-The Hindu The Centre must recognise that winning the war on COVID-19 is linked to the States being armed with enough resources The scale of disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has never been seen before. Even as we are in the midst of the second phase of the national lockdown, there is no clarity on the time it will take to come out of the crisis, the extent of damage it...

-TheWire.in Social policies almost always have multiple, often unintended, consequences. This feature came out sharply, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a nationwide lockdown to arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus without announcing an immediate or near-simultaneous relief package for India’s poorest. As the fight against COVID-19 unavoidably puts the livelihoods of millions at risk, an ugly truth of Indian society has come out in the open – namely, a large...

-The Hindu Circulars were sent to all departments. Employees from a number of government departments and agencies have donated a day’s salary toward the PM-CARES fund. While the donations, meant for COVID-19 relief, were said to be “voluntary”, government circulars show that the deductions were made directly from salaries. Those unwilling to donate were asked to submit their refusal in writing. Please click here to read more. ...

Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...

-The Hindu The trend across developing countries is to give State governments as much discretion as possible India urgently needs to increase fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding. Among comparable developing countries with similar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, India has spent the least as a share of its GDP. While the Central government has announced measures amounting to 0.8% of GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that State-level relief...