies in collaboration with Delhi Research Group and Karwan-E-Mohabbat. Ninety two per cent of the respondents had...

-Down to Earth Distress among marginal farmers and unavailability of food to migrant labourers has been largely ignored in Union government’s economic stimulus   Agriculture and allied activities are considered ‘essential’ and officially face no restriction to harvest and supply to the market, even in the middle of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. But an agrarian crisis stemming from systemic failures needs to be considered for immediate policy response. The current distress...