-The Hindu The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

-The Hindu Workers in rural Kerala are badly hit. Kochi: Shanthi M., a 53-year-old from a family dependent on dairy farming in the Rayamangalam panchayat along the eastern suburbs of Ernakulam district, has dumped down the drain nearly 17 litres of milk daily ever since two members of her family tested positive for COVID-19. There are no takers for milk from an infected household. Nor is the family at liberty to cut...

-Newsclick.in The deeper rot in agriculture can be overcome through more far-reaching reforms, starting from an overhaul of pre-capitalist land relations and relations of production that continue to shackle productivity and are at the root of aggravating poverty, unemployment and inequality in rural India. It has been more than five months since farmers from different parts of the country began protesting in Delhi. They have been unflinching when it comes to their...

-Hindustan Times Income and urban expenditure grew at below the national average. But rural expenditure grew faster, and there is a sharper dip in poverty levels Poriborton, or change, was the buzzword 10 years ago when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) defeated the Left Front. This time around, one of the popular campaign slogans, used by the prime minister, is asol poriborton or real change. The demand for change clearly has not changed...