-TheWire.in This lockdown hunger is not the only worry. Post-COVID, access to safe and nutritious foods would be uncertain if adequate policy measures are not taken. The COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened India’s hunger and malnutrition woes, more so for the millions of informal workers, on their way back home or struggling to meet two ends in their urban and rural homes. Their embedded informality over labour, land and housing tenure has...
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Wanted: An urban equivalent of MGNREGA -Amit Basole and Rakshita Swamy
-Down to Earth Such a programme is the need of the hour not only as a measure to revive the urban economy now, but also to mitigate any further shocks to it in the future The collective memory of how India lived through the world’s largest lockdown will be seared by images of how our state and society dealt with the country’s workers. Left largely to fend for themselves, millions living in...
More »Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »Diamond workers begin exodus from Surat
-PTI Nearly 1,500 families are heading to their home towns every day Left with no source of income, workers in Surat’s diamond industry are leaving the city in large numbers. After being forced to down shutters in March-end owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, business resumed in the second week of June. However, over 600 workers and their families have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the Surat Municipal Corporation to order the closure of...
More »Rolling back the induced livelihood shock -Sumit Mazumdar and Indranil
-The Hindu Specific policy measures can reverse the lockdown-created trauma and stop it from snowballing into chronic poverty For most regions across the country, the long lockdown has just got over. As the “unlocking” begins, it is becoming increasingly apparent how the Indian state had chosen its sides and revealed its elitist bias during one of the most stringently enforced lockdowns worldwide. Several news reports and surveys on the plight of India’s...
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